175 Comments

1. Stephen on January 16, 2017 at 3:20 pm

   It will be interesting to see if your split between persona 2 and persona 3 gets support. It doesn’t really fit my own use. Because I’m now retired I don’t have that many events to add to the calendar—but it’s really useful for those I do have. I make extensive, but simple, use of tasks (effectively as future reminders of things I have to do on certain dates—extending forward for very many years). Because I have Informant for iOS and Desktop Informant I have appreciated Informant Sync since subscribing (albeit a little reluctantly, given the price) to Informant 5.

   That’s the background. Where I differ from your split is that I do want to use triggers (and would do so if they were not so infernally buggy at present), I do make use of separate time zones (for holidays) and I do, as mentioned, have the apps on multiple devices.

   I suppose the point I’m really making is that there are some of us here (I’m sure) who are, in their way, “power users” but who, perhaps because we’re no longer at work and don’t have families, are, in another sense, basic users (i.e., maybe not “intensive” users).

   I’ve probably not explained this very well but I’m guessing that if there are many users like me it might be quite significant to you—because it may not be that difficult for us to change to using other apps if the price of Informant becomes too uncomfortable. I would certainly move to using other apps if I were to feel Informant was increasingly aimed at a market more “sophisticated” than that within which my own use falls.

   Stephen

   • Keith on January 16, 2017 at 3:38 pm

     Stephen,

     So if I interpret your comments correctly, you are saying you identify with some of the features of the “power users” group, but you are somewhat price sensitive? What price do you think is right for people who use the app the way you do?

   • Stephen on January 17, 2017 at 12:15 am

     Sorry, it seems difficult to reply directly to your comments, Keith and this is the only way I seem able to add a reply.

     In all honesty what I really get for my money at present, I feel, is sync—and I query whether that’s worth what I had to pay for it. (For many years previously I had been manually duplicating appointments and tasks between my iOS devices and, latterly, between iOS and Desktop Informant. Informant 5 effectively persuaded me to try Informant Sync—which works very well.) I just really wish you’d have a sync solution that did not involve the infrastructure you have had to develop (at a cost, of course). I know previously Alex dismissed Wi-Fi sync—but, for me, it works perfectly with 1Password (whose subscription model I continue to avoid like the plague). I also use Dropbox with 1Password without problems. I appreciate your app is more complex in its sync demands but it does seem to that the sync demands have substantially driven the pricing model—and that’s what makes me personally feel that perhaps some other app is more appropriate for the way I use Informant.

     In direct reply to your question, I’d be very much more comfortable with an annual cost of around $10. I don’t really need weather at all and simple tasks are perfect for me. I do use notes to some extent but if the cost of reducing the subscription to $10 p.a. was removal of weather, restriction of Tasks to simple tasks and, maybe, removal of Notes, I could accept that.

     (In case you wonder why I’m still using Informant it’s because I’ve been using it since I first started using it on a Compaq iPaq in 2001!)

     Stephen

2. Mike on January 16, 2017 at 6:06 pm

   I guess that makes me a super-power user. I use Informant many times throughout the day. My to-do list lives on it. I only have a couple or so calendar events a day, but up to a dozen tasks, (which I have whittled down from hundreds within about 100 open projects). I love the integration of calendar events and tasks, so I can see what my day looks like. I use a quasi-GTD method, and PI/DI works well for this. I also have the desktop app, and it is great to have the flexibility to see my activities on the run (on my iPhone) or bigger picture (on my Mac). In my opinion, the $25 (OK, more than that in $CAD) is peanuts for the value I get from the increased productivity that I cannot get from any other app.

3. Stephane on January 16, 2017 at 8:43 pm

   First of all, I want to extend triple kudos on this post from Keith, really well written and very clear. Personally, I fit in the Power Productivity User (Persona #3) category. I use PI multiple times per day for both calendar and tasks. I have multiple calendars to handle including my personal ones, the ones shared with my wife and my work calendars to have a full picture of my schedule. I am subscribed to Toodledo in order to have subtasks, SSL and a few other functions. I then am able to get everything in sync between work and home using gSyncit with Outlook on one side and desktop Informant on the other. I have also a paid subscription to Evernote in order to get the premium features and added security. Security is very important in my line of work.

   Speaking of work, I am a senior functional analyst and lead software tester also acting as a technological architect when mobile technologies are part of the things I have to handle. As such, I will build and recommend optimal solutions based on various use case according to various business requirements. I usually recommend Informant to all my professional workers wanting to be able to manage everything in one place while being able to keep a certain independence between work and personal life.

   One problem I see with the current trend is that it ends up being a endless money drain to get a full optimal solution nowadays. A subscription at $15/year would have felt more like a sweet spot for me.

   From what I have observed, the most frequently used functions globally speaking are calendar and tasks. Notes is an added bonus and everything else is just icing on the cake.

   If we look at typical users, here are my analysis of the use cases:

   1) Google Calendar: Free calendar service used both personally and professionally by a very large user base. The paid version is a rather small portion;

   2) Outlook.com: Another free option with a large user base since it includes Live.com and Hotmail users;

   3) Office 365: Paid subscription model with a smaller user base that will tend to be professionals or students;

   4) Toodledo: Offers basic free service that can sync with any supporting app and offers advanced capabilities for paid subscription that starts at $15/ year. Toodledo has a large user base amongst the Task management solutions available on the market;

   5) Evernote: Offers a basic free service with various limitations, then offers paid subscription plans starting at $47/year up to $90/year for advanced capabilities. The paid subscription plans recently changed and increased in price leading a great portion of users not to renew their subscription and switching to Microsoft OneNote. The paid users are mostly professionals with special needs for note taking and do not represent a the largest portion of users.

   Considering all of these use cases, a full solution with all capabilities would represent a recurring cost of more than $100/year. For mainstream users and the middle class, that is not an optimal or viable option. I believe that the largest potential audience for Informant 5 will be users using Google free services and possibly Toodledo free services as well with the possibility of a free Evernote basic account. Some of these users will pay a subscription for added features in the task management service (the rise of Wunderlist and Todoist are good indicators of that fact).

   To reduce your development cost, I wonder if there are that many customers using the Evernote sync capabilities in Informant. I myself tend to use the Evernote app itself directly and not Informant for notes generally.

   Question/Suggestion:
   – Another Informant user previously suggested making an arrangement with one or more of the 3rd-party service providers to try to make a deal to offer to users. I could easily see that working depending on what the details are. at $25/year, if it included and smallest subscription to Toodledo and give me the ability to also have Google calendar sync, I would be paying right away.

   – Google calendar being a free service supported by most applications on any operating system, it is really hard to convince a customer that for synchronizing on his mobile device with Informant he has to pay, he’ll most likely either decide to use the built-in calendar app or even use a work around and loose some functions from Informant and sync his Google calendar by having it configured in iOS built-in apps. I believe Google calendar is the most crucial part.

   – I don’t think you guys managing two separate apps is a viable solution.

   – I don’t think a very complex “à la carte” in-app purchase option is really viable either as it would cost you a fair amount in development and complicate things for a portion of your users.

   Sorry for my long post, but while I haven’t jumped in and subscribed to informant Sync, I still believe that Informant 5 if the most mature, feature packed and promising calendar and task management app out there.

4. m_g58 on January 16, 2017 at 8:52 pm

   Keith,
   Assuming that your personas are not “water-tight” compartments, I would place myself as more than a casual user but certainly not a power user. I am strongly anti-subscription.
   I mainly use Informant’s calendar and often add notes to events. Occasionally, I use the Tasks function. I need to be able to sync to Google calendar and tasks. I color code my calendar events but do not need to know what the weather is (or will be). I use templates since it simplifies entering recurring events, but would not want to pay more just for that functionality.
   I do not travel across time zones very often, but need the ability to enter events in different time zones when I do.
   Having paid for previous versions (I have been supporting PI since it’s release to the iOS platform), I would be willing to pay another $10 to OWN I5 with the above functionality.
   Just out of curiosity, please could you share how many of your users are willing to pay $100 to own I5 outright?
   Perhaps this might answer your concerns regarding pricing and subscription “volume”
   http://us2.campaign-archive2.com/?u=93e74aefc177c1df8d9e67c53&id=57714a7fd2&e=0086e45e72
   oneSafe has a 5 star rating on the App Store. I switched to this App after 1Password moved to a subscription based model and have not regretted the move.

   • Michiel on January 17, 2017 at 2:02 am

     m_g58 OT 1Password still can be used without any subscription. Just buy it here and enjoy the best Password Manager:) https://agilebits.com/storem_g58

5. SRhyse on January 17, 2017 at 12:59 am

   In this context I seem to fit more into the power user area despite not using parts of Informant in their entirety. I use the calendar, focus view, enjoy the weather, templates, icons, filters, and make use of the tasks section to schedule things on specific days with checklists, recurrence, in projects, etc. I don’t have a problem with the notes section but I have other apps I use for that, they are seemingly more functional there, and can be open at the same time as Informant while I’m using the calendar and tasks and focus view. Part of what makes Informant great is bringing data together all at once, which the relatively divorced notes view doesn’t play as well into as the other features. I can’t see my notes and tasks for a project at the same time, for example, or alongside events for that day.

   I don’t think I’ve ever actually used the contacts feature or saw the need to. If I want to call someone, I go to my phone area on my iPhone and call them. If I’m sending an email, I start typing their name in an email program and it fills in their address. If it’s a new email, chances are I’m clicking on it elsewhere and am replying from there, even within Mail. The contacts section didn’t seem to integrate at all into anything, so I never really saw the point. I’m sure for others it’s nice to not have to switch apps to pull up your contacts. I don’t travel between time zones much so I’ve never needed that, but it seems like a nice feature for those that do.

   I don’t personally have a problem with a subscription for sync, or ongoing development, provided that development is indeed ongoing and evidenced to be ongoing and responsive. My main problem with I5 is that it was a new release with a lot of hype behind it that introduced a higher price while launching with many a bug and being seemingly less or at best equal in functionality to I4. There was no apparent way to ‘try’ the app, it seemingly imported all my Informant specific data from I4 that can’t go back, and in general was a horrible experience. Price seems a little high for sync but that wasn’t really my concern. If it had been a definitively better app I’d have been begrudgingly okay with it, new release bugs aside. The date picker was one of the things I loved about I4, and I enjoyed having focus, calendar, and tasks 1 click away with a badge count on tasks. The experience was being given an app that didn’t work as well as the one before it and now being charged a subscription fee that is also higher than it was before. The natural response to that is to ‘nope’ my way out of that app.

   New icon didn’t help and served as a reminder that the main change seemed to be the dark theme. Your old icon was good, and in an effort to differentiate itself from that, the new icon has mostly veered away from a look that worked on fundamental levels in an effort to play up what is an appreciated but seemingly superficial change to Informant. It’s as if I’m being asked “do you want to pay $2-3/month for a dark Pocket Informant without the contextual date picker?” I enjoy the dark theme, but having it be the ‘feature’ that seems to be the highlight of the new app doesn’t reflect well on the rest of the app. It’s a lingering element that makes it harder to see as an upgrade to Informant 4 when even the old app icon was better.

   I would much rather have the app with limited use of the full functionality to ‘try’ when deciding whether to ‘buy’ it or upgrade, particularly to see if bugs or changes have been addressed if their existence was part of the reason I didn’t want to get a new app. If you really want to have the subscription, I’d say charge $25 or less for the app with an In App purchase after someone’s tried it out and include a year’s worth of sync service with it. I realize that’s the same basic setup, but it’s an entirely different way of framing it. You can also add in features that are worth while that can only be synced via Informant sync, which would also have the benefit of no longer holding Informant back entirely by the many other sync services it connects with. Maybe let people keep the app syncing with all free services if they made the $25 purchase after that year, but have the incentives continually mount for them to want to sync to Informant online over them. TextExpander going subscription is bullshit given what it is, but Informant seems like a better candidate for it if you can make it worthwhile. If you had just launched this without Informant 4 to trail, people would likely be praising this new app that integrated tasks and a calendar pretty well while offering full notetaking functionality and all else. “The missing planner on iOS.” Other added functionality over time would help to make people feel they’re getting their money’s worth too of course.

   Alongside that, you could always make some things available ala carte for those that’d prefer it, like say unlocking tasks or notes or contacts piece by piece, making some additional dough with minor things like maybe the weather calendar or something, all of which would be included in the full app purchase for less to help incentivize people to do that. It doesn’t have to be mutually exclusive.

6. Michiel on January 17, 2017 at 2:36 am

   I am so sorry to say but IMHO this whole thing on the PI5 release is getting quite hilarious.

   A new major software version is released and both developer and users start an endles discussion on the developers blog.

   You don’t have to be blind to understand that after reading global iTunes Store ‘reviews’, more users seem unhappy than happy with PI5’s new subscription model, its UI and even its app icon. (I agree on all three).

   Sure the iTunes Store eco system is a strange world and so many apps are not developed anymore. People seems almost tired of buying new apps and new killer apps are hard to find (if even developed).

   It is very 2016 or 2017 to release a new app update based on a subscription model, but look at your users. Business users might declare the purchase of apps bought but so many other users might not. Those are the people complaining.

   All this writing on user segments etc. should have been done before the PI5 release. This is an example of app marketing at its worst.

   If Fanatic feel they are on the same level as companies like Omnigroup (business/ prosumer productivity software) I can only suggest to read this https://www.omnigroup.com/blog/providing-the-best-possible-app-store-experience

   Last but not least, use your blog as companies like Omnigroup and many others do. Also filter user feedback at your own place and make decisions accordingly.

   You have a vast group of loyal users and really made great software in the past but with recent changes this could easily come to an end. In fact too many already switched and it is hard to get them back.

   Using multiple devices for years, I can perfectly live with sync solutions like iCloud, Dropbox and apps like BusyCal, BusyContacts, Fantastical, Evernote, Wunderlist and Things, I sincerely wish you good luck. You deserve it !

   • Takeaction on January 17, 2017 at 9:15 am

     Absolutely agree with Michiel’s view point.

     Actually, it is sad to see Keith and his team are still stuck and struggle with their pricing model created by themselves, and missing out the criticality of delivering a quality product in the first place. Keith did a fantastic job in coming up with 4 typical personas, I think the intension is good for a scientific analysis of the customer base, it is quite CRM oriented. However, what’s the point? There could be so many combinations of personas in the real world. The four typical personas can apply to almost any calendar scheduling and task management apps in the AppStore. Informant 5 really messed up the great Pocket Informant 4 according to the user community feedback (UI, UX, app icon, stability and functionality). How do you make the product worth the price tag on it? It is not a chicken and egg issue. Product always go first, then talks about the price tag. Hope Alex does not regret to leave us with I5 that shatter the success history of his PI. As a loyal user, it hurts.

7. Michiel on January 17, 2017 at 7:12 am

   @Fanatsicsoftware Sorry, I forget to mention that reading your Tweets, it almost seems that nobody noticed the PI5 release. Tweets asking for reviews should be done before or in beta stadium. In fact I know of some PI4 users who did not even know of PI5 ….#just saying

8. rick8 on January 17, 2017 at 7:38 am

   I am currently a PI4.0 user. I have evaluated PI5, but other then a new interface, I am not really seeing any compelling reason to upgrade. PI4 already allows me to sync to my Evernote and Toodledo accounts. While the new interface is nicer, not really sure it is worth a $25/year fee. Now, if you made a PI application for window’s to go along with the subscription, then I would seriously consider it. Remember, not everyone uses a Mac. 🙂
   One final thought on the subscription model, it is starting to kill everyone’s wallet….Evernote, Toodledo and now PI. It all adds up very very quickly. Maybe you should try to enter a marketing/partner agreement with some of these third party services and offer a “group pricing” Otherwise, SAAS is not really viable for the majority of end users.

   • Keith on January 23, 2017 at 2:51 pm

     rick8,

     Thank you for your comments. We are trying to find the right balance.

9. mehill on January 17, 2017 at 9:20 am

   I would consider myself a power user since I use the app multiple times a day.

   I don’t need to sync with google, I don’t need to sync with Evernote, I don’t need to sync with Toodledo and I don’t need weather in my calendar app. I think it’s unfair to ask customers using your product exclusively, to pay extra so people using multiple apps can also use your app. It seems backwards to me. I think people who want Informant 5 to integrate with other programs should have to pay more for those services and support while people only using your product should have a cheaper option. Basically I think your sync services should be a la carte and not a bundle. Personally I don’t care if other users pay for things multiple times or are missing out on some features they could use. Their ignorance shouldn’t cost me more money (although that sounded kind of harsh in my head just now.)

   Also, any comments I make in regard to pricing have the caveat that the app is in good working order. The amount of time I’ve spent trying to make Informant 5 work is upsetting. First trying to figure out how features work with no manual, second troubleshooting with Support on crashes and/or random alarms and lastly on this blog trying to make future versions of the app work better and teach the new owner how we as customers feel about the product… It feels to me like we’re all being used as beta testers which seems wrong.

   All that said, I’d pay up to $40.00 to own Informant 5 and then pay $5.00 each year after that for the ability to email tasks to the app (a feature of Informant Sync). I signed up for sync because I wanted to use Informant on my tablet, but I found that using my phone exclusively worked better for me and now I only use Informant Sync to email tasks to the app, which is a feature I really like, but it’s the only sync-type feature I use.

   As it stands now, I plan to purchase Informant 5 in March when my Informant Sync subscription runs out, but I don’t plan to pay for the sync services after that. So, even though I’m getting a bit of a bargain for my $25.00 since I’d be willing to pay up to $40.00, I am missing out on a feature I’ve come to really like and use so I feel a little bit let down.

