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Comment by ploynog | Hacker News Reader

I think the complaint is that you only get told that you require a paid plan AFTER signing up. At least on a brief look on the Play Store page and your website, it does not immediately mention it prominently.

That seems like a very dark pattern and is, honestly, pretty scummy.

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This is not a dark pattern, it's just a constraint that the app stores place on the pricing disclosure that is very non-intuitive. You have to mark your app as "free" to download if you charge a recurring subscription fee. You can only mark it as paid if there is a one time fee to download the app.

Our FAQ and pricing pages all list that it is a paid only app. All of our ads explain that it's subscription based. Anyone who asks we're very transparent about it. If there's somewhere else where you think we can list it to make it more clear I'm happy to add it, just not sure where that would be.

What FAQ and pricing pages? Your website makes no mention of pricing at all.

Edit: The "dark" pattern is in the registration flow. It doesn't mention that the app requires a subscription anywhere until after you've created an account. Surely you could add a disclaimer before creating your account? This has nothing to do with the App Store.

Edit 2: I'm not saying you intended to implement a dark pattern. Just perhaps a UX oversight.

Edit 3: The download page would be another great place to put this info, since that's the primary CTA on the home page (there's 4 prominent download buttons).

Looks like we used to have it in the description on the app store along with the FAQ but a team member made the decision to remove it because of complaints about it being inconsistent with the way Apple was localizing pricing to different currencies and regions.

We can't hit people with the paywall before they've registered because we need to assign the trial to their user record. We've tried adding more language during onboarding but no one reads any of it, they just click through.

You're mistaking challenges in building a global app for malicious intent. I left a job paying a lot more to do this because I wanted to help people.

We'll add something back to the FAQ on this, thank you all for pointing it out.

> You're mistaking challenges in building a global app for malicious intent.

Perhaps the grandparent comment of mine did, not me.

> We'll add something back to the FAQ on this, thank you all for pointing it out.

So people don't read onboarding instructions, but you're going to bury the pricing info in an FAQ in the App Store where it's hidden below the fold?

The fix is quite easy. Here's a redesign for your in-app registration screen:

   Create account   
                    
  ┌────────────────┐
  │Name            │
  └────────────────┘
  ┌────────────────┐
  │Email           │
  └────────────────┘
  ┌────────────────┐
  │Password        │
  └────────────────┘
                    
    ┌────────────┐  
    │  Register  │  
    └────────────┘  
   7-day free trial,
    $6.67/mo after

https://www.snapcalorie.com/

I cannot find a FAQ or pricing page on your website.

I don't see any mention of the price in the FAQ[0], which I had to guess the url of because it doesn't have a link anywhere on the homepage. Trying to guess the url of the pricing page doesn't yield any results.

[0] https://www.snapcalorie.com/faq.html

It doesn't seem like - it is

Which makes it par for the course in the scam that is mobile development

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