I bought the one-off DTTGv3 (full price as not a v2 user) the second I saw the headline about it in my RSS reader. I hadn’t read the DT blog post, I hadn’t checked any user feedback. I’m only a few weeks into my DT experience but I already feel the DT folks have more than earned my trust to do the right thing for both them (continuing a commercially viable enterprise) and us (vocal users with many options available). The one-off price is equivalent to ~2.5 years of an annual sub. That seems like a very nicely calibrated ratio given the life expectancy is likely to be >3 years.
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I had the same experience. When I saw the prolonged trial for users already owning DT2G 2 and the discounted options to choose between subscription and buying DT2G 3, I was amazed and thought of all the other software companies that messed up to present fair options to their longtime users.
DevonTechnologies: Your marketing sets a benchmark here. Do give a cake to whomever pitched the idea to branch out options the way you did.
It inspires a lot of confidence and trust in your company and software — which helps a lot with entrusting your software with all of my data. Thank you!
Also thank you for starting this thread. It was necessary.
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I have to agree that this has been the smoothest transition to a subscription model. I’m on board.
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I just found out about DTTG 3. I’m pleased about the purchase options.
I plan to buy the one-time upgrade price but can’t right now. Why? I’m in bed poking around on phone while my spouse is asleep. The iPhone makes a ding when I purchase something from the App Store and that could wake him up. Lol. I’ll do it when I get out of the bed.
Glad to see the option for one time purchase. I’m in the camp of “I hate subscriptions”.
———
Update, 7 hours later: yup, purchased the one-time upgrade option! 
The so-called backlash before the pricing model is to provide information about there popularity and unpopularity of different purchase options. Some love the idea of a subscription as it’s lower initial cost and others like me prefer to make a one time purchase and not have to keep thinking about a new line item each month related to software purchase.
I am also relieved that DTTG didn’t choose the subscription path.
I upgraded immediately, because DEVONtechnologies is one of the very few really trustful software providers.
Thanks to all at DEVONtechnologies. You are terrific team.
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I will admit to 2 things:
- I was somewhat confused about the pricing model — specifically how the purchase-versus-subscription thing worked. Not something we’ve seen a lot of.
- I instantly purchased the upgrade. Is it more money than most iOS apps? Yes! Is it likely to be more than worth it? Absolutely!
“Pay for your tools” is my philosophy.
I just renewed my Fantastical subscription, subscribed to Carrot Weather, and happily subscribe to Drafts, TextExpander, Due, CodeKit, and Nova. I’m sure I’m forgetting some. Others, like Keyboard Maestro, Hazel, and PDFpenPro have paid updates often enough that I’m sure they’re sustainable. Whatever works for the developer works for me.
Adobe crossed the line, though, right at a time when my needs shifted and Affinity’s apps were more than enough for me. Subscriptions aren’t a slam-dunk, but they’re not a show-stopper, either, if the business model works.
So well done, DEVONtech. You walked a fine line skillfully.
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Totally agree. It took me 0.1sec to buy the upgrade!
Thank you, team Devonthink!
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I wholeheartedly agree. Credit where it’s due. I paid the upgrade price. A great deal for a great app.
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Blockquote
Welcome @bertFB0.1 seconds? Why did you hesitate?
Well…they were hesitating between subscription vs. one-time purchase. Too many options!
LOL
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because that created a lot of sharing of ideas and points of views, and maybe, MAYBE some of them have played a role in what turned out to be a very smart decision by the product team and their CEO @eboehnisch.
Before anything was revealed, the company was looking for feedback, and they have received loads of it. Maybe they took some of that into account, maybe they did not.
It is not for us customers to know, but who cares really?
What matters is the fact that the pricing options are very well thought.
This is what happens on a free marketplace of ideas and products, with enlightened people and software creators interacting.
Eric und Team, Vielen Dank! 
Ciao, Luca
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Also pleased with the options and offers, bought the upgrade right away. Thanks!
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Absolutely agree. Free choice for everyone. I personally did not wait until the free trial period expires but bought the upgrade right away. No doubt that the permanent further Software development and the fast and excellent support deserves money to do the job. Thanks a lot!
Frank
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After beta-testing DTTG 3 for many months, I made the jump to the official release (3.0.3) earlier this week. Smooth switchover, no ghosts, and CloudKit syncing is outstanding. Anyway, I had planned to pay the full price ($39) instead of the upgrade ($19). I did not have to pay for DTTG at least since 2016 (maybe I got the DTTG 1 → 2 free? Can’t recall). Given my extensive usage of DTTG, this is criminally cheap. Turns out, the app store did not give me the option to pay full. I guess I could have wiped the program off my purchases to start from scratch, but I did want to keep DTTG2 first for a bit on at least one of my iOS devices prior to using CloudKit.
The conundrum is that if the price is raised even a bit, a vocal group will come out of the woodworks, announcing that now they can no longer justify paying for this app. DevonTech walked a fine line with the pricing model, as many above have remarked. I still feel that it could be helpful for the future viability to offer a possibility to contribute extra.
What about a premium package that provides a very useful feature? Smart groups, especially syncable with those on DT, would be such a killer feature. I would pay $39 for that, for sure. I’m equally sure that the complainers would resent that, but so be it.
Migrating this premium feature into the base version with the release of DTTG 4 could be an excellent incentive to upgrade. If by then a new killer feature can be identified, it could become the new premium package until DTTG 5 comes along and so on.
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I am curious about iOS vs macOS development in general.
App prices seem to be anywhere from 3 to 10 times higher for macOS apps than for iOS apps.
Is the demand/volume from iOS customers 3 to 10 times higher, or do developers for some reason accept lower pay for their efforts?
How do you do this?
It’s difficult to say for sure, but I think this is the result of the original pricing scheme in the iOS App Store when the iPhone was initially released.
Apps were mostly small gadget-like programs like calculators and notepads that were primarily charged at 0.99 of the local currency if it was close enough to the worth of 1 dollar. Together with the use of credit cards, that made it easy for users to buy apps (‘Hey, you know what, it’s just 1 dollar!’) and launched the App Store as if it was on a mission to Mars. That’s one of the brilliant ways Jobs was able to propel a completely new product in the world.
Eventually Apps started to resemble macOS programs more and more and pricing went up somewhat for the ones that people understood were worth more dan the above 1 dollar. If the price would always be 1 dollar I think people actually would undervalue very good more complex products (“It’s cheap, so it’s probably not very good’), but it was perfect for the initial apps on iOS when the first iPhone launched. As I feel it, we’re still in the slipstream of that original pricing scheme where apps on iOS are ‘supposed’ to be fairly cheap in comparison to macOS where large desktop program were always charged much higher.
Personally I think the regular price of DTTG3 is correctly valued in comparison to what it can do in comparison to DT. And every company of course makes an estimate what their users are willing to pay. Programs that are developed to do some professional highly complex operation used by some small group of professionals are likely priced at a very high rate (thousands of dollars). I wouldn’t be surprised people using DT and DTTG are on average richer than others, as they can afford a fairly high priced device. Although those devices also last long and the price per year is low or comparable to other de ices if you ask me, but you still have to pay for that up front.
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Like support for JavaScript-ing on iOS? count me in.
How do you do this?
That’s a good point. I’ve never removed a purchase, so I was going by my projection of what should be (aka speaking out of my rear). I seem to remember having seen options like that, but that was likely on the Kindle. I just checked in the AppStore app and also searched on the web, and it seems that on the iOS store you can’t undo things entirely, only hide purchases. So the Eagles are still correct: you can check out any time, but you can never leave.
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