10. boydston01 on January 17, 2017 at 11:38 am

    I think the 4 personas are a good working categorization.

    I am definitely a #3 power productivity user. Though I almost only use the calendar. Tasks and calendar integration is the huge thing for me. But I just have not gotten that to work for my environment which requires managing tasks from google calendar. This makes gtasks the requisite syncing account and that doesn’t work yet in PI5. However, once everything is extremely rock solid between PI5 and Mac Informant (with error-less, instant syncing), I may be able to forgo working directly in google calendar which would open up the option of using PI native tasks.

    I think the only way to ACTUALLY serve all segments is by separating the Connection Bundle/Sync Services and do a la carte pricing. But perfectly serving all the segments may not really be the best route.

    Regarding trial periods, I think they should be very generous to sufficiently allow a user to assess whether they should dive into the PI ecosystem.

    I have a hard time knocking $25/year when I consider other apps that are similarly priced and are only todo solutions—other than to say it’s a little high. $2.1/month is not a lot but when you consider multi-year use, $25/year adds up quickly.

    Here’s an interesting idea: $5 purchase which includes 6 months, then the user has to subscribe for $15-20/year. Essentially a long “paid trial” period. The low entry price may devalue PI making it hard to convert, though (which, by the way, is exactly what you are dealing with right now!)

    So, you could go the other way: 3 month trial, $25 app purchase, $10/year subscription. I like how this values the app, itself, at a nice price point and distinguishes the services as a separate cost. Initial purchase includes first year subscription, of course. Long trial period is important.

    The thing about satisfying “anti-subscription” users is that you can’t give them any on-going services—in other words syncing—because you’re spending money on them every month. It has to be a subscription. “Own it” option only makes sense for a product without backend services.

    • m_g58 on January 17, 2017 at 1:28 pm

      Please correct me if I am wrong – Google does not chargé the developer for an App that syncs to its on-line calendar or tasks.
      If this is indeed the case, Google sync should be part of the “basic” version of I5.

    • Keith on January 18, 2017 at 9:23 pm

      m_g58,
      You are right, Google does not charge for the sync to their platform. The costs are in the maintenance of it. For example, we were just notified that Google plans to deprecate one of their main authentication APIs in a few months. If we don’t “maintain” that, the sync will probably stop working. It puts us in a tough spot. At some point, (as a developer) you just have to cut off support for old versions and move to the new one. Informant 5 is that “new” one. We aren’t cutting off support for Informant 4 yet.

    • boydston01 on January 17, 2017 at 2:48 pm

      m_g58: that’s a good point. If the app is simply using sync service provided by google, then Fanatic is not providing backend services for that sync.

    • Keith on January 18, 2017 at 9:25 pm

      boydston01,

      Thank you for those comments. Some interesting idea there to consider. Having a better experience on the full trial is near the top of our list.

11. James on January 17, 2017 at 1:32 pm

    I’d like to posit that you’re not asking the question correctly (or, rather, that only half of your question is being phrased correctly). Right now, your question is, “How much are you (the customer) willing to pay for an app that does x, y, and z? And if we cannot come to a price point that your willing to pay and that allows us to remain in business, then how much should we charge for an a-la-cart pricing structure?”

    I think the correct “real” question is, “How much are you willing to SUBSIDIZE other customers for the features they want (that you will never use) to get the features that you want and will use?”

    I don’t think you realize that that is the correct “real” question; the minutiae of developing a complex app like Informant can get in the way, forest for the trees and all that, but, in essence, that is what the real question is (more on that below). Right now, you’re trying to be all things to all people and are ending up putting out sub-par software (meaning buggy and unstable, incomplete features, regressive features like the date picker, etc.) and expecting certain segments of your customer base to subsidize that other segments of your customer base with a high subscription-cost pricing structure. And your customers are PISSED!

    Why?

    You are trying to price Informant for “how it does it” instead of “what it does”.

    At it’s core, Informant is a Calendar and Task Manager. With the best damn calendar views and task manager views of any other app in the App Store! THAT IS YOU CORE COMPETENCY! That is “what it does” and why your customers are so hard core (Keith, I’m betting you wish we were a little less hard core!).

    The “how it does it” cost varies on the method of sync and additional features associated with that method (costs associated with developing and maintaining the sync method). Customers that use a particular sync method with any accompanying bonus features should pay for that method since they want it, NOT the customers that want/use another sync method with it’s associated features.

    So, in some of your customer minds at least, this is what I think they’re seeing (using some made-up rounded numbers):

    Google sync: 150 development/mainenance hours per year, $150,000
    Toddledo sync: 100 development/maintenance hours per year, $1000,000
    Outlook sync: 400 development/maintenance hours per year, $400,000
    Informant sync: 200 development/maintenance hours per year, $200,000
    Evernote sync: 150 development/maintenance hours per year, $150,000

    $1million in costs, just for the development/maintenance costs.

    IF a customer doesn’t use any sync method at all, they expect the cost of their app to NOT include the development/maintenance cost associated with all those sync methods; let’s say $5. BUT, you want that customer to subsidize the development/maintenance for the Googlers, the Toddledoers, the Outlookers, and everyone else with a cost of $25 (or $20, or $15; whatever, it’s more than the $5 they expect to pay because they KNOW

    And that is perfectly fine; as the owners of the company and software you’ve decided that the price EVERYONE should pay should reflect the costs of developing EVERY SINGLE POSSIBLE USAGE SCENARIO, as is your right.

    The problem you have is that that is pushing up the cost of developing the software to the point that you are alienating your user base; you’re pricing it out of range for most users, and the remaining users can’t give you enough volume to stay afloat. Added to that, there are so many apps out there that can do the same thing (even if they don’t do it as well) for a lower price point because the app developers have decided to not be everything to everyone. You’ve created quite a conundrum for yourselves. (I know all this is a reiteration of most of the blog posts for the past 2 months, I just wanted to condense it into a single post with the hopes that it can give you a new perspective.)

    I think Fanatic Software is at a crossroads; if you continue on this path I don’t know how much longer you can stay in business. I DO NOT think you’re having a pricing problem; I think you’re having a focus/leadership problem that is not asking the right questions…

    • cmgarnet on January 21, 2017 at 8:26 pm

      So if you are not ready to drop version 4 yey(please don’t). Will you make sure that Google calendars will still sync after April 20th?

    • Keith on January 23, 2017 at 8:13 am

      cmgarnet,

      Our official position is that we will only be doing new development on Informant 5 going forward. There are a number of reasons: for example, Informant 4 is built using an older version of XCode and it doesn’t even run on our current computers. Informant 4 has a version of watch OS1 which Apple does not want to see in any newly submitted watch v1 apps. Therefore, any changes to Informant 4 potentially open up a whole can of worms that are already fixed in Informant 5. We may change our minds in the future, but as for right now….this is our position.

12. sarz on January 17, 2017 at 2:42 pm

    Keith, with regards to your questions. These are my thoughts

    1,How do we price the product for 4 different markets with 4 different perceptions of value?
    -Keep the price at $25 – that is a fair price for the app

    2. If we dropped the price, would we make up for it in volume?
    -Do not drop the price

    3, If the price were dropped to $19/yr or $14/yr would we alleviate the anger about price?
    -Do not drop the price –no matter what price you set you will still have angry people

    4. How best to serve the “anti-subscription” market while still working within the confines of what the App Store allows and being able to cover ongoing costs associated with the “connect bundle”?
    -Ignore the anit-subscription market – they will have to make a choice if the product is worth a subscription or not

    5. Should we separate the Connection Bundle/Sync Services from the app purchase price?
    -No- it just makes everything too complicated

    6. What is the best way to encourage viral growth driven by current users?
    -This is your main issue and priority
    Do not promote informant 5 until it is stable and the UI and UX are improved
    You need user manual and helpful tips on the screen once a user installs the app for the first time
    You need a youtube channel to show off informant 5 and the company
    You need a user forum
    Once all that is achieved you need to contact influential bloggers and youtubers to review informant 5

    Check out the omnigroup, they do everything so well

    • Stephen on January 17, 2017 at 3:06 pm

      “-Keep the price at $25 – that is a fair price for the app”

      It may well be a fair price for all that the app now does and provides. However, I’m sure a number of us are going to move elsewhere if the app stays at that price—simply because, as I and others have already said, we don’t want or need all that Informant now provides. The more sophisticated app clearly results in the higher price—and there comes a time when some of us may have to bail out because the price and benefit are no longer in balance.

      I’m not criticising your views @sarz—but the major problem for Fanatic, surely, is whether there are sufficient “sarzes” to more than compensate for the fleeing “Stephens” (if you’ll forgive me for putting it like that).

      Stephen

    • mehill on January 17, 2017 at 4:04 pm

      sarz, I like how you said once it’s ready ask bloggers to review it. For me, all this (endless?) talk about how to gain customers is really simple. Make a great product like we’ve come to expect from Fanatic, and the users will follow. Word of mouth is the best marketing you can get, and while I used to be very vocal about my love for my “favorite app”, I no longer recommend it to people and won’t until I love it again. Not that I’m influential :), but I think you get what I mean.

      A good reputation will gain you customers. Trying to promote a product that’s not ready AND raising the cost at the same time is not helping the cause.

    • boydston01 on January 17, 2017 at 5:18 pm

      “Trying to promote a product that’s not ready AND raising the cost at the same time is not helping the cause.”

      I really think you nailed it here! Especially since the price increase is—relatively speaking—astronomical.

    • cmgarnet on January 23, 2017 at 12:47 pm

      Thanks you for your response Keith. This will help me look at bit harder for a different app until you decide if we are going to do the free full app and make sure triggers work better. Since I only use Google calendars with Informant i need to make sure I can keep my schedules going.

13. boydston01 on January 17, 2017 at 3:03 pm

    “Historically we have always had some price frustration anytime we are above $5”
    -If you want those customers, for all aspects of the app that do not require you to support backend services, charge $5/year. Assuming this price point retains the majority of your users, you will be MUCH better off compared to $0/year!
    -Anything that requires backend services (eg Inf. Sync) charge a $15-25/year.

14. padrelar on January 17, 2017 at 9:23 pm

    All good comments here. Vision is an issue. The fact that you are struggling shows that you have not identified what you want to be. You cannot serve all of these users well and trying to will serve one or many segments badly. If you want to be the next OmniFocus albeit multi platform – go for it, but make a decision and commit. That means focusing on a particular segment. Aim low, aim high, but aim somewhere and commit. You cannot be everything. If you seek to be a premium product then deliver all the requisite things one expects of a boutique product. If you cannot commit to that quite chasing the high end and carve out your place somewhere else on the spectrum. I have used you for years and paid for just about all your services. I wanted you to succeed, but I want me to succeed too and cannot do so with the product you have been delivering of late. This last week I put all my work on OmniFocus, I consider it worth every penny. Good luck on your decisions.

    • Keith on January 23, 2017 at 2:55 pm

      padrelar,

      You might have a good point about vision. In some ways we are trying to serve 2+ masters. Ultimately, PI is not a “simple calendar”, it is a very powerful organizer. The vision is to be the “Best Calendar + Task app” on the planet. If we can do that, $25/yr is probably a bargain.

      However, as we have discovered… Being the “Best Calendar + Task app” actually means different things to different people. Hence the 4 personas.

      We do appreciate your comments, and I hope we can win you back over soon.

15. bremin001 on January 18, 2017 at 9:26 am

    I understand that you’d like to charge consumers for completely new re-write of the PI-4, however you added almost no new features that are important for majority of us. Thus anticipating that anybody is going to pay for it, in hope that it will easy the development of the app in the future is somewhat ridiculous. PI-5 is not faster or better in most way then PI-4, and it has buggy, missing some of the good features that PI-4 had and more.

    Any, including free calendar applications have sync to google calendars which is one of the two most common standards (another is outlook) that majority of us are using. So I find it surprising that you anticipate that we are going to pay for ability to sync with free google services, which should really be a standard feature of sync on any calendar app on the market.

    While you advertise that sync with your servers is the only way to keep all of our data synced, I don’t find it something I’d like to pay extra, when I have a free sync options with Toodledo and Google Calendar. You may allow us to sync our data with dropbox, google or MS drive that majority of us use and save us money for paying for your server space (and add security to our data keeping – as I’m sure that dropbox/google are able to support security better then your small business).

    Like it was pointed previously, it makes sense (perhaps) to pay Evernote for subscription, since you buy a lot of space on their services (and their app upkeep is secondary). It does not make sense to pay subscription to companies like TextExpander, 1Password or Fanatics/Informant, when we are talking to an app version that from user perspective did not change from previous version and for the calendar/ToDo tasks saved on servers unrelated to your company for the vast majority of us.

    So I would be able to pay perhaps $9.99 for re-writing of the software (only if you remove double click new controls and install an old or better then current date picker), but certainly not for subscription of any kind. If you come with some new and helpful features that majority of us need – please come back and offer and increase in pricing, but otherwise I seriously doubt you will be successful long term. By now you wasted several months on talking and fixing bugs, you lost a lot of people who supported you for years, time may be just running out.

16. zegroy on January 18, 2017 at 5:38 pm

    I will be blunt, so please forgive me…

    I’ve owned Informant since my first Pocket PC. So about 14 years give or take. I bought it at least three times for PPC and WinMob (counting the upgrades), I bought it for Android, and I bought it for iOS.

    That said, I always did it when I felt the need to or wanted to support the development of the program I rely on. Not because I want a subscription.

    PI does many things well, but to be honest, it doesn’t do all equally well, it has a somewhat confusing interface (this is more related to design than capability, and it’s a subjective opinion), and there’s quite a few apps that do some of it, or nearly all of it, and do some things better, without going to a subscription model. Being a calendar addict, I’ve used nearly all of them at some point.

    I will not pay subscription. Period. And I will not pay $25 to upgrade every year or every other year when I have other calendars that cost less than half, are nicer in some aspects, have very responsive support, and do most of what I need them to do.

    At some point, it makes more sense to adjust the way I do things, which is what I did.

17. info127 on January 18, 2017 at 9:37 pm

    I would be more than happy to pay for ownership. I paid a once off $36.00 for each of the 3 licenses we have (myself and two of my staff) for I4
    The feature I am missing with I5 is the ability to Sync with Google calendar which was included and possible with the Premium version of I4.
    I understand that you are in business to stay in business but you also have to consider exchange rates (maybe???). I known that it essentially is not your problem how ‘our’ dollars is doing against the $US but what you consider a $25.99 for US based customers, is currently sitting at $36.00AU (Australian Dollars).
    Your $78US (for 3 licenses) is $108.00AU, something as a small company, I have to consider……
    I really like you product and I5 looks quite slick but I will have to weigh up staying with I4 which satisfies our needs or jumping on the subscription for $108AU per year.

    • Keith on January 23, 2017 at 8:49 am

      Info127,

      Google sync IS part of Informant 5. If you are having trouble with it, please contact support. We have started making some country specific pricing change tests. Your price in Australia may be affected. What kind of business are you in?

      Thanks for your comments,

18. MajorIzWater on January 19, 2017 at 3:34 am

    Although I can see a very solid case for a subscription model, the persona not catered for in the above scenario could be seen as anyone who has an organised life and uses Informant throughout the day, every day for everything. I have been a user of PI for a number of years and DI since it came out. I come under the heading of “Bought it for iOS”, “Bought it for macOS” and now “Worried I lose out due to new structure” in future.

    To elucidate: Not living in the US, I am very familiar with the very US-centric systems that we have to adopt. Subscription in the UK is still something a lot of people mistrust. When the CEO of Apple says that people should embrace a subscription model, it is easy for those with coffers of money that could buy a small planet. For the rest of us mere mortals, we like to try to budget. Pocket Informant has now become so entrenched in my daily life that to even consider losing any part of its functionality would be difficult. Buying the app outright gave me a sense of security and yet, I am always one of the first to want to try that new widget, or the new way of looking at things. Add into the mix that I have a mental health issue (no short term memory) and PI/DI is my lifeline to knowing where I should be and when. Moving to a subscription model forces a degree of the unknown to all of us, and so you will get the whole range of emotions aimed at what is perceived as being a threat to the longer-term users. New customers are less affected and would not have the same angst as those of us who have been with the systems for years. Where do I sit financially? A $20 per year sub is not a hardship, but I would expect the thing to work. I5 and DI are not there yet (I5 is unusable in Dark mode and crashes a lot on iPhones – DI is still in beta and has not seen an update in a long time).

    And finally – although company changes introduce a degree of uncertainty, the recent changes in Fanatic/PlanPlus/whatever on top of the subscription change instils a lack of confidence in those for who mergers have never been welcomed. DI has not seen a change since well before the Christmas period and I5 appears to have been hurried out the door on the back of mysterious email domain changes in the support realm. This needs careful management going forward or the foundation customers may feel a little let down and very nervous. It is these who will look elsewhere if they feel threatened.

    • Keith on January 23, 2017 at 3:01 pm

      MajorIzWater,

      One thing that I think may not be well understood is that if you choose the “own it” option, you would never loose access to any of the data you put into Informant. The only thing we turn off after 1 year is the connect bundle services. We need to do a better job of communicating that, but it really should help with that portion of the concern.

      As for your concerns about the merger, only time will tell. But everything is quite positive so far internally. I think as we get a few more weeks out, you will see a pattern that is reassuring. Such as, the next beta for desktop went live today. 5.03 for iOS went to beta last week. 5.03 will most likely go to apple in next 7- 14 days or so.

