Feed Wrangler - a modern, sustainable RSS reader

I can't see any screenshots, link to a demo, etc. Asking for $18 up front with no indication of quality is a bit rough.

This is one of the worst first impressions for a service that I can recall. . .

My theory is that you started this app when Google Reader was discontinued. You then hastily put together whatever you could as fast as you could. Perhaps outsourced on elance or a similar website. Then slapped on a yearly price of 18.99 a year to capitalize on a hectic time.

I'm generally pretty nice with my comments on here, but this is ridiculous.

Looks great, but the service I’ll switch to from GReader must have an export feature. There’s no mention of one on the site, even though it’s obviously written for GReader users, who have realized by now that whenever you sign up for a service, you have to first look for the emergency exit.

Echoing the comments of others, I'd really like to see a trial. One of the things that appealed to me about Newsblur (and eventually got me to upgrade to a paid account) is that I could try it out and see if it supported my workflow before I committed cash to it.

When I think about the target market for an RSS reader at any price point, I think that "technical" is the first descriptive word. Someone has to know a bit about "tech" to even know to use RSS, for example. When you put a "$19 per year" price tag on it, you really are polarizing your market to be "only those who are completely addicted to RSS". Which is fine - nothing wrong with niche marketing/products. But let's talk about those potential users...

The average RSS "user" doesn't spend $19 per year on an RSS reader. Most used Google Reader or another free version. Some, like me, spent $30 on FeedDemon (one time cost). I would put myself in the "addicted to RSS" group for sure.

Your hard core, addicted RSS people in 2013 have spent 5+ years, I bet, using RSS. So when someone who is an RSS junkie looks at the price point, they think, "I've used Google Reader for ten years and it's been free. I'm looking for a replacement that will hopefully last at least five years, maybe ten. This service is $19 per year - that's almost $100 over the next five years..." If you are charging someone $100 for the service, then you'd better "bring it". This page/site just doesn't do that, and it doesn't do it so spectacularly that it calls into question the entire product. Sorry but I think this needed a few more weeks to really get it together before launching it.

* Oh sure, there are always some who don't take such a long term view - "I'll just try it for a year." If that's your approach to marketing, cool. You'll miss out on the really smart and technical users, I think, but that may be best actually. It's fairly logical to think "Things that appeal to the really hardcore users" and "Things that appeal to the mass market" are quite different.

Just to share another alternative: http://feedbin.me/ It has support for Silvio Rizzi's Reeder already, or rather Reeder has support for it. Looks promising, though I haven't tried it out.

I'm definitely going to give this a try, because filtering sounds like an interesting concept, and I might find some inspiration...

For those still seeking new RSS reading experiences (and because I think HN tends to be OK with self-promotion in comments) I'd like to suggest my product - http://www.rivered.io. It's a bit different - focusing on a clean 'river of news' rather than inbox style or categorising. To directly answer some of the questions around FeedWrangler:

- it has an OPML export feature. - it has a free 30 day trial, and you can at least see what it looks like without dropping your card details. - there's a screenshot.

I still think there's a lot of innovation to be done around RSS feeds...

What about this makes it inherently 'sustainable'.

Sure, the pricing model makes it easy to see where the money is coming from, but that doesnt immediately make it sustainable.

There's still a critical mass of people that are needed to make the service first pay for itself, and then profitable, and then profitable enough for this guy to maintain it for the next X years.

If it makes 'ok' money and he gets bored of it and shuts it down in a year, that's not sustainable to me, and I can't see evidence otherwise why this might not happen.

I keep mousing over these features for screenshots or a demo video...

I'm still looking for a good replacement Windows app. I currently use FeedDemon, which uses Google. I haven't heard/seen anything about similar applications that use any of these new services out there.

I don't see anything about a trial period on the site. This sounds really promising but I'm hesitant to spend money without seeing it in action.

You want $20 for a product this ugly and with no demo? No freaking way.

Android support?