this post was submitted on 02 Aug 2023
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I installed Sync to try it out, and noticed the subscription model for no ads, and for basic features like push notifications and exporting a list of your subscribed communities. $2/month or $100 for a "lifetime" subscription. Immediately uninstalled it, yes it has a beautiful interface but I've never been fond of subscription-based apps, especially for FOSS services. A low one-time fee would be acceptable to me, like the $4 fee for Toot! for Mastodon.
The silly thing to me about the subscription is, they say it's to "cover the monthly running costs". What running costs do they incur if Lemmy is free and open? I'm genuinely curious, if anyone knows please tell me.
A few points to make and answer:
The app is technically free, but yes it is made by a single dev and it is/was his income, so it's ad-supported.
The development is still ongoing and so some things aren't finalized, but there is a one time payment option that will be available (something like $10) to just remove ads.
The Ultra tier which has the subscription cost (and much higher one time cost at $99) is what incurs monthly fees in this case, mostly for cloud storage for things like settings and I believe an OCR and translation API.
Ultimately, use whatever makes you happy and aligns with your principles, but there are at least a few good reasons why it is how it is.
Just a quick correction, to just remove ads it's $20, which is ridiculous to ask for a lifetime of something only a few months old (lemmy).
Lemmy had been around for a few years already, it didn't magically appear because of the reddit drama.
I do agree that $10 is more in line with what I'd expect personally, but to be fair you have a few options before getting to that point.
If you know you're going to be using Sync and staying on Lemmy, you have no problem.
If you're staying on Lemmy but just trying Sync, you can just use the app with ads for a while to try it out, or you could subscribe to the monthly subscription which is like $2 a month, and if you are still using it 10 months later then it's clearly worth the cost to you.
Or if you don't like ads and you don't like subscriptions and you're not attached to Sync, you probably just move on to another app!