19. Gennaro on January 19, 2017 at 4:59 am

    Reading a person like Ketih writing about “openness” and “as usual” (relating to PI) looks ludicrous to me.
    Anyway I guess I would fit the Persona #3 (Power Productivity User) but I consider usd 25/year too high, I would be happy to pay 15 USD/year and it WILL NOT HAPPEN that I even consider paying 50 usd/year.
    I think you are complicating things too much. PI4 pricing model was perfect. Pay for the app and own it, pay yearly fee for weather and sync (separately). I guess I’d be fine to pay up to 20 USD for the app and around 15 usd/year for syncing. I don’t care about the weather and I don’t want it.

20. rob.bruce on January 19, 2017 at 6:17 am

    I am a Pastor at a medium sized church in Suburban Atlanta. I have used Pocket Informant since I owned an iPaq back in the day. Informant has been the only productivity solution for me, a dedicated GTD practitioner. The fact that it works on iOS and mac is a great advantage for me. I have a number of plates that I have to keep spinning and without informant there would be no way for me to keep up. I have used toodledo, things, todoist, omnifocus, nozbe, plus other calendars including fantastical. I always return to Informant. While $25 maybe a little high, I am perfectly fine with it. Informant 5 does lack some features, but I know they will be there in time. Don’t like the dark mode. I use synch and I like having the weather, actually helps in my planning not to have to go to a separate app when planning outdoor activities. You guys are great, keep up the good work. Would suggest maybe a tiered pricing structure. I am certainly a power user. I use everything, even contacts.. Wish that was in the mac version.

    • Keith on January 23, 2017 at 8:23 am

      rob,

      We do thank you for your support and encouraging comments. We DO have a new build on the mac version going out to beta this week. Contacts are not there yet, but we are discussing it.

21. zegroy on January 19, 2017 at 6:45 am

    Just to add…

    To me, the biggest feature in any good calendar app is the integration of tasks with calendar. The basic iOS or Google calendar is good for just meetings, and there’s plenty of great and cheap or free task managers, it’s integration that makes me pay for a calendar app. And not just basic integration, but the ability to control how and where the tasks are shown, plus some way to work with the task list. The rest – weather, notes, contacts – are nice to have, but not really essential.

    It’s also important to be able to replicate whatever setup I have on my work computer, since that’s where I am spending most of my work day.

    I’ve tried all services there are, and narrowed it down to two. Toodledo has the best task organizing and planning tools, but can only be desktop accessed via a web interface unless I want to pay for an expensive and unreliable sync service. Outlook.com is more basic (still lightyears ahead of Google Tasks and iOS Reminders since it supports task start dates and categories) but can be easily synced to desktop Outlook with no need for any 3rd party tools, and is free. So while I loose some of the awesomeness of Toodledo’s planning and organizing tools, I gain the ability to drag emails into tasks right from Outlook.

    So any mobile calendar app I use should be able to sync with one or another service, and have ways to focus on particular tasks – show them on Today – without changing their due dates. These are the most basic, core requirements. I can do my detailed task planning in another app as long as the “today” method is the same and whatever tasks I set to do today will show up that way in all of my other apps automatically.

    Now, where does Informant fall into this ? It has the best overall set of tools, and it can support either the Toodledo or Outlook.com, and it has the best filtering tools.

    It’s the only app that works with either service and provides all of functionality.

    However it’s not the only app that can provide me with core functionality using one of the services. At least on my iOS devices (no longer using Android so no idea there).

    So, let’s say on one end, I can get all of functionality paying $25 every year for PI, plus $15 for Toodledo, plus $20 for syncing Toodledo to desktop, plus $70 for Evernote. That’s $130 per year and PI is the cheapest part of this that brings it all together on mobile. Great, and some people may pay that.

    On another end, I have a $9 competing app (no subscription), a free Outlook.com account, and don’t use Evernote at all. I lose many of the bells and whistles, still retain the Today functionality via priority filter using the option to show top priority tasks on today’s date, still sync all of my tasks to my desktops. The total cost $9 and even if I have to upgrade every other year, that’s peanuts. The biggest drawback it has vs Infomant is the planning flexibility of it’s task module, but since I am using High Priority as my Today feature, any 3rd party task manager would do – any task I designate as High priority will show up on today in calendar, and that’s all I ask for. AFAIK this app, excellent in it’s own right, is maintained by one person who also has a day job, so he can charge less – I understand that this is not feasible for a company to do.

    So, at what price would Informant’s bells and whistles and seamless integration with Toodledo make it a better option for me ? Honestly I don’t know, but not $25 a year. I’ve been jumping between 2-3 apps last year because of some issues I had with Informant on an older device, and while it’s the best overall, it’s not the only good calendar app.

    And let’s be honest here. Informant is so mature that feature wise, there’s little new year to year development to be done, at least until AI comes along. Maintaining sync with Google and Toodledo and few other services requires some coding every now and then, but I doubt it’s that much or ongoing. The real problem is, you have staff that needs to be paid, and with matured and saturated market, you can no longer maintain that staff via software sales along, and are going to be at a severe disadvantage between the free offerings from corporate giants, reasonably good software maintained by single developers, or software developed abroad with cheaper cost of living. You’re a Rolls Royse of calendar software, and you may have to concentrate on the top end of the market, and charge luxury price for luxury goods. Provided you indeed provide luxury goods. I just don’t think that a $25 per year subscription for PI in it’s current iteration is going to remain very competitive. Hope I am wrong.

    • boydston01 on January 19, 2017 at 10:26 am

      “And let’s be honest here. Informant is so mature that feature wise…”

      Yeah, I’ve been thinking the same thing! How many doodads does a calendar/task app need? Though, personally, I might pay $25/year just for the maintenance of a rock solid app.

      I’ve already committed to one year, but now my expectations are much higher than they used to be. By the end of the year, PI5 better be syncing perfectly for me and have zero bugs and be really fast in all ways.

      Mac Informant’s condition also affects things because I feel like I’m paying for an ecosystem now.

22. Takeaction on January 19, 2017 at 8:42 am

    Keith,
    “Less is more” and “Bad money drives out good”. Let go the money and keep things simple. Build a good product first, and we will come. Vice versa.

23. Reggie on January 19, 2017 at 12:49 pm

    To me, pricing is not as much the issue as is the functionality. I have used PI for years (back to Palm Pilot days) and paid for every upgrade including Informant Sync (though I do not use it now). For the past year (for my own reasons) I have used both Informant and Todoist averaging 33 tasks a day. So, I think that would put me in the “superuser” or “power user” category. I really WANT to use I5, but being tied to a Windows environment at work means I have to go through Toodledo (and I DO pay the Gold subsription). It also means I have to use Google Calendar (syncing Outlook across multiple devices is hit or miss). Using Toodledo gets clunky and takes quite a while to update. I thought I had in running smoothly, but PI5 seems to be slower in updating.
    I realize I am probably in the minority because of number of devices used (iMac, iPhone, iPad, Windows desktop, Windows laptop), but if I5 synced across the windows device without using Toodledo, I might be convinced to stay. However, I find myself leaning more and more toward Todoist as a more seamless alternative.
    Again, since I already pay for I5, Informant Sync, and Toodledo Gold, the price is not as much the issue as seamless workflow.
    Sorry for the ramble…

    • zegroy on January 20, 2017 at 6:59 am

      Reggie,

      Have you looked at Outlook.com ? If you use iOS devices and Windows machines, it’s way better than Google services. Hasn’t been that way historically, but in the past couple of years MS had quietly moved Outlook.com from their antiquated ActiveSync to Exchange. Now it can be syncronized to any Exchange compatible client without a need for 3rd party software, which means that I have my calendars, tasks, and contacts in Outlook at work and at home and on my iPad and iPhone without jumping through hoops or buying sync conduits.

      I have been using a setup with 2 Outlook.com accounts (wife’s and mine) on 3 Windows machines and 4 iOS devices for 2 years now without a single problem, syncronizing to Outlook, Windows 10 mail / calendar / task apps, PI and some other calendars.

      I actually quit using a paid Toodledo account because it was so nice being just able to drag an email into a task folder without leaving Outlook.

      Also, Outlook.com is way better than Google. The calendars are just as good (it’s hard to screw up a calendar) but the tasks support Start Dates, Priority, and Categories, and sync to programs that support these fields. I could never quite live with Google tasks limitations.

      Now, Informant had at some point dropped support for Start dates in Reminders… but they are not the only game in town. Still, the categories and priorities can be used. So even if you use Toodledo, having your basic info in Outlook.com provides a good fallback strategy just in case. I was able to recreate top three features I used in Toodledo with some tweaking.

      Just my two cents…

    • boydston01 on January 20, 2017 at 5:27 pm

      zegroy: “…which means that I have my calendars, tasks, and contacts in Outlook at work and at home and on my iPad and iPhone without jumping through hoops or buying sync conduits.”

      How do you get your Outlook/Outlook.com tasks onto iOS? Are you using the built-in Outlook.com sync which syncs with reminders? Reminders seems way to sparse of a todo app for real use.

24. corneliusdenise on January 19, 2017 at 2:27 pm

    I am going to weigh as someone who is deleting the app and will not be resuming the service. I have owned Informant for years, I don’t remember what I initially paid for it but I do know it was a one time fee. My biggest issue with developers switching models is not the money aspect…even though I would prefer to just pay the bulk one time fee as opposed to subscriptions.

    However my biggest issue is the poor communication that is always involved. I don’t follow this blog or this company on twitter so I found out about your new app when I clicked into the old one. Immediately it took me to the app store and I downloaded the new app. It did say it was new app but it didn’t address previous customers at all. I didn’t know if I needed to pay separately for this, if there was any incentive as previous customer, the instructions were minimal at best. The only way I found out any answers was by reading poor reviews in the app store.

    If you asking for more money from consumers, then you need to be bringing your A game. You need to specifically address previous consumers and tell them the deal. We appreciate your business but a one time fee is no longer able to sustain our current aspirations for the company. There always seem to be a disconnect between developers and consumers with regards to monetary rates for this reason. Don’t assume your consumers know because a lot do not. I spent a bunch time of this morning trying to figure out information that should be readily available. In addition, I looked at the new and the differences don’t stand out either so tell me what I am paying for. If you look at apps that have moved to subscriptions services this the main reason they lose customers. You need to be direct with consumers and explain the reasoning.

    If want to be a business, act like one.

    • Keith on January 23, 2017 at 8:21 am

      Thanks for your feedback. We will take your suggestions and make our communication more clear. If you would like to sign up for our newsletter, you can find the link here:
      http://staging.pocketinformant.com/ (bottom of page)

25. Steve on January 20, 2017 at 8:47 am

    I was a diehard Omni user and loved their app OmniFocus. I switched because I DO like the idea of one app for Calendar, Tasks, Notes, Contacts. I am a POWER USER.

    So, Yes I AM willing to PAY to support you.

    BUT ~
    A. Fix the BUGS. Recognize that PI5 simply fell short of the hype. You will keep your base if your bugs are fixed. We don’t tolerate crashes well because we know there is a choice of other options out there for us.
    B. Have a Unique way to SPEED ENTER new calendar/tasks/notes. Your Button to choose the VIEW is greater than the NEW Entry button. That’s wrong. we use your app to store things so make the NEW button EASY to use. Recognize that POWER USERS want Speed of Entry. We think fast and we type fast. Create a new way to make that happen. Multi button pushing to get where we want makes us feel like we’re buried in the app. That slows us down and makes us perceive your app as cumbersome.
    C. Get ahead of the game with FILTERS. Recognize that POWER USERS treat your software like a database. We need to switch gears quickly (Different Jobs, Home vs Work, Different Departments) and therefore FILTERS are VITAL. We need to be able to FILTER information fluidly. This is why we picked your software. EVERYTHING available in one Place. Quickly filtering our information by personalized FILTERS is why we chose PI over others.
    D. Get Point C & D combined in a better UI. This is your ultimate WIN for your software. This is what will build your loyalty base. POWER USERS want SPEED and FILTERS. Your attempt at TRIGGERS was incomplete and cumbersome, leaving POWER USERS who loved templates for SPEED and FILTERING frustrated. Therefore, as long as you continue to push the envelope on the idea of FILTER VIEWS, FILTER ENTRIES, FILTER CONTEXTUAL VIEWs, FILTER LISTS, FILTER TRIGGERS.

    ~~Are you sensing my desire to have a database that filters fluidly is my big issue behind using this app? 😉 ~~~

    Simply put, I want more than Apple Calendars, More than Evernote, More than Outlook.

    I want . . . One Ring to Rule Them All . . . LOL.

    Sarz said it well . . .
    6. What is the best way to encourage viral growth driven by current users?
    -This is your main issue and priority
    Do not promote informant 5 until it is stable and the UI and UX are improved
    You need user manual and helpful tips on the screen once a user installs the app for the first time
    You need a youtube channel to show off informant 5 and the company
    You need a user forum
    Once all that is achieved you need to contact influential bloggers and youtubers to review informant 5
    Check out the omnigroup, they do everything so well

    Thank you for your dedication to our voices. Thanks for tolerating our rants. But MOST IMPORTANTLY, thank you for making an app that has truly made many people’s lives more productive, more focused, and more fluid that anything else we’ve seen.

    I look forward to the future of Fanatic Software and the Informant app.

26. stewlevine on January 20, 2017 at 9:55 am

    Put me somewhere between #4 and #2. To explain – I came to PI on Windows Mobile when I first landed on the platform and have continued to use it on my iPhone (personal phone), Galaxy s7 (work phone), and iPad- but I use it more to see quickly my calendar that I manage in Outlook on my laptop. PI is almost always used as a portable view into that, albeit a much nicer view, and an occasional input tool.

    With that, I have ridden the upgrades on each platform as the functionality and UI have improved, but I have found that I have stayed with PI4 on iOS (which I paid for before it went to the freemium model and have switched away from PI4 on Android as it received much less attention, which was a shame since the PI5 alphas looked like they were headed in a great direction.

    I’ve looked at PI5 and I have to echo the comments up thread. Right now the re-write doesn’t seem to be to bring a lot of new capabilities to drop down $25. I largely rely on the native sync services on both iOS and Android; while I can see some improvements in the native PI4 google sync, it isn’t enough that I would want to pay for it. And when comparing PI5 to its peers in the calendar space as a standalone product, it gets really hard to justify the premium.

    So, based on my needs – I would welcome a price point that unlocks all local features and foregoes native sync and relied on the OS to sync, both on Android and iOS. I am looking for a really nice client to supplement my desktop management (does that make me user type #5?) and am willing to pay for that.

27. cmgarnet on January 20, 2017 at 11:23 am

    I am a user that hates the subscription idea. I have been looking at other options because of it. That being said i love Informant. I use the calendar and templates every day! I would consider purchasing the app but have no way of deciding if I would like to purchase or not because i have no way of playing with triggers since it is an option in the purchased version. So the full version trial would be great and would probably get me to at least purchase for one year to get the software. I do use Google calendar to sync about 5 different calendars into Informat. Would love to just pay for Calendar and syncing to google and not the rest at a lower price.

    I thank you for looking at options to make more people happy and to continue to use your software.

    I do agree with your grouping of users. I would be a advanced in the calendar part but the tasks, notes and contacts I have other apps for.

    • Keith on January 23, 2017 at 8:17 am

      cmgarnet,

      Thank you for commenting.
      You can get a 2 week trial of the full app by signing up for Informant Sync.
      https://pocketinformantonline.appspot.com/signup

28. nkraus on January 21, 2017 at 12:36 am

    I am using informant on iPhone and Android. I payed for every new version and I like the App. There are a lot of good calendar apps out there, but the toodledo integration is best with informant. So I only need toodledo integration with a good calendar App. But to pay 25$ a year is really not worth. You even will get Microsoft office for only 99$ a year and this is for 5 user!! I already found another app for only 3,99 which is quit OK and has toodledo integration. I am willing to pay but not an unrealistic amount.

    • Keith on January 23, 2017 at 8:14 am

      nkraus,

      I hear you saying that you think $25/yr is too much and that you want Outlook integration. We have some things in the works.

29. bruce on January 21, 2017 at 10:28 am

    I am between a 2 and a 3 and I just can’t keep using PI5 right now with all the bugs that are still in it. The exchange email functionality still doesn’t work, which is one of the things I “got” with the paid upgrade. Some of the basic bugs like not being able to select a contact for location when it pops up because it tries to click through the pop up seems minor, but since I assign locations to most of my events, it is a killer as an example, and a pretty simple bug to fix I would think. Anyway, sad to remove PI5 from my devices, I will wait a couple months, see if things get cleaned up, and then possibly come back, but until then, I have multiple individual apps that are as good or better that I can use, I just always like the idea of a single solution. I am also not happy as I bought the Mac version just to go with the iOS version at PI5 launch, never needed it before, so that’s money not well spent either. Sad to be leaving as a more than decade long user, closer to 2 decades.

30. zegroy on January 21, 2017 at 12:04 pm

    @boydston01 “How do you get your Outlook/Outlook.com tasks onto iOS? Are you using the built-in Outlook.com sync which syncs with reminders? Reminders seems way to sparse of a todo app for real use.”

    Yes. And yes. But there are ways around this. The main task features that I need are being able to put them on Today’s date in calendar without changing the due date (what Toodledo uses a Star for), some way of triggering a start date review of the task, and some ways of high level categorizing and prioritizing. In my years of task management, I learned that the simplest system is the best, otherwise you spend far too much time massaging your task list and not enough working on your tasks. I sync Outlook to Outlook.com and to Reminders. I use high priority as “Today” indicator (i.e. all high priority tasks show up on today’s date), priority 2 as “next action”, and the rest just remain unprioritized (sometimes I do use priority 3 if I have too many). I make sure that there’s never more than 3-4 tasks in 1 and 4-5 in 2, across all lists. I use lists for Categories – just because I like it that way, there’s more ways than one to do it (and Tags in Informant sync to Categories in Outlook). I use Due dates for tasks with deadlines, and set an alert for start date (actually the app that I went back to after seeing Informant pricing change supports assigning actual start date for Reminders, but I don’t want to have a system that forces me into one software… I learned my lesson). So on the start date, I get a notification and am forced to either set a new alert / move the task into P2, or start working on that task. )

    What I miss compared to Toodledo is contexts, saved searches on iOS, and more finely detailed Status. All of which is really nice to have, but not absolutely necessary.

