DEVONthink To Go - price of new version?

Surly the time to let DT know people’s thoughts is before they make a decision about pricing / subscriptions so they can bear this in mind - not just complaining afterwards.

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Even freeware gets complaints :smiley:

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Software companies can’t make a living on the ridiculously low prices of iOS apps (of which 30 percent goes to Apple). So they have to find other business models – ads are one possibility, subscription is another. If you don’t like it, don’t use it. If you need it, you may have to pay for it. It’s like with any other product.
There’s no obligation to use DTTG, last time I looked. And it still is free, unless you want the pro version.

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Not sure why you feel the need to answer on behalf of DT? I am a happy DT3 Pro user on the Mac (and DT Pro Office previously) as well as DTTG Pro on IOS. I was merely giving my personal opinion on the DTTG product adopting a subscription pricing model - nothing for you to get stressed about.

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I didn’t. Just gave my personal opinion as a happy DT and DTTG user.

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The silly thing is that now that a number of people have offered their unsolicited opinions on something which may or may not happen, I feel the need to offer my differing opinion. I am aware that it is equally unsolicited.

As a user, I am not a big fan of subscription models - I have til now accepted them only when the price of the subscription over 3-5 years is close to what I would otherwise have paid for upgrades during that time. I used to believe that updates (to eliminate bugs and holes) should come free, whilst new functions can be charged for. The fact of the matter is, though, that for most material things in life, that logic does not hold true, certainly not over extended periods of time. I have worked with an unreasonable amount of software which has had bugs which were never rectified. I drove a BMW which had software flaws which were never corrected and - in the end - solved by the company degrading the available options in the software. So I’ve had to adapt to that reality (and I no longer drive a BMW :stuck_out_tongue:).

I still balk at paying a subscription for any software which I don’t use on a regular basis; that software must offer me some noticeable value. As an example: I pay subscription fees to Adobe to use Acrobat Pro DC. Whilst I neither like the software, nor feel Adobe do enough to earn that fee (where’s the roadmap for the ARM version?) it saves me time and energy - because (once I’ve found a function) it just works. All the time. I tried numerous other PDF editors, and none came close and most instead failed at simple things like rearranging text or other components of the PDF.

Where does that leave me and DT? I happily paid for the upgrade to DT3 - and would “happily” pay a yearly fee to use it. It is a piece of software which has literally changed my life. Replacing it would cost me an enormous effort. I feel the team have done a brilliant job and are and remain extremely responsive both in the forum and in their work on the software. They are limited by the size of the team they have; but again, I have worked with software which is more expensive by orders of magnitude, but in which the simplest of user feedback cannot be or is not ever implemented. DTTG is free [Edit: my mistake] DTTG comes in at the combined price of 217 g of Swiss Emmentaler, 267 g of Gruyere, 228 g of Appenzeller cheese and one baguette with a small number of functions offered for a one-time fee which would not buy me lunch at the restaurant around the corner. Whilst I often wish it were more powerful, it is a perfectly good companion app - I wouldn’t be using it as a standalone app. Now, I’d pay a subscription fee to use DTTG too; I would consider the cost in the context of combined costing - I’m surprised DEVONtech can make a living from the software they sell at the price they sell it for, and would prefer for them to charge more than to go out of business. @eboehnisch when you drive a Lamborghini and start to entertain guests in your country mansion, let me know, and I might rethink.

As for the last update to DTTG being months ago - well, yes - I’m happy to accept DT were working on releasing DT3, perfecting it, getting it ready for Apple Silicon and Big Sur and probably pissing about with the same pandemic as the rest of us. Would I prefer perfection? Yeah sure, who wouldn’t - I’d really really like smart groups in DTTG. And I’m sure that if that is technically possible, I’ll get them one day. In the meantime - again - I don’t feel wronged by DEVONtech - a company known to respond to users on this forum every single day of the week - I’m not getting the impression anybody is sitting around twiddling their thumbs and going “yeah, come on, let’s see if we can get rich faster doing less”.

In the end, for DEVONtech and the handful of people who are that company the question must boil down to “what’s the return on invest?” And at the moment, I personally can’t imagine DTTG being balanced as far as that goes. A subscription model will lose DT some customers - but not much revenue.

So anyway, that’s my opinion (and I’m not representing DT; I’m just a random user who is honestly happy to have found this piece of software). And I’m aware that my own fortunes are such that I can afford to pay for what I use, and that not everybody is so lucky. My dealings with DT so far leave me with a warm cozy feeling that my data is safe in DT - I couldn’t say the same for some of the other products mentioned by others in this thread. I really need things to stay that way - free software is not sustainable in the long run - if you’re not paying, you’ve got to ask what the company is living off of.

For those who read all that: welcome to the end.

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Here. Here. Cheers.

I’ve seen several comments saying DTTG is free? When has it been free? I paid $15 for it and it’s still the case.

DEVONthink to Go has never been free, IIRC $15.00 for the base app and $8.00 IAP for the Pro features. However, the 2.x version, free or otherwise, will go away when 3.0 is released.

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Nothing wrong with discussion nor speculation of prices. That’s what forums are for.

All I want now is fix for DTTG bugs. 8+ months without a simple update.

That is correct and as such I made a mistake in my post; thanks for pointing that out. Rereading what I wrote in light of that mistake the points I made still hold true, ie my opinion remains unchanged. I’ve (transparently) edited my post to point out my mistake and recalculate the cost of DTTG based on a bag of cheese in my fridge.

Hopefully I’ll still remember this the next time someone will file a bug report :slight_smile:

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I totally agree that DTTG is a decent companion app to the Mac version. But it doesn’t hold a candle as a stand-alone app on iOS/iPadOS.

For people who love the Mac app so much that they can justify paying subscription for its accessory, the move to subscription is not an issue. I doubt that it’s the case for most DT users.

There’re people who use DTTG alone, like me. While I think it’s a good app, I definitely won’t be able to justify a change of business model in its current state, unless some revolutionary changes are made. I guess I’m in such a niche minority that my opinion doesn’t really matter.

What changes would you find suitable for making DEVONthink To Go a good standalone app?

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Actually, my car is a Fiat. But it’s also from Italy :wink:

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Again, this is my very own personal opinion: I don’t think that’s true. To me, your opinion and that of anybody else who actually voices an opinion is equally valid; I have no doubt that DT value their customers - they are literally dependent on us. At the same time - to me - voicing an opinion entails more than just saying “I don’t like that” - you’ve just pointed out your use case, which to me is much more useful than the rather more unspecific complaint of too few updates. I don’t equate reasoning ones opinion with an opinionated post.

Eric has just responded in a fashion which to me confirms what I’m saying.

again what learned, as we say in German - thanks for that idiom

If DTTG requires a subscription of $25/year, I would expect it have pretty much feature parity with its Mac brother, which sells at $100.

As for OS specifics, I’d really like a better integration with Files, especially I want other apps to access entire directories in DTTG. Otherwise those organisations are kinda wasted.

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Please could you explain to me what you mean by this, maybe with a specific example? I can access the contents of entire databases from other apps, so I’m obviously misunderstanding what you mean.


This is a screenshot from Textastic (a text editor) when adding external directories for access. You can see DTTG is greyed out. So I cannot let third party apps to access, say a database of markdown and images in DTTG, which makes it impossible to “compile” the html with images.

I know this a specific feature introduced in ios 13: accessing entire folders requires special privileges. Very few apps actually implemented this. Working Copy and Shellfish are exceptions.

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