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Comment by Torn | Hacker News Reader

What made you decide on the $199 price point?

Additionally, do you think the $199 price point might it out of reach for a lot of people who would benefit from the app but who have tights budgets?

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I struggled a lot with how to price it. Initially I didn't think I would sell very many because I underestimated the size of the market. Because of the low volume I was going to price it at $99, but the speech language pathologists I talked to said that people were so used to paying so much, that $99 was too low.

There are definitely people who can't afford it, but this price allows me to spend more time on development. Also I do give away a fair number of copies.

> Also I do give away a fair number of copies.

I believe I have seen you do so on reddit quite a while back. :)

You're doing great work and I am extremely happy for you.

Yeah, that was me. That Reddit thread was a lot of fun.

Link? What subreddit did you post on?

http://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/g2pgc/some_jerk_s...

It is a long thread so just search for "nathanbarry" or "onevoice"

I'm not OP, but one way to reason is that he's not competing with $.99 fart-apps, but rather with an expensive specialized medical devices. From this perspective $199 is a very reasonable price point. Maybe he could charge even more for that, but it depends on what feedback he's getting from his customers.

That was my first thought as well. People with disabilities aren't exactly rolling in cash. I think it's great you're not exploiting desperate people to the same extent the people entrenched in the medical-industrial complex are, but imagine... what if you released it much, much cheaper? How many people would you help then? Or even did it as a kickstarter and open-sourced it and put it out for free. Then people with disabilities and their families could contribute. My other reaction is that you mention talking with speech pathologists. It might be a good idea to get input from people actually using AAC, i.e. people with disabilities.

I totally appreciate your awesome effort and am glad you make a living. I just would suggest if you want to take it further, learn more of the landscape and think about it politically and where you want to make your profits from.

I've struggled with this a lot. But ultimately I decided I want to create the best product possible, and charging more helps me do that. If I gave it away for free I wouldn't have the financial ability to focus on it and put in the time to make it better.

Thanks for the feedback.

"and think about it politically and where you want to make your profits from."

What, do you want him to not make the app at all and work on enterprise software?

Your comment is so short-sighted it annoys me in multiple ways. All this whining about how things that make the lifes of people better should be cheaper cheaper cheaper or free - guess what, if he sold it for 5$ he wouldn't spend any time on developing it further. You don't ask doctors to work for free either, do you? Or otherwise, why don't you take a few months out of your own life to make something that others will find useful?

Same people who bought thousand-dollar boat anchors. At 199 it has a known customer base.

It's a $200 alternative to a $7,000 device. Seems like a bargain to me.

Especially if it changes the life of its user. It has tremendous value.

This is not the same kind of purchase a fart app, a coffee, a nice T-shirt you like or even a bigger TV, this application changes what its user is able to do, in that sense it is closer to the purchase of a car, or household appliances.

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