    What I gained is the ability to have all of my tasks in Outlook on my work laptop, which is where I spend most of the day. So I can drag an email into a task, or set up any kind of custom task view (Outlook is fantastic in how it lets you slice & dice & organize things).

    I am also increasingly using Floating calendar appointments for simple tasks to prevent them from clogging my task views. Shopping, errands, one-off tasks go into Calendar and stay there until completed. PI doesn’t have Floating appointments but it’s very easy to replicate with a drag & drop at the end of the day.

    Finally, I am not using my task list as my project planning tool. This is another trap that people fall in. All planning and high level task lists for projects are being created elsewhere. (I prefer mindmapping type apps but even a simple text outline would do). Only when I feel that a particular task is ready to become an actionable task, I export it to my task list. This helped me to go from hundreds of tasks to dozens.

    • boydston01 on January 23, 2017 at 2:35 pm

      @zegroy, thank you very much for taking the time to explain that to me! That gives me some ideas…

      On a side note, I miss Outlook’s very robust task management (which was well integrated with WinMO). I’ve been wondering for years why it seems like they have abandoned cross platform access of Outlook tasks. For example, the nice Outlook app on iOS is integrated with Wunderlist. What?!?! And it’s a clugey integration. But I am happy to see that Outlook.com seems to be fully syncing exchange tasks! That brings hope.

      Thanks again.

31. Erik on January 21, 2017 at 4:06 pm

    I suppose I am a #3 in your description, so I am a Power User, but I am certainly not even willing to entertain the idea of $50/yr to use PI/I5/DI. I could not care less about e-mail integration, and weather is simply a perk I currently get, but I would lose no sleep if it went away. I use the calendar and tasks. Tags are essential. Notes are superfluous. My number one requirement is the ability to sync among an iPhone, iPod, iPad and two Macintosh computers. $25 is probably too rich for my blood, given what I want and use. The interface of I5 is kludgy and the date picker is a significant step backwards. Chris’ thoughts, articulated in a separate blog, would seem to indicate that this might be fixed. I would probably prefer a menu of subscription choices.

32. swcolleen on January 22, 2017 at 9:13 pm

    I am a long time user (dell axim days) who would fit Best into the casual user category however one of the features I have always used and inquired about if icons and colors would be available and I got the impression they would but I see now they aren’t without the purchase. I have asked multiple times on Facebook with no response about if those features stay active if I bought it and then cancelled in the effort to own because I do not want subscription. I understand why apps do it but I would find another app first yet I have been trying to hold out hope for this one since I have continued to support it with every platform change I have made. I also paid extra for the weather feature and like it but again if it became a subscription piece I would just use my free weather apps-it’s cool to see on my calendar but not necessary but for me the colors and icons are key. Oh and I do prefer it with tasks and notes so the calendar free version is a waste to me bc really I can do what is offered in the built in app. So for me, I don’t see a subscription in my future by I would like to continue supporting an app I have enjoyed and I am trying to hold on to hope but it hasn’t been easy.

    • Keith on January 23, 2017 at 8:03 am

      swcolleen,

      If you buy the “Own it” option, you would keep the full version of the app. The only thing you would be missing after the end of the 1st year is the Informant Sync / Connect bundle.

      I am sorry if we missed your comment on Facebook. We really do try to respond to every one.

    • swcolleen on January 23, 2017 at 10:47 pm

      Thanks Keith for replying. I am still not convinced it’s worth the price or “upgrade” when honestly I can do everything I like now in pi4 (colors icons notes tasks and weather and I am another who likes the old icon). I really want to support the app as I have with every device I have made and always paid for any update in the past . Even had two versions one for ipad and one for iPhone before they merged. But if all I get for a subscription is sync-I don’t need it. And while PI 4 works I can use that because I haven’t seen anything new in PI 5 that appeals to me since most features aren’t in the free version anyway. I am holding onto hope but it’s looking bleak. I appreciate you seeking feedback and feel better reading the comments and seeing I am not alone in my feelings.

    • sarz on January 24, 2017 at 10:01 am

      I’m happily using PI 4 and hope to use PI 5 in 6 months to a year when it’s up to my standards. At the moment PI 5 is very annoying to use.

    • Keith on January 25, 2017 at 5:41 pm

      sarz,

      Hang in there. We are fixing the annoyances soon. All will be right in the Informant world soon.

33. Greg on January 22, 2017 at 10:30 pm

    I think you are making a mistake by primarily categorizing users based upon the frequency with which they use the app, and are confusing basic FEATURES which we expect to get from an app that we buy, with add-on SERVICES that merit a subscription. For example, I use the app all the time (at least a dozen times a day) to manage calendars and tasks for both work and home (1860 iOS Calendar items and 2221 iOS Reminder items, according to Database Statistics), rely on features such as travel zone support and templates, and would most certainly would be screwed if these data were lost.

    So by your definition in this blog I would be a “Power Productivity User” and thus willing to pay a subscription! However I am quite happy with native sync functionality, and have no interest in paying a subscription for the Informant Sync SERVICE that I do not need. But because I want all the FEATURES of the app (except for those which are only possible when using the SERVICE), you intend to charge me a subscription? Seriously, just to have things like color coding of my events?

    At least in the original (current) Informant 5 pricing scheme I can essentially buy the fully functional app for the cost of a 1-year subscription (and then cancel). But even in that model, the $25 price was way too high – not necessarily in terms of the “value” you suggest the app will provide me, or based upon my ability to afford it – but given that I can buy any of several apps which integrate tasks with events for $7 or less in the app store.

    I don’t expect free upgrades forever – sell me a fully functional app for a one-time fee of $10-15, support it for 2-3 years, and then when you release the next version I will try it out and if I like it would pay another $10-15 again (speaking of which, you need to include support for 1 Reminders list in the free version, else users cannot assess how well Informant handles tasks; and as an aside I have tired v5 and won’t pay a single cent for it in its current form until the user interface issues are fixed). You can price the add-on Informant Sync service as a subscription at whatever you like, as I have no need for it!

    • Keith on January 23, 2017 at 8:01 am

      Greg,

      Thanks for the feedback. Based on what you said, I am hearing your “anti-subscription” thoughts the loudest, and if forced to put you in any bucket, that would probably be the one. Your point about making 1 reminder list in free version is a good one. I frequently say that it is better to give a “small taste of all functionality” vs. individual taste of separate functionality. I also hear you saying $10-$15 is an ideal price for non-subscription features. Noted…

      Again,

      Thanks for your comments.

34. zegroy on January 23, 2017 at 9:20 am

    Keith,

    Have you actually looked at the competition and what they offer & charge ? Have anyone tried to get users to indicate what functions are absolutely must have for them & see where does Informant stand vs competing products in how it handles these features ? Assuming a decent set of features would run a user $25 x 1 year or $100 in 4-5 years, what does it offer vs ABC that’s $10 one time payment ? Is informant 10x better ? 2x better ? Less buggy ? Better customer support ?

35. keith3 on January 24, 2017 at 6:37 am

    I generally agree with the different Personas but do question the pricing. I do think there’s a Persona missing that encompasses a user who doesn’t care about Informant Sync and just wants to use the 3rd party syncing services (Toodledo, Google, Evernote). A package ought to be created that allows this Persona to fully use the software without the price of Informant Sync being built-in.

    As a Power User I don’t take issue with paying up to $40/yr if it includes Informant Sync, apps on all three platforms and third party sync. Once north of $40 I’d seriously consider moving to another platform.

    My spouse is a casual user primarily syncing with Toodledo on one iPhone as a way to share our chores list. We’d be willing to pay some amount to continue that use case but anything above $10/yr would be a deal breaker, especially if I’m paying at the upper end of the range for my subscription.

    The glaring omission, IMO, is families. You are focusing the Personas and therefore pricing on an individual level but what about couples? In my household at the upper end of the range we’d be paying $75/yr for one Power and one Casual user. Deal-breaker. At the lower end we’d pay just $19/yr. Too inexpensive and a huge $56 gap.

    I’d be HAPPY to pay $35/yr for my scenario of one casual and one power user and the casual user account could be devoid of Informant sync as long as he could sync with Toodledo and Google.

    Thought needs to be given to what people are happy to pay vs. willing to pay because often they do not intersect.

    • keith3 on January 25, 2017 at 4:53 pm

      Having finally read through the comments here and looking at the current I5 pricing model again I’ve found myself confused and wondering if Fanatic is just trying to find any way to get more money in the door. Hopefully this is not the case but that’s how it’s coming across.

      A fair pricing model is one that encompasses pay to own, pay to enhance and subscription. One could argue this makes the revenue model even more fragmented but it is less confusing that what’s on offer.

      First off is subscription. The only thing that is subscribable is Informant Sync. Seeing as it has built-in features that allow extra attributes to sync vs. Toodledo/Reminders it should be sold as a service with a subscription. Toodledo charges between $15 and $30 for their plans (let’s not even talk about the $90 plan). For some reason $24.99 sticks out as a fair price to be charging for Informant Sync. It is also the price I’d be happy paying for just Sync each year.

      Given the software is intended to be used as a full fledged PIM (remember the Palm days?) it should be sold as that without certain primary features turning off*. What could be limited is the number of ways one can sync their data after a trial. Fair price on iOS is $9.99 with full syncing turned on for a period of time.

      The Connect Bundle on its own could easily be sold for another $4.99. It would include the ability to sync with Toodledo, Google (directly) and Evernote and required after a trial period if one wants to sync with anything outside of iOS. I could make an argument and would be willing to pay for this as a yearly subscription however that view may be unpopular.

      The Connect Bundle must come as part of the Informant Sync subscription price as Informant sync would be useless without sync. Given that, let’s bump the price of Informant Sync to $29.99/yr.

      This serves a number of different users at various price points.

      1. Those just wanting to sync reminders and calendars* get the app for $9.99 one time.
      2. Those wanting to sync with Toodledo, Evernote and/or Google calendars not setup on iOS have a yearly $4.99 subscription after the Connect Bundle trial.
      3. Those wanting to use the superior Informant Sync have a yearly $29.99 subscription. (BTW, this is the product that is being undersold/promoted.)

      The Mac version is a different animal and should have its own pricing. Sync should be in-built without a subscription cost. Price point could be $39.99, half way between beta and current “full price”. Again, one must have an Informant Sync subscription to take advantage of all the nice “bells and whistles” it offers over Toodledo, etc.

      What Apple and the rest of the development world is trying to do is completely upend how we pay for software. This has been a trend in the business world for a long time but in this day and age where people refuse to pay for cable I just don’t see it working.

      In my household you’d get ~$60 from my initial purchase (1 Mac, my iPhone/iPad, husband’s iPhone). You’d also get an additional ~$35 yearly from us (1 Informant Sync account for me and Connect Bundle for the husband). This doesn’t differ all that much from the pricing suggested above; what’s different is what’s being paid for.

      $30 a year for quality services, great! $5 a year because my husband is a “power user”, fine. $60 up front for three apps, awesome! Need to charge me again for major upgrades in 2-3 years, alright, I don’t love it but I’m used to it.

      I would scrap the “free” version unless you want to give everyone a 30 day trial of Informant Sync. That sounds like a lot of overhead to me and headaches when users’ data suddenly stops syncing because they haven’t subscribed.

      *This falls apart with notes. Informant can sync Reminders, Contacts and Calendars with iOS but has no hooks into a Notes sync. Perhaps notes has to be “turned off” if one does not subscribe to the Connect Bundle.

    • boydston01 on January 27, 2017 at 11:55 am

      @keith3, to be fair, ALL PI5 sync accounts require on going maintenance because the third parties make changes which then require PI to make changes to keep the sync working. Thus, I think a subscription is reasonable. Apologies if you already addressed this and I missed it in your post.

      Anyway, you make a lot of good points. Especially considering that Informant Sync alone costs $25/year, it seems like PI5’s new price tag is because you’re “forced” to pay for Informant Sync.

36. drjensen on January 25, 2017 at 4:44 pm

    I don’t think I fit precisely in any of the described categories, as I am a very heavy user of the calendar (often several times a day) but don’t use other parts of the app very much at all. I prefer Evernote for notes, Toodledo for tasks, and just use my iphone’s native contacts app. I sync 3 different calendars into informant, including my work calendar. I LOVE all of the options informant provides within the calendar, and I don’t think there are any other calendars available that provide the same quality and flexibility, least of all the native iphone calendar. I have been using informant for probably 7-8 years, and have been a big fan.

    HOWEVER, despite my enthusiasm (and high-level use of) the informant calendar, there is NO WAY I am paying $25 per year for it. I can find somewhat lesser calendars that will meet my needs for around a $6 one-time cost, and I think you should keep in mind that this is one of your major price point competitors for a (likely large) subset of your users.

    • Keith on January 25, 2017 at 5:40 pm

      drjensen,

      Based on what you said about your calendar usage, I might put you in the “Curious User” category. Historically, the Calendar has been our freemium feature and has built a large following because of it. I do realize there are many people like you who would pay (a few bucks) for the calendar, but probably not $25. Your situation is one that is getting much conversation internally.

      Again, I’ll point out that we ARE 100% focused right now on getting the app to a 5 star quality (bug fixes etc, see 5.1 objectives), and then any market slicing packaging changes will be considered. No decisions quite yet, but lots of info gathering happening.

    • m_g58 on January 25, 2017 at 11:44 pm

      Keith, You need to be realistic. I agree that your priority is to get I5 working at least as well as PI4 does. However, you should be aware that even PI4, the “most loved” version, did not achieve a 5 star rating. Aspiring to reach “5 star quality” with I5 is a laudable goal, but if you are going to wait to reach that before you change your pricing strategy, you are going to be losing a lot of your “non-power” users (both existing and “curious”). These are the people who, as you casually state, will pay a “few bucks for the calendar”. Please do not make the mistake of discounting this group. It may be your achiless heel…………

    • boydston01 on January 27, 2017 at 12:08 pm

      I bet an alternative to the “freemium” that is a few dollars each year would retain the majority of them. Like $5/year. There’s your $10/15 “upgrade price” every 2-3 years.

    • Keith on January 27, 2017 at 1:35 pm

      boydstron01,

      That is an interesting idea. We have thought about something like that. We are trying to avoid maintaining multiple “version” of the app….But something like that is an interesting idea.

37. nkraus on January 26, 2017 at 12:50 pm

    There are a lot of really good and cheap calendar apps for android and iOS and it is no problem to use them with exchange, icloud and gmail calendars. So I do not see the need for cross platform syncing within Pocket informant. I only like the App and the possibility to sync with toodledo. I pay every year 15$ for toodledo silver plan and get a really good Web interface and free apps for every platform. I would pay a subscription for informant 5 and the toodledo sync function but not 25$ / year. So please make a cheaper plan for different functions within Informant or include the toodledo sync function as standard for one time paying.

38. boydston01 on January 27, 2017 at 12:28 pm

    The more I think about it, the more I think the underlying problem revolves around going from—what felt like—$0/year… to $25/year. And on top of that, the HUGE price increase is accompanied by a new app that is “not as good” as its predecessor and has “lots” of bugs. Two very synergistic problems.

    You’re focusing on “fixing” the app—great. Maybe you’ll figure a great tiered pricing model with just the right subset of features in each tier. But you might also consider offering “introductory pricing” for 2017 at $5. Renewal in 2018 will be $10. Renewal in 2019 will be $15, etc. Something along those line…

39. divekathster on January 27, 2017 at 2:59 pm

    I just saw the updated app. I think i’m leaning towards anti subscription. I don’t mind paying for updated versions of software, . I do believe it’s commonly expected when a software product is bought that some maintenance and support and even suggestions for new options to be put in place are included in the original cost. and after versioning it, i understand not supporting the old one. I would have thought that the purchase of the new app would supplement the new maintenance and support .

    Out of curiosity though, I’m a bit confused as to this whole pricing subscription. I have three screens from the shopping cart icon. The first one says own it 24.99 yearly. Is this the initial cost of the upgrade plus a year subscription? Once the year is up, does that mean I will no longer be able to use tasks? and if you did continue the subscription is it 24.99 yearly?

    The second screen has Use it for 6.99 quarterly, 27.96 yearly
    the third screen has use it 2.99 Monthly, 35.88 yearly

    the second and third screen description says exactly the same thing. why is one more than the other? Is it because the subscription for the second one is 6 months rather than a month?

    • Alex Kac on February 1, 2017 at 11:20 am

      The subscription allows us to develop the app without any thought to keeping a certain feature to a future version. We can institute major new features tomorrow or next month without holding it back for PI 6. It also allows us to add new services that add cost, without having to charge the user again. Those are huge benefits, but its going to take time for those benefits to make themselves known to customers – I admit.

      So the pricing works like this:
      1) You can subscribe monthly or quarterly and then its just that. Simple.
      2) If you buy it YEARLY – then you get to OWN the app. You get PI5, PI6, etc… even though you are not subscribing. However, at the end of subscription, you lose anything connectivity-wise such as Sync or Weather. If you use iOS events or Reminders, then you only really lose weather as that’s not connectivity.

