Hi everyone,
First of all, thanks so much for everyone using Avelon and everyone who've decided to support the development by upgrading, it really means a lot! All the feedback in the post following the release of pro was definitely insightful. If you're unaware, I recommend reading the post as well as my reply here.
I've decided to push towards a 1.0.7 release a bit earlier than planned to address everyone's feedback. My goal with these changes is to provide a wider range of features in a more basic free variant, whilst offering more extensive customization options and an even better experience as an optional upgrade. This way everyone gets to try out more stuff for free, and if you want the full capabilities you can feel confident that the features work as you'd expect. This setup is more in line with other apps as well as the feedback from all of you.
In addition to tweaks to the free tier, the update contains a new text selection tool, a new dark theme, the ability to lock the app with FaceID, more filtering options + lots of QOL improvements and bug fixes.
Full Changelog
Adjustments to the free/pro tiers
- Added a basic jump button to the free version
- The smart jump button with extra settings and customisation remains pro
- Everyone now has access to a limited number of custom filters for free
- The pro version includes unlimited filters and new filtering options
- The maximum number of profiles in the free tier is now three (guest + 2 custom accounts)
- This change does not affect any accounts you've already added
- The pro version has unlimited accounts
- Added a free 7 day trial option to enable everyone test out the pro features
- Added various descriptions to pro settings to more clearly explain what they do
- Replaced the groups “pro” tag in subscriptions with a link to a more details about the feature
New pro features
- Added ability to lock the app with FaceID
- Added new dark theme ‘Hacker man’
- Added option to place the smart jump button anywhere, not just around the edges
- Added ability to filter independently on either the post title or post body
New features, QOL improvements and bug fixes
- Added tool to select text from comments & posts
- Added ability to delete your own posts
- Added share option to links and comments
- Improved prioritizations for swipe gestures
- This should prevent accidental downvotes when you’re trying to swipe back!
- Fixed issue where editing markdown links would sometimes show weird characters and symbols
- Limited the maximum number of smart link previews in posts
- This should keep “link aggregation” posts from being unnecessarily long
- Fixed issue where adding accounts would sometimes fail
- Fixed issue where swipe-to-go-forward could sometimes break after tapping the navbar to go back
- Removed option to report/block yourself
- Lots of minor bug fixes and improvements
I’m happy you put the FaceID lock in but immensely disappointed in the fact you put everything (literally everything) behind A Paywall.
I understand that €2/month isn’t much, however - the fact that every small thing goes into an paywall, doesn’t show me personally any good.
Last time, I saw the Lifetime option was €30-35 (can’t see prices in TestFlight version anymore) while the app is great but not yet bug-free.
It makes me worry that there will be “another tier” later on which costs more to get the newer features and so on.
My opinion (for what’s worth it): Your app is great and at the moment the best out there but due to paywall on literally every feature. Less good.
I sympathize on the “at the moment” because Memmy is back on track with development and so is Voyager which are currently free with different features but possible getting similar features later on while maintaining being free.
Good luck though!
IMO the most important thing by far is making the core app experience as solid as possible. Things like post feeds, comment sections, posting, sharing, image viewers, inboxes, replying, editing, text selection, user profiles, swipe gestures, searching, font settings, sorting options, display options, hiding read posts and everything else you'd expect takes a lot of time to develop, maintain and polish. The vast majority of my development time is spent on improvements, bug fixes and new features for everyone, and I really do care a lot about creating a great experience that can help improving Lemmy overall. Offering some more niche nice-to-have features on top of that is a good way to support everything else.
I'm not going to add a higher tier - as I briefly mentioned in an earlier comment my goal is rather the opposite. If Lemmy keeps growing, Avelon Pro could at some point make sense as a $5-or-something one-time upgrade. Unfortunately that's just not the case right now.
That’s a lot of worries for not a lot of reason. Honestly, the dev needs to be supported and new features is a pretty industry standard method of generating an income. Aside from that, you’re literally seeing the dev move features out of the paywall, so it seems weird to be worried about some weird dystopian future in a thread about moving away from exactly that.
Perhaps might not be for you but it is for me. This is quite much the standard formula, paywall everything and a while later put new tiers for more income-streams.
I understand he needs support but this a not-so-friendly way (in a friendly way of saying).
Certainly he might change things from paywall to free but the actual features people want (for example; I requested FaceID) - it gets put behind paywall.
What’s weird for one might not be weird for someone else. Perspective.
What do you mean when you say that literally everything is behind a paywall? The core features are accessible for free.
Still no update for the messed up GUI for iOS replies and posts? 💁🏼♂️
I posted a reply to your post about that, its a bug with an accessibility setting in iOS. Forgot to include the fix in 1.0.7, but you can resolve it for now by disabling "Button Shapes" in the iOS accessibility settings.
Very cool. Thank you!!! Please let us know if there is a fix in future update. Great app. 🙏🏼
What percentage of your revenue are you contributing back to Lemmy in general and the instance that hosts your community?
Honestly, it’s pretty fair. I appreciate that you listened to the criticisms of the community and reworked it.
Although I’ll probably not buy it due to the price, I think the paid features are reasonable and most importantly, the essential features are all available for free.
Thanks for listening, and most of all, thanks for Avelon!
Enjoying this app immensely. Thank you for all the updates!
Unfortunately still have the accessibility issue with the default dark theme.
I have light sensitivity issues, and the contrast between text and background on the default dark theme is too high. So in lower light (but not completely black) environments, the light theme is too light, and the dark theme too dark for myself. The “Calm Night” and “Ocean Depths” themes are so much better and do not cause the same issues.
As this is should be an accessibility feature, much like font size, there should be an alternative dark theme available in the free tier. Without one, the app is extremely difficult to use when in darker environments, for people like myself.
I would like to say however, I understand theming and other, non-essential features being a premium option. Let’s be real, you deserve to be paid for your hard work.
Have you checked out the "reduce white point" option in accessibility settings? Does that improve things or is there still too much contrast?
