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DesktopSMS by @koush pricing thoughts?


Guest PaulOBrien

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I've started using DesktopSMS by Koush (details - https://market.android.com/details?id=com.koushikdutta.desktopsms) which is a great app to forward SMS to e-mail and Gtalk.

The app is currently in free Beta, but since it has a server side component, I assumed that this would be a paid app and one with a likely ongoing cost, which Koush has since confirmed. My question is this... which pricing model would suit you for the app?

I'm not posting this at Koush's request, i'm just interested myself to hear what people think... particularly as I know there's a tendency to 'shy away' from subscription based apps. As I see it the options are...

- a set fee per month, charged per month (e.g. 50c/month)

- a set fee per month, charged in a block (e.g. $3 for 6 months)

- a set fee per month, charged in a user chosen block (e.g. I could choose to buy 12 months or whatever)

- a per usage option (pay per message?) via a credits system

- a free app combined with the above

- a paid app combined with the above to potentially subsidise the monthly cost

It will be interesting to see what Koush works out the monthly costs at... I'm certainly going to buy the app, of all the options above I am pretty comfortable with any except the per usage option. Thoughts?

I wonder if there's any viability in selling a version of DesktopSMS that somehow allowed the user to 'self host' the infrastructure piece...

P

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Guest The Jones

It's a seriously cool app. Works really well too. But, I think to make it perfect I would need a way to send a text easily without having to be sent one first.

As it exists, I would think some way of making an in-app purchase for usage on a monthly basis or similar would work for me though the app needs to remain free to download. If there were a desktop client, a client Android app or a Chrome extension to be able to send a text easily without being sent one first then I would pay decent money for that

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Guest Koush

I can confirm it will not be a pay per usage option. That is a headache to manage, for both the user and the developer.

It will be block level pricing, with a 6 month and a 1 yr option.

There will be a free fully unlocked trial period of two weeks so people can adequately try it out and see how they like it.

I'm uncertain as to what the pricing will be, because there are a lot of features I want to roll out which will definitely add more server costs. Right now, I am not doing any message archival on the server. But I do plan on doing a Chrome/Firefox/web extension to this, in which case message archival will be necessary (and opt-in of course).

Persisting lots and lots of messages (and potentially images and videos from MMS) will be added server load and is an unforeseen cost. But I'm very excited about this new app, and hope you guys are too!

Koush

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With that in mind, how about a tiered offering? Kinda like paying extra for the more advanced features (for example, I have no need for archiving, nor images and videos from MMS)...

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Guest Matty-p

I've started using DesktopSMS by Koush (details - https://market.andro...utta.desktopsms) which is a great app to forward SMS to e-mail and Gtalk.

The app is currently in free Beta, but since it has a server side component, I assumed that this would be a paid app and one with a likely ongoing cost, which Koush has since confirmed. My question is this... which pricing model would suit you for the app?

I'm not posting this at Koush's request, i'm just interested myself to hear what people think... particularly as I know there's a tendency to 'shy away' from subscription based apps. As I see it the options are...

- a set fee per month, charged per month (e.g. 50c/month)

- a set fee per month, charged in a block (e.g. $3 for 6 months)

- a set fee per month, charged in a user chosen block (e.g. I could choose to buy 12 months or whatever)

- a per usage option (pay per message?) via a credits system

- a free app combined with the above

- a paid app combined with the above to potentially subsidise the monthly cost

It will be interesting to see what Koush works out the monthly costs at... I'm certainly going to buy the app, of all the options above I am pretty comfortable with any except the per usage option. Thoughts?

I wonder if there's any viability in selling a version of DesktopSMS that somehow allowed the user to 'self host' the infrastructure piece...