      So in essence, you can buy PI5 via yearly, then cancel the subscription the next day – and you’ll get free upgrades of the main app.

    • zegroy on February 1, 2017 at 1:18 pm

      “If you use iOS events or Reminders, then you only really lose weather as that’s not connectivity.”

    • zegroy on February 1, 2017 at 1:35 pm

      “2) If you buy it YEARLY – then you get to OWN the app. You get PI5, PI6, etc… even though you are not subscribing. However, at the end of subscription, you lose anything connectivity-wise such as Sync or Weather. If you use iOS events or Reminders, then you only really lose weather as that’s not connectivity. So in essence, you can buy PI5 via yearly, then cancel the subscription the next day – and you’ll get free upgrades of the main app.”

      Alex,

      Sorry but this is a very bass-awkward way to do business. “You pay upfront to get basic task functionality, but you can cancel and keep it indefinitely”. Seriously ?

      If by canceling the subscription the user gets to keep Reminders (which are already synced to device by Apple so all you charge us for is showing them in Informant) then why charge for it in first place ? I could understand the “hey from now on if you want to sync to Toodledo it’s $xx per year” but … Reminders ? The most basic form of tasks ?

      And on top of this, the new design ? I will hold the adjectives, but let me tell you that I _strongly_ dislike it.

      For someone who’s been paying for all new versions (voluntarily) since 2003 or so, the way this program and pricing change has been rolled out is simply insulting.

    • zegroy on February 1, 2017 at 1:46 pm

      Tried to answer to a specific post but something went wrong, so here’s a brief recap…

      Alex, I’ve been buying Informant on three different platforms since 2003. The rollout of v5 feels like a slap in the face. I very strongly dislike the visual design and the slow down in functionality (it now takes an extra tap to switch between views). I also feel that charging users to access Reminders information that is synced to the device by Apple is either mercenary tactic, or (based on your “just cancel and keep it” comment above) plainly a bad decision.

      For anyone who synchronizes Reminders with Outlook (which I assume is a very large number of people in the corporate environment) all the extra functionality that Informant offers is useless when it can’t be replicated on the desktop Outlook which is the program they are going to be using 8 hours a day. The only thing coming across, really, is Tags and due dates – and I am not paying $25 to get this given all of the other options I have. This is plain ridiculous, especially given that the visual design of the new program is – in my highly subjective opinion – a huge step in the wrong direction.

      I assume there’s a large initial surge of diehard Informant users buying these yearly subscriptions, but once that core group has renewed, I would be very surprised if the new pricing model proves successful. I do hope I am wrong .

    • divekathster on March 15, 2017 at 10:04 am

      Alex,

      thank you for your explanation. As i don’t mind paying for the upgrade, i am kind of bummed I don’t like the way the new version looks, those icons are confusing at the bottom, and i get it that once i learn exactly which ones are which it won’t be but dang…..it’s like your dumb’ing us down with pictures rather than words.

40. Doug on January 27, 2017 at 4:07 pm

    I’ve grown very tired of all this bickering about price and who is what kind of user etc. While I don’t like the price, especially the subscription end of it, if you look at most other quality apps there is quite a range in prices. Personally, I think you as a company and some of the user you do have left have lost focus on what’s important. An App that actually works. I’m upset because you put out a product that doesn’t function as it should and is not now a quality app. I’m constantly wasting time because it crashes. I just can’t figure out how you think putting out an app with so many defects and so many absent features is worth your reputation. Informant has been a part of my life, off and on, for many years and I was especially excited about the desktop version. But even with that program there seems to be a lack of focus in meeting your own deadlines and getting it out of beta into a properly and fully functioning program. Why is it the software business thinks they can put out a program with so many bugs and non working parts to it? Any other form of business would be called to task or be regulated to death before releasing a product that was as defective as your program is.

    For the reasons I’ve outlined I fear it is time to part. It’s like living in a bug invested apartment, do you fix the problem (which you have not done) or do you move on (goodbye Informant).

    • Alex Kac on February 1, 2017 at 11:09 am

      Hi Doug – I’m apologize that you’re not seeing the quality that you expect out of Informant. I don’t know your details, but I do know that when I personally released Informant 5, it was after our regular months of beta testing with hundreds of users, and since then Chris has released 5.01, 5.02 and he’s working on 5.03. In all of those cases, most of the crash fixes we have are very idiosyncratic or specific use cases that cause crashes.

      Historically, I5 is more reliable than previous versions of Informant. That doesn’t help you – you specifically are seeing crashes, but most likely you are also seeing specific crashes that hit you personally more. I do hope that you’ve provided some information to support that they can verify, reproduce, and then we can get it in engineering to fix your crash.

      Having been part of this new team for the last 4 months – I hope I can tell you that the project planning, testing, and general processes are focused on building a better, more reliable product than it was under my tutelage. However it does take time for all of those changes to become obvious to the customer. You’ll see more of it in 5.03 than before, and 5.1 will be the first real major update that will show the promise of this merger.

41. zegroy on January 27, 2017 at 4:52 pm

    “But you might also consider offering “introductory pricing” for 2017 at $5. Renewal in 2018 will be $10. Renewal in 2019 will be $15, etc. ”

    So why on earth would most people be willing to build their entire workflow around “sucker them in slowly” pricing scheme when there are so many good alternatives ?

    Keith could start by outlining what is it _he_ believes are the superior qualities of Informant when compared to Calengoo, Fantastical, Calendar 5, PlanBe etc. etc. etc. And how this helps users to manage their time better to justify the very significant price difference, and a few bugs and annoyances. Then see what of these features do the majority of users really want, and how much are they willing to pay for them over, say, the next 5 years vs all other programs.

    From my perspective, the single biggest thing setting Informant apart is the near-complete support for Toodledo. With contexts, tags, stars, collapsible subtasks, the ability to recreate saved searches (via custom saved filters) etc. So if you’re already paying for Toodledo and are utilizing all of it’s powerful features, paying $xx per year for Informant to get all of these features in the calendar app may make sense. For me, the features that I’ve been using (star to place a task on today regardless of due date, and start / due dates) can be replicated in other systems with some functionality lost and some other functionality gained.

    The Informant Sync ? Sorry but it’s absolutely not something I’d be interested in.

    Paying just to get native iOS Reminders in calendar ? All of these apps are doing this for free.

    Notes, contacts ? Again, not for me. Evernote connection ? Nope. Sorry. I moved all of myt notes to Onedrive.

    I do need a good set of task management tools, but I am not going to use all of them (projects, contexts etc) and also, I am not going to be able to utilize some of these features without paying at least $15 yearly for Toodledo on top of Informant subscription. So, please persuade me to still pick Informant over it’s competition. I am not being sarcastic – I do want to hear the sales pitch.

    • boydston01 on January 30, 2017 at 10:22 am

      “So why on earth would most people be willing to build their entire workflow around “sucker them in slowly” pricing scheme when there are so many good alternatives ?”

      If they end up sticking wth a price option of $15-25/year, it is just an option to slowly raise the price until they get there, instead of all at once. Presumably they would not “sucker” anyone because it would be clearly spelled out. It might ease the pain of an app upgrade that is not yet significantly better than its predecessor (and has bugs). It also gives users a lot of time to decide if they want to pay more when the next price increase happens.

      Understand, this is another idea for a “compromise.” Certainly Fanatic Software is NOT going to change from $25/year back to a one-time $10-15 purchase, so I’m throwing out ideas that I think jive with where they are tying to go and address some of our complaints.

    • zegroy on January 30, 2017 at 3:43 pm

      “Certainly Fanatic Software is NOT going to change from $25/year back to a one-time $10-15 purchase”

      Certainly, this is not entirely up to them, it it ? There’s them, and then there’s market. The market doesn’t look good for that $25/year pricing in the long run. There’s so many alternatives.

    • m_g58 on January 30, 2017 at 5:49 pm

      CXRM has taken over Fanatic, and Keith appears to be oblivious to the writing on the wall. Looks like another good App is going to bite the dust.

    • Keith on January 30, 2017 at 9:47 pm

      m_g58,

      I’m here…reading the writing on the wall, or at least the blog anyway…I can assure you that we have no intention of “biting the dust”. In fact, another release on 5.03 just went out to beta tonight. We are busy working away. You will see some of the much anticipated improvements to Informant 5.03 and 5.01 coming very soon.

      One of my personal favorites I just noticed in 5.03 is that the “add task” option is back on the task/projects summary page.

    • m_g58 on January 30, 2017 at 10:05 pm

      There you go again. You are focusing on just one aspect of your problem, an App that was put out in haste, without adequate beta testing. You are overlooking the compounding factor, the price hike. Many of Fanatic’s loyal users, including I, feel that we have been betrayed.

    • Keith on January 30, 2017 at 10:41 pm

      m_g58,

      I sincerely apologize for making you feel that you were betrayed. What can we do to make it up to you? Really… I would like to know.

      We do have a very passionate and tight community. That is awesome and we don’t take that for granted. And we certainly don’t want to push people away.

      As for the comments about putting an app out in haste: We have been criticized by some people for putting the app out too quickly, and by others for waiting too long, or by not announcing it more widely. Some things are just hard to know until you know. We have learned some lessons from the release and quickly released a 5.01 & a 5.02 and are working on a 5.03 and a 5.1 that will address virtually every issue that has been brought up. For a company the size that we are, I think we are moving pretty quickly.

      I’m not trying to make excuses or tiptoe around the issues. Price has been another factor that has been brought up quite a bit, and if we weren’t selling anything we would probably drop everything to fix it. But, the truth is, we are selling quite well at $25. We have mentioned that we may consider some price adjustments, we have offered coupons for participating in surveys, we have said “get on our newsletter lists” if you want a discount, we are coming up with new creative ways to work within apples billing constraints. So while pricing is a topic of discussion, our primary focus is on addressing the feature/function areas to make sure that Informant 5 is worthy of the current $25 price.

      P.S. I really would like to know what we can do to make things right by you.

    • Keith on January 30, 2017 at 10:29 pm

      Zegroy,

      Thank you for your comments. I think I’ll save the full comparison for another post and just summarize the advantages of Informant 5 here.
      Here are a few of the advantages:
      -It has more and better calendar views than all of these you mentioned.
      -It is more customizable than any others.
      -Informant is better with GTD methodology.
      -Informant projects are far superior than google tasks OR apple reminders… not even close.
      -Informant is 1 price for iPhone AND iPad. Some of the others charge separate for both.
      -Informant has Excellent support, both customer technical support and developer support of bugs, etc.
      -Informant is a cutting edge product that is going to keep up with the latest advances in IOS10 and beyond. (Force touch, etc)
      -Informant has triggers (aka Templates) – a huge time saver.
      -Informant has saved filters, smart filters, and location based filters.

      Informant is like a good steak. You can say that “I can find a burger for $1, or $5” but Informant is a Steak. If you want to eat for free, there are even places that will feed you for free… Still, there are plenty of restaurants that charge $15, $25, $39, $59 or more for a steak. (Heck, a friend of mine just got back from Houston Texas where there was a 4oz Filet for $70, you could add 2oz for $40 more… How do they stay in business when McDonalds sells burgers for $1?

      Yes. We want Informant to be competitive with other options in the market place. We need too. But it is not the soup kitchen, Informant is a Steak. If you want a top quality app, with developers who are doing this full time and committed to being the BEST… then buy Informant. If you want to take a chance on some other app that only does a fraction of what informant does… give it a try, sure. But if you are serious about productivity (and we are).. then we think you will love Informant.

      And if you are on the fence about trying Informant: Sure, $25 is a lot of money. But really, when is the last time you spent $25 on a meal, or went to a movie. You can’t even go out to a movie on a date for less then $25 in most places (in USA at least). Do you drink coffee each day? If you are a regular at Starbucks, you probably spend more on coffee in 1 week, than Informant costs for the entire year.

      If you aren’t spending $25/year on your own personal productivity… then… you should be! Your time is worth it, your schedule is worth it. Your projects are worth it. Your relationships are worth it. Using Informant will make you better organized, more productive, and it will save you time.

      Now Zegroy,
      I’ll remind you that you asked for “the Sales Pitch”, I hope I didn’t lay it on too thick. 🙂

      P.S. for my Vegan friends, please excuse the Beef analogy.

    • m_g58 on January 30, 2017 at 11:26 pm

      Keith, I do not want you to make things right just for me. I would like for you to recognize the feedback from those of us who are your loyal “non-power” users and make things right for all of us.

      At the risk of being redundant (since I have already mentioned this a few times), I think you should provide Google sync independent of the requirement to pay an annual subscription. I do not wish to remain indebted in perpetuity just to be able to use the notes and tasks features of I5, and be able to sync these with Google. I have no need for the other third party sync functions. As others have commented, I would be willing to pay up to $10 to be able to use this “bare bones” version of I5.

    • zegroy on January 31, 2017 at 6:51 am

      Keith,

      I know that I can be very blunt sometimes, sorry in advance if any of my comments below sound like I am criticizing you or Informant.. I am just trying to give you my (subjective) perspective after 20 years of project management, most of it using some sort of software to assist me. Also, since I have an Android phone and an iPad, my experience is based on these two platforms, and perhaps doesn’t apply to iPhone.

      >-It has more and better calendar views than all of these you mentioned.

      More, perhaps. Better, debatable. It has the highest degree of customization & tweaking thanks to custom filters, but it also sometimes feels cluttered. Also, certain things like managing meeting invites were problematic – not sure if it’s been fixed. Out of all the calendar programs I used (and I think I tried them all and own quite a few) I’d place it in the 2nd tier, but very close to 1st.

      >-It is more customizable than any others.

      It’s very customizable, again you may want to spend more time with some others.

      >-Informant is better with GTD methodology.

      This is probably correct. However, the pure, Dave Allen style GTD is rather a high maintenance process and the user often risks ending up spending far too much time massaging their task list at the expense of working on them. The system I developed for myself is much more simplified and all I need is the ability to be warned about upcoming tasks on a pre-set date (start date feature, but even an alarm would do), the ability to designate 3-4 tasks for today, and another 4-5 tasks as next step, without changing their due date (not unique to Informant, and can be done a couple of ways), and some way of getting my setup to work across different systems and devices.

      >-Informant projects are far superior than google tasks OR apple reminders… not even close.

      If GTasks / Reminders are used in their plain vanilla form, yes. No doubt. But a successful calendar / task manager application builds up on these plaftorms. Informant is very powerful, however in a typical work environment (i.e. no Apple desktops 😉 ) there’s no way to harness this power outside of Informant without using Toodledo or perhaps gSyncit, which is expensive and often not possible to install due to IT restrictions. OTOH, Reminders (via Outlook.com) and Google Tasks (via CalDav) can be synchronized to Outlook – so a list in Reminders / GTasks can be used as a project.

      Anyway, from a purely subjective perspective, based on my personal preferences and experience, I prefer to plan my projects and do high level project task list development outside of my task manager (in a mind mapping program or Onenote, both of which allow quick export of tasks to Outlook). Only the actionable tasks (Next Action) or random individual todo items get into my master task list, otherwise, I would be buried under a mountain of tasks.

      >-Informant is 1 price for iPhone AND iPad. Some of the others charge separate for both.

      Only Fantastical IMHO… but it’s not the one I had in mind.

      >-Informant has Excellent support, both customer technical support and developer support of bugs, etc.

      Sorry, have to disagree here. Ever since they killed the user forum and went to in-app support, the quality and the responsiveness of support went down. They are still good, but not the best, and I’d call some of the responses I got dismissive (yes, this doesn’t seem to work… we’ll fix it one day).

      >-Informant is a cutting edge product that is going to keep up with the latest advances in IOS10 and beyond. (Force touch, etc)

      OK 🙂

      >-Informant has triggers (aka Templates) – a huge time saver.

      Templates are not unique to Informant, but yes, a time saver and very well implemented.

      >-Informant has saved filters, smart filters, and location based filters.

      The smart filters are indeed what I would call the main strength of Informant. Especially – and primarily – when coupled with Toodledo. The question is, are they worth $25 / year ? I think this is the question that people should answer individually. To be honest, for me the answer is, No. But I do wish you the best of luck.

42. Bob on January 30, 2017 at 9:40 am

    I am currently employed as a consultant, but will be retiring later this year and I will continue with my own practice on a part-time basis. I currently use PI on my iPhone 6Plus and iPad Pro and use Informant Sync to exchange data between those devices and Outlook on my Windows10 laptop, via gSyncit. I manage both my personal and professional life via this app and have done so for at least 8 years. This configuration allows me to sync my calendars, tasks, and notes flawlessly (along with the various management techniques). I also use weather, since I do travel and it is convenient to review weather conditions in my calendar while I am planning. But once I retire, that need may go away and I would want the option to reduce that cost.

    Having said all that, I am getting comfortable wit PI5 now that is more stable and since I renewed my Informant Sync subscription in late August, I sill have time to see how things develop before making any final decisions. But I do not feel as productive with it as I did with PI4, so the release of PI5.1 is crucial. I need triggers that work, I need a much better date picker and of course a user interface that saves me time. Proper documentation is also crucial – this app has lots of bells and whistles and the “hunt and peck” method of discovery and self-training IS NOT very efficient.

    I would pay $10 – $15 own the app (and pay for significant upgrades, when available) and with the sync bundle broken down into a menu of subscription choices that allows the user to determine how they want to sync depending on their needs (plus the option to change those choices, also when needed). But before I renew in August, PI5.1 needs to be rock solid and supported with rock solid documentation at a fair price, or my wallet walks to another application.

