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Comment by there | Hacker News Reader

Congrats on the app, it looks nice.

I launched Pushover (https://pushover.net/) this week, which looks to be pretty much the same exact product as yours: an HTTP API to push messages to an iOS and Android client.

I built it over the past 4 weeks to replace my use of Notifo, which shut down last year. There are a few other apps already available, like Prowl, Boxcar, and NotifyMyAndroid, but none were cross-platform, so I built Pushover.

I am charging for my app as a way to pay for the server costs, as I'm not sure how else these types of apps can make money and stay around. Notifo had a lot of users but their apps were free and I don't know if they even had any paying content providers pushing large amounts of messages. How do you plan to make money with yours?

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there, I like your design better, since I am comparing to Airgram right now: immediately I can see how it looks on the mobile device screen because you provide an image, AND I see the code in different languages, which is easy for my eyes to match to languages I am writing in. So, if I would need this kind of functionality today, I would go with yours.

So did Notifo actually shut down or not? I mean, it still works for me, and the web page is up. I offered many times to pay for the service.

It's still running, but I'm not working on it, so it's kind of in zombie mode. There are some plans afoot, but I can't talk about them yet... however, you should assume it will go away. I will try to give 30 days notice if/when the plug is ultimately pulled.

Thanks! It's refreshing to have such an open conversation and you deserve high praise for it. I can now look for an alternative.

As to Airgram, I'm worried because I don't see where they charge money. Pushover looks much more reasonable for me. I became wary of "free" — what "free" usually means is that eventually I am either a) bombarded with ads, b) the service disappears because there is no money or c) somebody acquires the startup because of their stellar subscriber growth (remember "free"?). In all cases I am left out and have to re-invest my time into looking for an alternative.

I also noticed over the years that the most stable and trouble-free services are those which I regularly pay for. I'm quite happy with SmugMug and Squarespace for example, even though there are free alternatives in each case.

Funny how this perspective is different from what you hear if you are a startup founder: as a founder, you are supposed to "build something people want", and the rest is supposed to sort itself out. But if you do build something people want, but never charge for it, you end up disappointing those people sooner or later...

jazzychad, thanks again for the frank statements and giving us the time to find another solution!

I was in the process of building essentially the same app as yours, for the same reasons :) After seeing yours (which I think looks great) I have dropped dev on mine (see: http://redd.it/r47p9) and will probably use your app to hook up some notifications to some other apps of mine.

Anyway good luck with pushover :)

Neat app you have, there. We are not planning to charge for the apps, but keep a look out for premium features on Airgram.

Huh, very nice. I balked at the non-free app a bit, but hey, if it'll help keep the service alive, I'm all for it. I don't have a pressing need for it currently, but if it gets a bit more mature I will definitely buy the app and use it for the things I use Notifo for now.

Charging for the app will work for the DIY hacker types, but it'll be hard for other services to convince their users to purchase your app.

Your app icon looks like Pinterest's, but otherwise it looks great, will be trying it out in a jiffy.

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