P

Why dose it have to be ongoing pricing the server side would be none/negligible why not a free app with annoying ads not only in app but also in the message thats sent to the email address and a £2.99 app with out ads. and koush what are your server needs/costs and even if you do archive you can store millions of messages a gig or billions a terabyte a simple 4tb useable raid 5 is 4 billion messages. let me know if you need putting in touch with or some help with selecting the right solution i know plenty in that area. Also koush (just thinking aloud here) could we have the option to use our own servers for this (and then just have a one off cost for the app) i can see your in america (your using a comcast ip) so this would have the added benefit of better latency for us Europeans too not that thats much of an issue but i have ocd when it comes to response and transfer times even when it makes no noticeable effect. Or even better do a free app with ads and a paid app without ads and then have a setup page on app start saying click her to you your own server click here to use my server *average user clicks on that* app asks you how many 'credits' you want to buy 1p a credit in bundles of 100 credits

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Guest Kushan

Perhaps I'm being a bit naive, but I don't see why this app couldn't use your existing gmail account to work? From what I can tell, the process works like this -

You receive an SMS, so the app contacts the server and the server sends you an email in the format of

[email protected], i.e. the phone number @domain.com

To reply, you just reply to the message. The server must see who the reply came from and inform the app to dispatch an SMS to the number at the beginning.

So, theoretically, I don't see why your existing gmail couldn't do this, thanks to the way that gmail handles the "+" character. Let's say my email is [email protected] (it isn't, btw), why can't an email be dispatched to [email protected]? Replies would work in exactly the same way, all the app has to do is check your gmail for emails from yourself with a number in the address. If the address is the hard part, it could potentially even do it by subject.

Like I said, perhaps I'm just naive as to what's possible, but in my mind I don't see why this wouldn't work.

I love the app and find it incredibly useful, but I don't think I could pay a subscription for it.

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Guest Koush

Perhaps I'm being a bit naive, but I don't see why this app couldn't use your existing gmail account to work? From what I can tell, the process works like this -

You receive an SMS, so the app contacts the server and the server sends you an email in the format of

[email protected], i.e. the phone number @domain.com

To reply, you just reply to the message. The server must see who the reply came from and inform the app to dispatch an SMS to the number at the beginning.

So, theoretically, I don't see why your existing gmail couldn't do this, thanks to the way that gmail handles the "+" character. Let's say my email is [email protected] (it isn't, btw), why can't an email be dispatched to [email protected]? Replies would work in exactly the same way, all the app has to do is check your gmail for emails from yourself with a number in the address. If the address is the hard part, it could potentially even do it by subject.

Like I said, perhaps I'm just naive as to what's possible, but in my mind I don't see why this wouldn't work.

I love the app and find it incredibly useful, but I don't think I could pay a subscription for it.

Because, how would the app know that you responded to that gmail? It doesn't have access to your mail. There could be a mailforwarding rule setup, but that would require some user interaction and setup. The 1 click setup is really awesome for this.

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Guest Koush

I love the app and find it incredibly useful, but I don't think I could pay a subscription for it.

Even if a 1 yr subscription costed ~$5?

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Guest Kushan

Because, how would the app know that you responded to that gmail? It doesn't have access to your mail. There could be a mailforwarding rule setup, but that would require some user interaction and setup. The 1 click setup is really awesome for this.

Sorry, I am not an android developer, but I believe the official gmail app was built with all the same APIs as any other Android app, so is there no way to build that functionality in?

If you have to set up a subscription of sorts, it's not going to be 1-click any more =P

Even if a 1 yr subscription costed ~$5?

Sorry, even if it cost 30c a year, I'd be reluctant to pay. I'd rather just pay up front for the app and have it, but I'm a bit funny like that. I do quite like the idea of it being ad supported though, the emails at the moment are pretty blank, so why not throw some ads in there?

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Guest Matty-p

Even if a 1 yr subscription costed ~$5?

The problem with pay for stuff is actually mainly the inconvience of paying especially if its a subscription people just don't like to arse around for half a hour setting payments up for the sake of some app i spend more than £3/$5 on a coffee and don't think about it so its not the actually money thats the issue there is also the issue of trust how do i know you not going to steal my payment data or just stop runnign the service after i have paid ect ect a free app and paid ap with credits like i said above in my last post is the best idea imo

Why dose it have to be ongoing pricing the server side would be none/negligible why not a free app with annoying ads not only in app but also in the message thats sent to the email address and a £2.99 app with out ads. and koush what are your server needs/costs and even if you do archive you can store millions of messages a gig or billions a terabyte a simple 4tb useable raid 5 is 4 billion messages. let me know if you need putting in touch with or some help with selecting the right solution i know plenty in that area. Also koush (just thinking aloud here) could we have the option to use our own servers for this (and then just have a one off cost for the app) i can see your in america (your using a comcast ip) so this would have the added benefit of better latency for us Europeans too not that thats much of an issue but i have ocd when it comes to response and transfer times even when it makes no noticeable effect. Or even better do a free app with ads and a paid app without ads and then have a setup page on app start saying click here to you your own server click here to use my server *average user clicks on that* app asks you how many 'credits' you want to buy 1p a credit in bundles of 100 credits

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Guest Kushan

Probably because the ads wouldn't make any money. :)

P

The server costs don't sound particularly high, would they have to make a lot of money? I think it'd be worth trialing for the beta.