    Bob

    • Keith on January 30, 2017 at 9:51 pm

      Bob,

      Thanks for that feedback. I’m curious if you would like to see all the sync options separated, or just grouped together. Such as, $1/mo for sync w/ google or $2/mo for sync w/ toodledo, evernote, etc. What do you think? Any need to separate the charge for the sync services? Or just lump them all together?

    • Bob on January 31, 2017 at 9:09 am

      Keith:

      I think it would much more flexible if the services were be separated. For example, I see a need to have weather in the application now, since I am working. But after I retire, I think that I can do without sync option, so I might want to drop that capability. I think situations change quite often as the work and personal life change and it would be nice to see that kind of flexibility to accommodate those changes.

43. tab on January 31, 2017 at 3:01 pm

    Keith,
    re: steakhouse analogy…
    They stay in business because they deliver, rather than promise it’ll be better next time. If I were to pay $80 for a steak, I’d expect perfection the first time it arrived at my table. And I certainly wouldn’t tolerate being charged extra so the guy (Google user) at the table next to me could have great fish…sooner.

    • m_g58 on January 31, 2017 at 6:50 pm

      Enjoy the ambiance of an expensive steakhouse, order a healthy entree rather than a overpriced slab of meat. and have it served sooner. That sounds like a good deal 🙂

    • Gennaro on February 1, 2017 at 3:44 am

      m_g58. I have decided I will abandon Informant no matter what. I’m still using PI4, I don’t like Informant 5 and although I hope it will get better I really do not care any longer. If Alex ever appears again I will explain better, but I don’t like the way Fanatic has been absorbed by a bigger company, I don’t like the way the twitter account of Fanatic is wandering around advertising PI, I don’t like the new pricing model and the fact that now I have to pay for features I don’t want (weather), I can’t stand the new user interface, I don’t like the whole process of conception and release of I5 and I strongly loathe Keith. I’ve spent a lot of time adapting and customising to my needs, and writing on the blog to try to get features I wanted. I’m not very keen on getting on the hunt again, but I’m done with WebIS/Fanatic and I’d rather support a smaller company or an established one who doesn’t betray its customers. Even if I have to buy a more expensive product (well, at the moment it’s quite hard to find anything mor costly than Informant), even if I must check out several new apps, even if I must face a new learning curve and slightly modify my methods. It will be a bit of waste of time, but the ethics of the company I give me money to is quite important, and I don’t see anything I like in Fanatic right now. I do not even feel like wishing them well, and no good seems to be happening given that (judging from the useful link you provided a couple of weeks ago) the average rating is going down towards one star. Maybe Alex made a good deal, but HIS software and his company are ending up very very badly

    • Alex Kac on February 1, 2017 at 10:56 am

      Gennaro – I am sorry you feel that way. I don’t go on the comments here much because honestly I’m not fond of web-boards all that much. I’m not sure I can add more than I have said in the past.

      Fundamentally, all the things you don’t like are things that I personally was moving towards and continue to do so. Being absorbed by a larger company has given us the ability to do things that we simply couldn’t do before. The changes we’ve made were necessary to position Informant towards a better place. It may not be the direction you would prefer and I truly am sorry that’s the case.

    • Alex Kac on February 1, 2017 at 12:28 pm

      I’m really sorry you feel that way. I totally get the concern about the pricing and I know Keith has been listening and processing all those comments. I get some of the concerns about some of the interface changes – I took a risk in some areas and I’ve heard from many people who really like it…and of course, we’ve heard from those who have legitimate feedback on some areas. You have to know that behind the scenes, there have been many discussions and planning sessions and they are working really hard to address all that feedback in future updates (there are several competing priorities at the moment, so progress perhaps isn’t as quick as we’d all like…but it’s definitely being worked on).

      But when it comes to betraying customers or company ethics, I guess I don’t quite follow that. Our merger has changed nothing with regard to how much we value our customers and our ethical standards (I wouldn’t have agreed to merge with any company that violated either of those principles). Changes in pricing were necessary for the future of the product…that was true whether Fanatic stayed as an independent company or not – doing a single paid upgrade over the span of 7 years honestly just wasn’t sustainable. I regret that you perceive that as betrayal.

    • Gennaro on February 1, 2017 at 3:48 am

      …and I agree with tab, even if I’m ready to pay 80 or 100 for a delicious steak, for that I don’t want to eat something disgusting, being forced to use a dressing I don’t want just with the promise that next time I might get something better.

    • m_g58 on February 1, 2017 at 11:05 pm

      Alex, I understand that you are not a fan of blogs, but I sure hope that you are reading the feedback, mostly from “veteran” PI users, on the US AppStore and also in other countries. That should give you enough food for thought regarding the betrayal angle.

      In the first of your two replies you said that Fanatic was absorbed by a larger company, and in the second you state that you merged. I hope it is not a case of the Borg, “Resistance is futile. You will be assimilated” (Trekkies will understand what I mean).

    • Keith on February 2, 2017 at 7:17 am

      m_g58,

      We just released a 5.03 beta 2 to beta testers & updated the release notes here: http://staging.pocketinformant.com/informant-ios-5-03-bug-reports-5-1/

      I am familiar w/ the Trekkie reference, (and I think it is kinda funny). I do assure you that we intend for Informant to maintain its own identity.

    • m_g58 on February 2, 2017 at 8:43 am

      Keith, The I5 release debacle (my apologies, if that sounds too harsh) is an unique case of 2 unruly elephants in the room. You are focussing on the just one of them (bug fixes), forgetting the other (pricing strategy) which is continuing its rampage. A simultantous 2 pronged approach is needed.

    • Gennaro on February 26, 2017 at 4:26 am

      Alex,

      Thank you very much for your replies and please accept my apologies for seemingly ignoring them. As I wrote, I really respect you a lot, but I don’t like the direction things have taken. Here are my thoughts:

      (1) On pricing: skimming through my records, it looks that (limited to iOS) I purchased “Pocket Informant” in 2009 at 7.49 GBP, “Pocket Informant Pro” in 2013 for 3.68 GBP and I’ve been paying 15 USD/year for the past few years for “Informant Sync”. Not sure if I have made other purchases. Looking in the app store, I see you now sell “Informant Premium” for 14.99 GBP (I suppose people get full featured PI4 as I have) and “Informant Sync 1 Year” for 14.99. I see for PI4 you sell premium pack + sync for 22.99 GBP. With I5 I need to spend 22.99 GBP for “Premium to Own” (if I want to keep using the app once my Informant Sync subscription is over). Now I am going to spend 22.99/year instead of 14.99/year to get the extra feature of weather (that I don’t want, but OK). It is a huge increase in price but not something which would put me off if I wanted to keep using the app. I might be wrong, but to my eyes it is clear what happened: basically not enought people were using informant sync and/or weather, so you are selling the full app as before, but forcing everybody to use sync+weather at least for one year. You’ve called this “subscription model” and you’ve justified it using the usual arguments for subscription model (continual updates, no need to push important updates to future releases and suchlike). To me, it doesn’t work, it’s an utterly confusing mess, and it doesn’t play well with current and potential customers. Furthermore, judging from the experience of the 2 months or so since I5 has been introduced, I see that updates for bug fixes and minor improvements, let alone for major new features or long awaited major improvements, are not arriving any faster than before. It’s just not working

      (2) Being absorbed by a larger company, and its ethics: if this fits with your plans to take PI and WebIS/Fanatic were you envision it, that’s good for you and we will see with time if it works. For the moment, there’s nothing I like. You don’t like web forums, neither do I but it was a great way to interact with great developers like you and Chris. I would mention something here and I was sure developers would see it and were quite likely to work on it. I am already seeing on these pages how this is changing: not only Keith but you as well are directing people to an almost non-existent support which works very very very poorly. Keith was introduced as a marketing guy, started with insulting his customers and no later than yesterday is still continuing insulting (ex) competitors (Sunrise) and current users (“we must do something for OAuth and PI4 just to avoid flood of hate emails, we keep PI4 in the store just to avoid that”). From personal experience, I very strongly dislike people taking over the long-established work of others to call it their own. If it works with you, should work with me, despite my personal reserves. But still every time I read a comment from your new CEO on this blog I can’t help feeling extremely concerned about the ethics of the company you are now working for, and I just don’t feel like keeping supporting it, even at the expense of my own prodctivity. This is what I’m talking about when I mention a betrayal, I wouldn’t mind purchasing paid major upgrades, and I would be even OK with what I see as a 50% increase on Informant Sync. But bad app quality and poor company ethics are things I can’t accept.

      (3) Again to justify pricing, Keith goes boasting about “top notch” developers and support which cost money. Your support is extremely poor. The developers (that is, you, Chris and more) can well be top notch, but I can’t bear any longer to read this boastful void. I WANT TO SEE RESULTS! And If Informant 5 is what the top notch developers are giving us, Keith might as well hire somebody less skilled. It is alread February 26, I have no doubt that I5 will be on par with PI4 (but with a wose User Interface) not before summer. The Informant Sync subscription which I bought for PI4 is expiring on Juune 24. You have 4 more month.

    • Alex Kac on February 27, 2017 at 8:52 am

      Hi Gennaro.

      1. Your assumptions are actually incorrect, and I do not agree with your conclusion. Before, it was very confusing – you had to buy the app and if you wanted to you subscribed to Informant Sync. Now, its very simple: one subscription that covers everything. We added the “Own It” option simply to cover the base of people who didn’t want to subscribe and could work without sync. To me, that’s super simple and definitely simpler than before.
      2. I agree there were some really good things that occurred with the web forums. I supported them because they worked…but then they stopped working. They became more of a hindrance. We were spending 30-50% of our time on just forums. I can’t see any world where that’s a good thing.

      I also agree that the introduction to Keith didn’t go well. Keith is great at marketing, but perhaps not so much at customer to customer communication. It was chaotic at that time and I apologize.

      Keith hasn’t “taken over” my work. Chris has. And Chris was deep in my work and doing over 50% of it anyway for several years. Keith has taken over the CEO’ing, not Informant. Let me reiterate that: Informant runs as its own division within Keith’s company and Chris is the lead. He’s been my partner for 10 years and was the one who actually wrote PI for iOS before I moved from Windows Mobile to it. Everything done with Informant on the development, product management, etc. is driven 100% by Chris.

      As for support – we’ve got the same (actually better) support team that we’ve had for years. I don’t understand how you say its non-existent. Wesley and Tabetha have been running support for me for many many years and I personally go in there from time to time to check on them and I see it as going well. Perhaps they can’t answer as conclusively as I could, but again I had to remove myself from being the point person on customer communication.

      As for the ethics of the company, I sit here participating in all of the C-level and product management discussions on Informant internally and ethics are of the highest order. How to do what’s right for the customer is always the mission. I think the problem really comes down to a personality clash more than anything. Sometimes I hit those some situations with customers and it wasn’t pleasant for either side, and I consider my ethics to be pretty solid.

      3. 5.03 is coming out shortly. It has over 100 fixes and I’m very very happy with it. The quality of I5 at launch is 100% my fault. I thought it was much much better than it was, and part of that was rushing because we were behind on schedule. Chris has spent the last 5 months fixing my mistakes. At this point, 5.1 will not be focused on bug-fixes but mostly just taking customer feedback on UI design and features while 5.03 should be what brings PI to above PI4 levels of quality. About 20% of the bugs fixed in 5.03 were in PI4 as well.

      Hope that helps.

    • Gennaro on February 27, 2017 at 12:11 pm

      Hi Alex. Thank you for your reply, informative and to the point as usual. It does indeed help I can see your points even if I beg to disagree on some things.

      I take heart in knowing that Chris is still 100% behind the development of Informant: this means things might actually get better with PI5. I’ve been lucky enought to never really experience important crashes or bugs with PI4 or with my limited use of I5 (there were some issues with time zones, but I see them in the list of fixes for 5.03), so for me it is vital to see significant improvements in UX/UI in 5.1 in order to possibly see improvements over PI4.

      There might well be a personality clash but, for one, I’m firmly convinced your CEO should strongly refrain from denigrating your (former) competitors.

      cheers

44. wolfgang.heimbuechel on February 1, 2017 at 8:44 pm

    I’m using pocket informant since the good old Palm days, I’m a power-user and strictly against subscription.
    Maybe you should go back to the core-function of informant (Integration of calendar and tasks) with sync and add other offers like integration of memo, eMail, addresses, weather, travel ……
    Advantage would be the offer of the core functionality to a reasonable price (e.g. 10$) and additional offers for 2 or 3$ more – so everybody is able to built his own informant according to his needs.
    If you update the app offer a lower update price for existing users.
    I think this would be a fair deal. I’m using only the “core-functions” so the demanded subscription pricepoint is far to high. If you’ll continue with this price policy you’ll loose a lot of loyal customers and in the end you will loose a lot of your turnover!

    • Keith on February 2, 2017 at 7:24 am

      wolfgang.heimbuechel,

      We do appreciate your comments. I do think that your “a la carte” suggestion is probably the most mass-customer friendly, it is also the most complex from a development perspective. We have not given up on the concept, but we are focusing on the core functionality first. As we get the complete app to a more stable, reliable, favorable (from a 5 star ratings perspective), for the “Full-product customer segment” we may be able to address the customer segments that you mention here.

      thanks for your feedback

    • m_g58 on February 2, 2017 at 8:49 am

      Please read my response in the previous post. You do not need to reinvent the wheel. You had an “a la carte” model for PI4.
      The more you dither with your pricing, the greater the attrition of your loyal base.

    • wolfgang.heimbuechel on February 3, 2017 at 1:17 pm

      I don’t think it’s very complicated to divide the functionality of informant into moduls. You can still deliver the whole program and block the additional modules e.g. weather, evernote, notes, travel and unblock them with an additional payment…..a lot of apps in the store are working with this system.
      Again: Advantage is a lower price point for users, who only are using the core-functionality (tasks and calendar with sync). And each user can built his informant according to his needs with additional payments. Or they start with the core-functions and unlock other features later with a payment. As a result your are covering all market segments.
      Honestly: Informant is a powerful tool but to pay a high subscription when I’m only using tasks and calendar with sync to toodledo / google is not very useful for me and a lot of other users. It’s a preprogrammed loss of consumers and turnover!

45. sarz on February 2, 2017 at 11:50 am

    Keith, I stand by what I’ve said earlier that $25 per year for informant 5 is a fair price.
    I think your focus should be more towards the professional user and the people complaining about the cost of the app are probably better suited to cheaper alternatives available on the App Store.
    Keep fixing the bugs and add more useful features and you will have a much better market without all the complaints about the price.

46. zegroy on February 2, 2017 at 4:16 pm

    “I think your focus should be more towards the professional user”

    Sure. But per my very unprofessional calculations, these pro users better be over 15% of current Informant users to make up for losing the people upgrading every two years at $9. And that’s just to make up for the lost revenue… what’s to happen when Microsoft integrates full Exchange task support in it’s Outlook for iOS (which is supposedly happening this year) and all of a sudden it becomes good enough for the majority of corporate users (no more jumping through hoops to get your corporate emails into tasks or assign them to other team members who don’t share your fascination with 3rd party mobile tools) ? I can’t see any large company dumping their Outlook based internal mail and calendar system for Informant. Even with desktop app. MS and Google not being serious about providing a compelling calendar / task solution for their users is a large part of why the market exists in first place.

    So, that “professional user” is likely to be a niche user – between a casual personal user who’s not paying pro subscription, and a corporate user invested in Outlook if / when it does provide native task support on mobile.

    • sarz on February 2, 2017 at 4:48 pm

      Maybe the term professional was a little over the top but anybody who is serious about organizing their life informant is the best out there
      I would never recommend using informant in the corporate environment

    • m_g58 on February 2, 2017 at 5:19 pm

      I am “serious about organizing my life” but cannot justify forking over $25 annually to do so.
      I agree with zegory that in an ill-advised attempt to promote I5 to niche users, Fanatic/CXRM is shooting itself in the foot!

    • sarz on February 2, 2017 at 5:49 pm

      Informant 4 couldn’t compete with the likes of fantastical, weekcal etc.
      Even if the price of informant 5 was reduced to $5 they still wouldn’t be able to compete.
      Most people want a basic calendar that’s better than apple’s calendar and that’s why fantastical is so popular (and very basic)
      Informant has a better chance to survive and grow if they did just promote to the niche market that is happy to pay the price.

    • zegroy on February 2, 2017 at 8:21 pm

      “Informant 4 couldn’t compete with the likes of fantastical, weekcal etc”

      Nor should it – it’s a completely different tool to begin with. But then there’s CalenGoo and PlanBe and Agenda-something-or-other, all of which have their own pro’s and con’s.

      It all depends on what system you use. I won’t get into too many details here, but based on my personal experience and preferences, Informant has the best task module when used with Toodledo, and most flexible to support any one method of implementing a “Today” function. Calengoo has a better Calendar and still good enough task module, but no Toodledo support, with “Today” function implemented via assigning the Top priority to tasks. PlanBe has a clean uncluttered look and very fast interface, is the easiest program to use on the run, but only a basic Toodledo support, the Today function has to be implemented via Start dates (more taps), no Today widget, and hasn’t been updated in a while.

      I could not care less for contacts. I don’t use Evernote so notes aren’t high on my list either. Weather is just an icing on a cake. I do however use floating events a lot. I do use checklists inside them a lot. Both features that Informant either doesn’t have, or not as well implemented. I could go on. And to be brutally honest, Informant is also the buggiest of them all – not by a huge margin, but still… and I am talking v4.

      My point is, while I wholeheartedly agree that Informant is the best program overall, by sheer number of features, it’s not the best in every aspect, and not orders of magnitude better than the other programs which essentially allow me do the same thing, which users don’t have to pay a yearly subscription for, and which cost less to begin with. So how many of the potential new users would gladly jump into this new “professional” pricing scheme ?

      I could see getting an upgrade to v5. I could see having to upgrade every couple of years. I could see paying some yearly amount, even though I am dead opposed to subscriptions. But to pay $25 year after year to gain a few more options to get the same end result in integrating tasks and calendar ? Sorry, I am not *that* professional. “Dad makes better steak anyway”, as my kids once said leaving a pricey restaurant. 😉

47. zegroy on February 2, 2017 at 5:40 pm

    “anybody who is serious about organizing their life informant is the best out there”

    Perhaps, but not by a wide enough margin. Informant has the best overall collection of tools, but doesn’t necessarily have the best tools in every collection. And not every user uses everyE.g. out of two other calendars that I have on my devices now, Informant was the only one to completely drop support for Start date in Reminders. One other has a Start date that can be used locally (sync to Outlook is iffy), and the other has a Start date that reliably syncs to Outlook. So for anyone who uses Reminders and syncs them to Outlook via Exchange, this is still one of the best tools, but I am not sure it’s the best overall – it depends on how much time you spend in the calendar on your tablet / phone vs desktop.

    Also, the other calendars have goodies like floating appointments (just like in Palm Calendar) and checklists inside events that are much better implemented from the end user perspective, using plaintext code that can be easily entered in Outlook.

    The best features of Informant, for me, are Toodledo integration (the best in this respect) and custom filters. In this order.

48. zegroy on February 2, 2017 at 5:59 pm

    Sorry hit “submit” too early…

    My point is, Informant vs others is no Ferrari vs Yugo type of comparison. And “being serious about organizing their life” is different things for different people. E.g. I am getting about a hundred emails a day and many of them require follow up. Copying them from Outlook inbox into my Task folder is way more convenient than forwarding them to Toodledo. Another thing I learned the hard way is that you absolutely want to keep the number of items in your task list at a minimum, and do all of the planning / brainstorming / high level task development in other apps (I prefer iThoughts on the iPad and Onenote on the desktop, both allow exporting tasks to Reminders / Outlook). Again, if I want to get serious about organizing my life, I probably should be looking for a calendar that does the best job building upon Reminders.

    Anyway, sorry if this was long-winded. My point is, becoming a “professional” app with professional level pricing sounds great, but a lot of things have to align just right for this to be a viable plan. Having a wide array of tools is great but most people will only use a few of them (just ask Evernote). And there’s always a chance that one of the big guys will decide that integrating tasks with calendar is actually a good idea, and poof… here goes half of your paying users.

49. zegroy on February 3, 2017 at 8:02 pm

    Did you just pull back the functionality on v4 that users paid for already ?

    I can’t use the old version – any time I go into settings it goes to the upgrade page and won’t let me go back.

    I’ve already paid for this version, there was no time limit condition when I bought it, and I expect to be able to use the app I purchased. Is this a glitch, or did the new owner just decide to take the features people already paid for away ?

    • wolfgang.heimbuechel on February 4, 2017 at 6:30 am

      It’s obviously a very questionable strategy to force people into informant 5. Looking into the comments it’s obvious that they started this weeks ago. A reason not to upgrade!

    • Keith on February 4, 2017 at 7:52 am

      You should NOT be locked out of Informant 4. If this is happening, please contact support. We still DO support v 4.

    • Keith on February 4, 2017 at 7:52 am

      You should NOT be locked out of Informant 4. If this is happening, please contact support. We still DO support v 4.

    • divekathster on March 14, 2017 at 12:57 pm

      I can’t use it either, it keeps opening up to Pocket 5 site that tells me it’s available.

    • Keith on March 16, 2017 at 7:30 am

      divekathster,

      There is a fix for the issue you are facing: here is a link:

      https://webis.helpshift.com/a/pocket-informant/?s=informant-for-ios&f=i-am-stuck-in-an-ad-for-informant-5-but-want-to-use-informant-4-ipad-only

50. zegroy on February 4, 2017 at 11:35 am

    “You should NOT be locked out of Informant 4. If this is happening, please contact support. We still DO support v 4.”

    I contacted support around 8 pm yesterday through your support webpage, through Facebook, and through Informant on my iPhone (which still works). So far did not get any replies, although I understand it’s Saturday.

    Basically, if I remove Informant and then re-install it, pressing on Settings icon sends me to the web page for Informant 5 and it’s an endless loop from there. I can’t go back to Calendar or any other tab without deleting and re-installing, then I can’t use Settings. The program is completely unusable and it feels as if it forces users to upgrade whether they want to or not.

    There are multiple complants about this very type of behavior dating back to at least mid-January. If it’s not by design – which I believe you when you say it wasn’t – then it’s a very serious bug that makes Fanatic look extremely bad.

    • wolfgang.heimbuechel on February 4, 2017 at 5:04 pm

      Looking into the comments of the AppStore it’s evident that this problem occurs since WEEKS and can easily be seen by Fanatic (if they are interested in comments about informant). No change up to now. I wrote to the support one week ago and got no answer.

    • Keith on February 5, 2017 at 8:13 am

      Wolfgang,

      We have identified a bug in iPad when you click the “Learn more about Informant 5” button. It is only affecting iPad (as far as has been reported). Our support team CAN provide a fix if you contact them. Unfortunately to “fix” the bug would require a new build for 4.94 and Apple is not approving any apps with the Watch 1, which 4.94. So, it creates a bit of an issue.

      However, our support team CAN deliver a fix for anyone affected by this issue. Please contact them (through the website if necessary).

    • zegroy on February 5, 2017 at 2:00 pm

      “We have identified a bug in iPad when you click the “Learn more about Informant 5” button.”

      Wrong. This happens every time I install Informant and click on the settings icon. After this, the only way to use Informant is to delete it and re-install and even then, you can’t really use it because you can’t enter settings. There are messages on your Facebook page about this going back to at least January 11th, without any clear straight answers from your team on what is happening.

      I am a project manager, as such I am on the phone 24/7. I can’t use a program that I can’t use. The thing is, with Informant, if I was to use it and pay the steep subscription costs, I would have to build my entire way of doing things around the features unique to Informant – and this means giving a lot of trust to the people behind it, as it going offline or making major changes to the way the program works or making major changes to the pricing can put my entire time management system in disarray in the middle of a large project.

      So, I guess I have to thank Keith and the anonymous silent support team for helping me to become software-independent to a far larger degree while maintaining my ability to handle dozens of tasks .

      I have completely re-thought my time management methods in the past couple weeks, and I can actually take my tasks and events to any calendar program that supports a few basic features, and just keep on working with least amount of interruption. For now, I am using Calengoo, but I can easily modify my methods now for most available calendar apps that are a step ahead of Apple calendar. I grew too used to solving my problems via Informant provided features, while the true answer was to solve them via developing a better workflow. I am only glad that this disruption happened early in the year while we’re relatively slow.

      I will be keeping an eye on this project, as I have over a decade invested into it. But for now, it’s off my devices. Good luck to everyone !

    • Keith on February 7, 2017 at 9:50 am

      Zegroy,

      Here is an FAQ that describes a fix for iPad users.
      https://webis.helpshift.com/a/pocket-informant/?s=informant-for-ios&f=i-am-stuck-in-an-ad-for-informant-5-but-want-to-use-informant-4-ipad-only

    • Gennaro on February 7, 2017 at 5:19 pm

      I WANT the advertisement for Informant 5 on top of the settings screen to be completely eliminated from PI4. I paid for that app (and for Informant Sync), and I didn’t do that to be insulted by your advertisement.

    • Keith on February 8, 2017 at 4:35 pm

      Gennaro,

      I apologize for insulting you. That is not the intention. We have had a large number of people get mad at us over the years for not informing them when a new version is available. This is how we do it. It seems that we can’t please everyone right now.

      We do regret the bug that is affecting iPad users and are working on a fix. In the mean time, we have disabled the message that is causing it, but it may not help if you already clicked on it. We have posted an FAQ with a fix.

    • sarz on February 9, 2017 at 5:25 am

      It’s very important to let your users know that there is a new version of informant but to have it permanently at the top of the settings in V4 is INSULTING

    • Gennaro on February 26, 2017 at 4:29 am

      Keith,

      you feel the need to inform users of the existence of I5. Good, now whoever opens PI4 setting knows that I5 is there. You need to give users the possibility to hide that piece of information once they have seen it.

      As a side note, I find it interesting how you can find the time to force I5 advertisement for PI4 users, but find it too demanding to update Google OAuth implementation for the same people.

    • Keith on February 26, 2017 at 8:01 pm

      Gennaro,

      The function that allowed for the I5 message to be part of the PI4.94 code has been in there since the beginning. It is not something new that was added. Of course we regret that the I5 message caused such a problem for iPad users. It is due to a bug that exists in PI4.94 and not something that has anything to do with I5. It just happened to be an I5 notice that was posted that exposed it. Maintaining 4.94 has become something that is really not sustainable long term from a maintenance perspective… That is exactly why Informant 5 came about.

51. m_g58 on February 5, 2017 at 12:39 pm

    “Apple is not approving any apps with the Watch 1, which 4.94.”

    Keith, you have either been given incorrect information by your support team or have misinterpreted what your were told.
    I purchased oneSafe4 a couple of days ago. This new version of oneSafe (99 cents, no annual subscription!) added an Apple watch App, in addition to other changes. I have installed the App on my “original” Apple watch and have added it to the dock.
    FYI, Apple watch series 1 is identical to the “original” watch, the difference being, a faster processor. It was announced at the same time as the series 2 watch. So, there is should not be any reason that a new build of PI 4.94 cannot be created to fix the “bug”.

    • robertopitz80 on February 6, 2017 at 10:58 am

      “Keith, you have either been given incorrect information by your support team or have misinterpreted what your were told.”

      OR…..Keith had the correct facts but did a terrible job communicating them and then you jumped down a completely wrong rabbit hole to try to prove your agenda.

      I suspect Keith meant to refer to WatchOS 1, which has indeed been deprecated by Apple.

52. Dom on February 5, 2017 at 1:39 pm

    Keith
    From.the comments I see on the French App store, what I see is a bit different: most (all ?) comments come from previous PI 4 owners.
    Though the pricing is considered as outrageously high, it is seen as a major issue because:
    – I5 is buggy (it was at the time of release)
    – almost no new functionality is brought by the new version
    All these considerations were pointed out by the β testers and communicated to Alex PRIOR to release.
    I hope this helps. Or will help.for a future version.

53. shawncope on February 8, 2017 at 1:12 pm

    Background:
    Power user- work and personal. I’ve used Informant for over 5 years and love it(v. 4). I make use of most of its functions with the exception of contacts and Evernote sync.

    I think Michiel on January 17, 2017 at 2:36 am still has the most pertinent comments as it relates to the problem with this pricing structure. However you slice up your users, which is a necessary step in determining marketing/pricing strategy, I believe you are missing it altogether.

    I was willing to pay $14.99/yr for sync, but that was pushing it for me, based on the available apps out in the market. I paid in part to support the continued development of the app, with hopes that someday Informant would gain momentum in the App Store and prices would come down since more people would be purchasing it. I still don’t like anything as well as Informant 4, but chose to replace it this month with two apps based on principal alone. I feel like everyone involved is losing here, including prospective users who would benefit from this long-standing, well-developed gem of an app.

    Now perhaps I’m wrong and if so, please help me understand why Fanatic decided on the subscription-based “low-volume” client structure opposed to what appears to be a much more successful “low price / high-volume” structure in the App Store(iOS users). There are countless apps out there charging $2.99-$6.99 and have thousands and in some cases tens of thousands of users. This alleviates Fanatic needing to waste time worrying what bucket your users or potential users are in and spend more time developing this and possibly other apps. I assume there’s plenty of market research that would make this case one way or the other. What have you found that brought you to the decision of this pricing model? I for one would like to hear this.

    I look forward to hearing everyone’s thoughts on this.

    • Keith on February 25, 2017 at 1:27 pm

      Shawncope,

      Thank you for your comments and specifics about your pricing opinions. Pricing is a difficult thing, we are really looking closely at it from a number of angles…I’ll let you in on a few things here. I share these comments not to be flippant, but out of respect to to try to really explain some of the decisions about the whole process….

      In your example you said getting “tens of thousands of users at $2-$6/per… if an app only has 10,000 paid users that is only $30,000-$70,000. that might sound like a lot of money, (especially if you have ever considered building an app), but, it is not nearly enough to keep an app maintained, and doesn’t even come close to what it costs to build an app like informant. Now you might understand why so many apps show up in the app store and then never get a second version. The sad truth is, that so many people build apps thinking they are going to get rich, and then it is a lot harder to make money on them than anyone realizes. I bet you know someone who has built an app and had this happen.

      Let’s talk for a minute about the actual costs of building an app. Have you heard what sort of careers the schools are promoting to young people now? The #1 job promoted (at least in some presentations I’ve seen is: Mobile App Developer). Mobile app developers can make $80,000-$100,000+ with just a few years of experience, and that is at the low end. Informant does not have any “junior” developers working here. We have top notch, best in class developers. These guys are really world class. I’m not going to disclose salaries here, but I will say that to build a “best in class app” you need best in class resources. That is what we have here. Now, Tech support: you can go google tech support jobs as well, but our people here all have years of experience to provide the levels of support that we do.

      What kind of app do you want to have? Do you want an app that is fully maintained and fully supported? Do you want to be able to respond to customer requests about bugs and enhancements? Do you want to sync with 3rd party services? Do you want to be able to fix the app when those 3rd parties change their APIs? Do you want to stay current on latest device platforms and OS’s? All of that costs more than you might think. One developer can not do all of this, pretty soon you need 1 developer for iOS, another for Android, another for Sync, another for Mac, Another for web… the costs add up pretty quickly.You want QA? Oh yeah, what about marketing? You want people to know about your app? You need to spend money. You need to spend money on pay per click, websites, seo, email marketing, designers, PR. You want your people to stay up on the latest trends and platform capabilities, budget in some conferences, a few plane tickets, etc… The costs keep adding up.

      So (and sorry if this feels like a rant, that is not my intention), but getting 10,000 users at $5 will put you $100s of thousands of dollars in debt, and out of business. Now, 10,000 users-20,000 at $25… You might have a prayer.

      A few facts: Most app developers that offer a “Freemium” model, where you get a free version and then have a paid version experience only about 5% conversion from Free to paid. That means to get 10,000 paid users you would need to have 200,000 free downloads. Now you say that getting free trials should be easy? Not so, as a wise advisor once told me: “you still need to market FREE”. What that means is that…sure, you can get a few downloads if you make something free, but you won’t get a million of them and probably not 200,000. Ever been to Costco on a Saturday? How much do you think is spent on giving away free product samples there? They have the salary of the person sitting there, the cost of the product you give away, etc… Point is, it costs big money to give something away free, especially on a large scale. Let’s say for a minute that you spend $1 for every download, now it costs you $200,000 to get to break even… but wait, now you just spent an extra $200,000. Now you need 400,000 free users to get to 20,000 paid for break even. (Have you ever worked with google pay-per-click? It costs not pennies, but dollars for most clicks… that is just a click.. not even a download.)

      What is your end game? Some app developers build an app, raise money from investors, make the app free, spend money on marketing, with the sole hope of getting 1M+ users and then selling the app to some other bigger company. Does anyone remember Sunrise Calendar? They built a good app, had millions of users for free, then sold to Microsoft for big money. A dream for a developer right? maybe, but a nightmare for a customer. They then proceeded to turn off the app and leave millions of customers in a lurch. (good for informant though, because we picked up many of them). You might look at the Sunrise debacle as a giant Ponzi scheme where the only people who made out were the original investors/founders of the company. The customers got lured in, and then ultimately abandoned. Customers were using a product that they weren’t paying for so they had no recourse when it got pulled away from them.

      At Informant, we have a different strategy. We want to be in business for the long term. That means we want to build a product that customers find value in, and will actually pay for. We build a great app. We find customers who will pay us for it. It is a good exchange of value. Customers (because they pay), can expect to have an app that works for their purposes, and one that they get support with. And, because we have built a good product, and charge enough money to stay in business, we are here for the long haul.

      Now, to get back to your comment a bit more…When we priced Informant 5, let’s say we considered 2 options (there were actually many more, but at the extremes) :
      Option 1) Charge $25, get a minimum of 10,000-20,000 paid users so that we could break even.
      Option 2) Charge $5, we would need 1,000,000 downloads at a ~5% conversion to break even.

      Now just considering these 2 options, and just making things really simple…

      Option 1 is a much safer bet for Informant as a company and for the 10,000-20,000 who bet with us (by buying the app). It is safer for both because it is more likely to assure that value exchange is maintained long term.
      Option 2 is a riskier bet for Informant, and for the customers who jump on board. I say riskier because if we don’t get to the 1M user mark, we run the risk of going out of business.

      Now, as much as been said about pricing and “going out of business” I want to set the record straight and say that Informant has made a GOOD decision in our pricing. We are well on our way toward our customer and revenue milestones and we WILL be in business long term. Could we have charged $15 and still made it? Maybe… Probably… Would we have more users if we dropped the price? Maybe/ probably. Are we going out of business… NO. Are we driving Ferraris and Bentleys? Not even close (BTW- I drive a 2004 Acura MDX with 198,000 miles). However, we did make a good decision. Was there a better way to do it? Maybe/ Probably, but hindsight is 20/20.