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Guest Matty-p

The server costs don't sound particularly high, would they have to make a lot of money? I think it'd be worth trialing for the beta.

+1 what do you need i.e is actually costing you i.e what spec/bw ect

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Guest Kushan

Furthermore, I know it's a bit more work, but if you use impression-based ads and have the server supply "credits" automatically when an impression is detected (to stop people hiding the ads), then you'd have quite a little earner on your hands. And, of course, offer the subscription for those that don't want ads. Pretty win-win.

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Guest PhreakNJ

I can confirm it will not be a pay per usage option. That is a headache to manage, for both the user and the developer.

It will be block level pricing, with a 6 month and a 1 yr option.

There will be a free fully unlocked trial period of two weeks so people can adequately try it out and see how they like it.

I'm uncertain as to what the pricing will be, because there are a lot of features I want to roll out which will definitely add more server costs. Right now, I am not doing any message archival on the server. But I do plan on doing a Chrome/Firefox/web extension to this, in which case message archival will be necessary (and opt-in of course).

Persisting lots and lots of messages (and potentially images and videos from MMS) will be added server load and is an unforeseen cost. But I'm very excited about this new app, and hope you guys are too!

Koush

Well @Koush exceptional idea it's nice to see developers thinking outside the box to add functionality to Android's features in any way. Now I know you were expecting this outcome since your a prominent Android Dev and know our Android community very well. But in all I think any option you choose would be great, there is no 1 option that will please most and I'm sure you know that. The only one thing that I would urge you to consider would be to try to be able to make some of the features optional ( ex. archiving of MMS, Photos, Audio, Video, etc.) mostly for two reasons 1. even if there is no price benefit to user it could still lower the server load due to some users deactivating such features and therefore reduced server costs for you and if you could integrate that into the billing system ( yes I know that's a lot of work if even remotely possible ) then there could even be a price reduction for the user based on his/her selected features.

In any event good luck, keep up the great work and I look forward to testing it out pretty soon.

PhreakNJ

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Furthermore, I know it's a bit more work, but if you use impression-based ads and have the server supply "credits" automatically when an impression is detected (to stop people hiding the ads), then you'd have quite a little earner on your hands. And, of course, offer the subscription for those that don't want ads. Pretty win-win.

That would be neat... not having used the Android ad frameworks myself I don't know if impression based ads exist or indeed earn enough for this to be viable. Anyone?

P

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The only one thing that I would urge you to consider would be to try to be able to make some of the features optional ( ex. archiving of MMS, Photos, Audio, Video, etc.) mostly for two reasons 1. even if there is no price benefit to user it could still lower the server load due to some users deactivating such features and therefore reduced server costs for you and if you could integrate that into the billing system ( yes I know that's a lot of work if even remotely possible ) then there could even be a price reduction for the user based on his/her selected features.

What he said. :)

P

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Guest Kushan

That would be neat... not having used the Android ad frameworks myself I don't know if impression based ads exist or indeed earn enough for this to be viable. Anyone?

P

Well I was actually referring to ads within the emails themselves, not the program.

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Well I was actually referring to ads within the emails themselves, not the program.

Oh, I see, impression based isn't going to work then.

P

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Guest Kushan

Oh, I see, impression based isn't going to work then.

P

I'm guessing it's impossible to track the impressions? Even so, if there's an impression based android ad service, that could work as well. Didn't Angry Birds show video clips and such within the app? That has to be impression based and I wouldn't mind watching a clip or looking at an ad every now and then for some free "credits" or whatever. Then again, it's starting to sound a lot more complicated than perhaps what Koush was planning, so I'm not sure how much effort it's really worth.

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