      Now, I’ve seen people comment and say that we were “greedy” for pricing the app where we did. I don’t agree with that. I would say that we priced conservatively given the risk calculations and where the app where it is a real value for our most hardcore power users. Is the price a bit high for some people? It may well be. Please understand, we DO LOVE ALL of our customers. We DO want to take care of ALL of the past Informant customers, even the people who paid $5 for it 5 years ago and nothing since then. However, we just went through a MAJOR transition. (a complete rebuild of the app, a major change from 1x purchase to subscription, an acquisition, etc)… We have every intention of trying to find ways to get back to more of the customers who might not be willing to pay $25 for an app. Why did we make these changes?… Because we had to. The old ways were just not working any more. The app store economy has changed. We are certainly not the first to switch to subscription billing, but we are following Apples lead (since they own this game anyways). We do feel like we are making “good” decisions about pricing, (maybe not perfect, but good). We also predict that some of these other competitor apps may not be in business, or may not be able to afford to keep putting out updates, stay current on devices or OSs or continue to be innovative.

      Informant is a FULL Featured Task Manager, AND a Full Featured Calendar app. We think we are one of the best in that category. We will continue to hold ourselves to a super high standard of quality (and you can hold us to it as well), and we will continue to charge a reasonable price for that. We know that the easy thing (short term) would be to cave in to the pressures of “give it away free” but that would not be a long term win for us, or for our customers.

      Shawncope, (and anyone still reading this long reply), I sincerely hope I have showed you that we respect your opinions, we will answer your questions, and we CARE deeply about building THE BEST products we can.

      Best,

    • Gennaro on February 26, 2017 at 1:35 am

      Keith: <>.

      I couldn’t find better words to describe the Pocket Informant upgrade from 4.9 to 5 (and I am not only talking about pricing here)

    • Gennaro on February 26, 2017 at 4:31 am

      Keith: “You might look at the Sunrise debacle as a giant Ponzi scheme (..). The customers got lured in, and then ultimately screwed.”

      I couldn’t find better words to describe the debacle of the Pocket Informant upgrade from 4.9 to 5 (and I am not only talking about pricing here)

    • m_g58 on February 26, 2017 at 1:38 pm

      A classic case of the kettle calling the pot black.

    • zegroy on February 27, 2017 at 6:44 am

      @Gennaro: this is not a “Ponzi scheme”. What Keith is saying – and that’s in line with what I said earlier – is that they have large overhead costs, and have no choice but to drastically raise the price to stay solvent. Informant is developed by a team of paid professionals for whom it’s a full time job – or so I understood. The old way of selling it doesn’t work well now that the mobile device market is saturated and not expanding as it used to.

      The problem is, there are several other apps that offer, say, 60 – 70% of Informant’s features – more so if you only look at the core calendar / task features – that are being developed without such overhead (e.g. individual developers with a day job). It remains to be seen if there’s enough users for whom the extra features offered by Informant are worth a drastic increase in the cost of the program. This has nothing to do with personal feelings or some evil marketing schemes. They have an unsustainable business model, at least under the old pricing scheme.

      In my very subjective opinion, the best features that Informant has to offer are all in task management, and heavily tied to Toodledo features. It would make sense if they tried to partner with Toodledo and perhaps be able to offer a large enough discount on paid Toodledo services to make the cost of yearly subscription more appealing. But this is not something they have much control over – for all I know they may have already talked to Toodledo people and were turned down.

      The only thing they can be blamed for is the way in which PI5 was released – between a new interface that honestly felt like a step-down in every way, and the PI4 advertising debacle that hasn’t been fixed for weeks, it was a disaster from user perspective. But, stuff happens.

      The bottom line is, you can’t rely on things being static. They change, you accept the new norm or adapt your ways to a different system. I don’t see the need to blame them for doing what they felt had to be done.

    • Gennaro on February 27, 2017 at 7:42 am

      @zegroy: I don’t know whether you read Keith’s comment above, but the new owner of Fanatic Software likened the funders and developers of a (former) competitor software to the authors of “a giant Ponzi scheme” (sic) in which the customers were “ultimately screwed” (sic). That is, funders and developers of Sunrise calendar engaged in fraudulent activity to extort money from unwitting customers. I don’t know if you find these arguments and language elegant, civilised or even appropriate for the owner of a company willing to be a big player in productivity software. As far as I’m concerned, and as you point up, they are obviously free to do whatever they want with their UI/UX and pricing model as I’m free to adapt or change. I’m adamant to add that the ethics of the company I am going to support play an important role and I am not at all inclined to give any support or confidence to a company whose CEO’s behaviour and views are what I read on this blog.

      As for “The customers got lured in, and then ultimately screwed.” (sic), I’m sure this is what most current and long time users of PI are feeling right now (you can think only of those who invested 14.99 GBP for “Informant Premium” two months ago, and are already risking losing functionality as PI4 is treated as legacy software).

      I guess I’m not in a position to complain, in the end of the day I used PI on iOS for eight years or more. I have never used such arguments (Ponzi scheme likening, customers lured in and screwed), but it is not without disgust that I have read the current owner of Fanatic Software use them against his competitors.

54. lorrained on February 12, 2017 at 11:58 am

    So I would be in persona 3 & 4 – I did use several times a day eevents, tasks etc but very anti subscription.
    Why? If I’m a power user would I objects to what I regards as over priced subscriptions?
    Reason: all the work I do and the features I was using before the upgrade was charity based as a volunteer. I paid the £10.99 for the app (v.4) and within 6 months things changed.
    Maybe you need to add another persona to include charity based volunteers who don’t have funding for a hefty yearly subscription.

    • Keith on February 12, 2017 at 12:24 pm

      lorrained,

      First off, I applaud you for your charity work. I think it is great that you are taking your personal time to do this sort of thing. You mentioned that it is volunteer work so I am assuming that you are not getting paid for it. It would be nice if we could come up with a good discounting program for non-profits. Fact is, right now, we are just getting into the subscription billing offered by apple and there may be a way to do it, but we haven’t figured out how to make it happen yet and we have had higher priorities to solve first (like getting all the bugs fixed, and keeping all the “change resistant” users happy with the new app functionality like view picker & date pickers.

      Now, 2 questions for you…
      #1) Can you ask your non-profit for a reimbursement? I have done work for a non-profit in the past as a finance officer and we had budgets for tools that made our work easier. $25/year for a tool that added value would be a no-brainer. I’m not sure if your organization is in that situation, that was just my personal experience.

      #2) Why don’t you just pay for it yourself? If this same charity were to ask you for a $25 donation I am assuming that you would probably hand over the cash. Now I realize that might sound unsympathetic (but stay with me for a minute..), but since you are spending your own time on this charity I am assuming that you are spending way more than $25/yr worth of your own time. I have had this exact conversation with people who submitted reimbursements to me (in my role for the non-profit) for small amounts like $5 for this or $25 for that. Keep in mind, these were the same people that were writing checks or giving cash for $100s or thousands (literally some people were paying thousands of dollars a month to this non-profit) and then asking for a reimbursement for a $20 expense. So, I don’t mean to sound harsh but this is the same question I have asked myself and discussed with colleagues at this non-profit. “Why is it that we will write checks for 1000s of dollars and then ask for a reimbursement on a small expense.” I think the best answer that we came up with is that the “donation” or the “reimbursement” allows us to validate externally our contribution. So… my advice would be this: if it makes you feel better to have a record of your charity, then ask for a reimbursement or at least make a note of the expense so that when you do your taxes you can write it off as a deduction. Or, if you ARE willing to donate $25 to your cause, then just pay for it yourself and be satisfied that the blessings will come back to you.(Obligatory Disclaimer: nothing in this post is meant to constitute tax advice. Consult your tax professional for all tax related matters)

      Lorrain, please know that my response here is meant with love, respect, and admiration for the charity work that you are doing. Please don’t think that it is meant rude or disrespectful in any way. Fact is, we could probably manually do some sort of a discount for you right now if you contact support, if you really are in need of some financial assistance. We do have a heart for this sort of thing and we want to support people who are doing good work in this world.

    • boydston01 on February 21, 2017 at 4:18 pm

      Really of topic here but…

      “Why would you donate large amounts of money to a charity and then request small reimbursements?”

      Because when you add up ALL the “small” expenditures from EVERYONE that spends money towards operating a charity those expenses can become significant. Thus it is possible for an organization to not really know what its operating cost is because of the undocumented cost supplementation.

55. Terminus Labs on February 13, 2017 at 5:49 am

    First of all, I DO NOT NEED the Informant – I like him, I want him.
    I DO NOT NEED any notes, no tasks, and no synchronization! I like the weather. I bought the weather and I am willing to pay for it again. But: ONCE and for a REALISTIC PRICE. (1 or 2 € or 3, maybe.)
    I will NEVER COMPLETE A SUBSCRIPTION! Especially not for 26,49 €. Give me a reasonable weather price or just get nothing!

    • Keith on February 14, 2017 at 7:45 am

      Terminus Labs,

      Where are you located? ie, what country?

    • Terminus Labs on February 14, 2017 at 8:15 am

      It’s Germany.

    • boydston01 on February 21, 2017 at 4:16 pm

      Really of topic here but…

      “Why would you donate large amounts of money to a charity and then request small reimbursements?”

      Because when you add up ALL the “small” expenditures from EVERYONE that spends money towards operating a charity those expenses can become significant. Thus it is possible for an organization to not really know what its operating cost is because of the undocumented cost supplementation.

    • boydston01 on February 21, 2017 at 4:17 pm

      Sorry, hit the wrong reply button…

56. lorrained on February 13, 2017 at 10:09 am

    Thank you Kevin, yes you have some very good points. I’m not offended in the least by your comments, they are not quick responses but well thought through.
    I do the charity work voluntarily as I am not able to work, due to long term health problems that make full time work impossible. So my income is from the government (in the U.K. We have benefits that help those who cannot work).

    # 1 Your point about making a donation, yes I do make a donation to the charity, and the reason people submit receipts for reimbursement is purely to ensure that if they weren’t around to contributed the organisation would know it’s running costs and can evaluate, some not all can claim gift aid on a donation and therefore to take that away would end up costing more with the loss of gift aid taxes (I do the finance side of things for the charity).

    # 2 However, I do not want to expect a reimbursement for an item that worked really well before the upgrade. I did claim the cost of version 4. The arguement being there are other tools out there that do a similar job, maybe not all under one roof, but at no cost. If I were to submit a request to the trustees for a regular subscription I’m guessing it would not be well received. If they do for one they will have to do for all and we have a large volume of volunteers.

    Thank you for taking time to respond in such great length. Once you have worked out how to do charity discounts maybe you could contact me so I. An subscribe??

    • Keith on February 14, 2017 at 7:47 am

      lorrained,

      Are you saying that your v4.94 has stopped working?

57. lorrained on February 14, 2017 at 5:57 pm

    Only in as far as I deleted the app and started working with other one. I couldn’t afford to wait for it to suddenly stop functioning and then do a search.
    I did write to support when the update happened. I found there ‘reasoning’ unhelpful, it felt like it was about we need funds to continue, that I needed to understand that they have only had two paid for update since the app began, which to be honest didn’t really make any difference to me. I asked how long v4 would work for and was told no further updates would be done so it would gradually become obsolete. Hence deleting and working with other apps.
    I must say that informant 4 was extraordinary and hard to replace (v5 doesn’t even match it uniqueness) – to suddenly loose functionality would be horrendous, so cut and run was the only way forward.
    One other thing, the pricing for v5 works out more expensive than MIcrosoft Office yearly subscription – (that’s the full package for NFP).

    • Keith on February 15, 2017 at 7:40 pm

      Lorrained,

      Are you confused about the price of Informant 5? It is only $25/yr. How is that more than Microsoft?

58. lorrained on February 16, 2017 at 12:58 am

    Confused over UkP and USD – I pay under 25 UKP for Microsoft office 365 which is approx $30. Not a great deal of difference!
    The pricing is for MS is for ‘Not For Profit’.

59. Gennaro on February 20, 2017 at 10:15 pm

    PI4 is very good in handling time zones: I can choose a different time zone for both start and end time of an event, and whenever I pick a time zone different from “automatic” for start and/or end time of an event, PI4 shows start and end time both in the time zones I chose AND in my current time zone. This works both for generic calendars and for calendars attached to a time zone.

    I am not able to find another calendar app that deals with time zones as efficiently. Does anybody know if there is any? This would be really helpful!

    thanks
    Gennaro

    • zegroy on February 22, 2017 at 6:30 am

      Gennaro: yes, the calendar I am switching to supports different time zones for different events and shows both the current and “host” times for calendar events in other time zones.

      I don’t want to promote other program on Informant’s blog, so email me at my username+google mail if you want more info.

60. dk1234 on February 27, 2017 at 8:26 am

    I have been a PI user since 2009. I discovered it when looking for an integrated task manager and calendar, and I’ve never looked back! I guess according to your criteria I would be Power Productivity User since I use PI many times daily, sync with Toodledo and Googlecal, and do use some templates. But I’m not particularly “techy” and don’t have a bazillion calendars, or use many of the features of PI (subtasks, filters etc) . I’ve loved some of the improvements in PI over the years, particularly features that have made things so much faster and streamlined (default due date for tasks, for instance – I remember having to go through 4 steps or so just to have a task due today!).
    But for the last few years I’ve found the “improvements” and added features of minimal value to me personally. And PI 4 is pretty much all I need it to be.
    All this to say, I am pretty disappointed that I will be required to subscribe at the cost of about $40 a year (I live in Canada) just to have access to what I have now on an ongoing basis. I would certainly be prepared to pay a modest subscription fee, say $10-15 a year, but $40 sounds pretty steep. And for the first time since using PI I have started looking around to see what else is out there (spoiler alert: a lot more than there was in 2009!).
    I would like to remain a PI customer. I’m just not really keen on the new pricing structure. I wonder specifically, whether there could be variable pricing. For instance, something much more modest that allows someone like me to maintain the features I now have (including syncing – so the purchase only is not an option), without all the fancier and expensive “improvements” I neither want nor need.

    • Keith on February 27, 2017 at 8:41 am

      dk1234,

      You are not alone. We know there are more people like you who are in this group. We are evaluating ways to make Informant more available to more people. We want Informant to be the “Best” app, and we would also like it to be the most widely used. Apple has been making various new APIs available and we intend to investigate all options to find the best solution. We thank you for your loyalty and ask you to stick with us through these transitions. It is helpful for us to hear about the various user types and your use cases so thank you for sharing that with us.

61. dk1234 on February 27, 2017 at 8:51 am

    Thank you Keith. And when you calculate how much money you make from a customer over the years (and how much you stand to lose if they go elsewhere), you should make sure you take into consideration how may recommendations an enthusiastic fan like me has made. I know at least 6 people who are PI customers because I raved about the product. That factor is probably impossible for you to measure, but don’t forget that it exists.

62. dk1234 on February 27, 2017 at 10:32 am

    One more thought.
    I feel like at $40 a year those users like me. who take advantage of only PI’s basic features, would effectively be subsidizing all the real super-users out there, who do want and need adn expect more and more from the app. That doesn’t seem very fair.

    • Terminus Labs on March 1, 2017 at 8:07 am

      Interesting thought.
      The user 1 and 2 (possibly less money) are asked to cash to the user 3 and 4 (possibly more money) to subsidize. Clear, so the real poweruser can live well with 25 $.

63. m_g58 on March 1, 2017 at 4:57 pm

    I think that Fanatic/CXRM are confident that they will continue to be supported by their “power users” & no longer need to cater to the requests of their more price conscious “basic” users.

    • Terminus Labs on March 2, 2017 at 12:46 am

      Looks like this. No matter. BlackBerry has also concentrated on poweruser. Does anyone know this company? (irony off)

    • zegroy on March 2, 2017 at 10:19 am

      “Confidence” is not the word I’d use.

      They have heavy overhead and no way to support it with mobile app market saturated. Their problem is they are selling an _app_ yet maintain the team of people and now the pricing structure more suited for a _service_.

      This, to me, looks like a classic “Hail Mary” move. Let’s increase the price by 5x (roughly) and hope we have enough die hard users to sustain it.

    • m_g58 on March 2, 2017 at 11:23 am

      While a ” Hail Mary” pass may work, throwing the baby out with the bath water is not a wise move.

    • Keith on March 2, 2017 at 1:21 pm

      m_g58,

      I think it is frequently forgotten that we STILL offer a FREE version that has significant functionality. We may not have every market segment perfectly nailed, but it would not be correct to say that we don’t cater to basic users at all.

    • zegroy on March 3, 2017 at 6:50 am

      >I think it is frequently forgotten that we STILL offer a FREE version that has significant functionality.

      Nope, sorry. You don’t even support Reminders in your free version. And you don’t have any way to work with meeting invites (accept or decline or see the unread ones), unlike the native calendar. If all we talk about is basic calendar functions, the native app all the way, unless you don’t get any invites.

      What makes Informant stand out from the rest is two things. Toodledo integration (no other app comes close) and custom task filtering in calendar views (which is heavily dependent on Toodledo integration, since you removed Start dates from iOS Reminders).

      To get the most out of Toodledo integration, you must have at least the $15 account with subtasks. Add $25 for Informant, and it’s $40 per year, or $200 in 5 years. And I can’t sync my tasks to my desktop Outlook unless I pay another $20 for Gsyncit.

      Or, I can buy a program that supports adding Start date in iOS Reminders, and has features that allow me to replicate the Star or Next Action / Status functionality. All for one time $7 payment. And set up a free Outlook.com account that syncs to desktop Outlook. And get 80% of functionality for fraction of cost

      The question is, for how many “power users” would the remaining 20% of functionality be worth $200 over the next 5 years ?

      I think your subscription is grossly overpriced. But I may be wrong.

64. m_g58 on March 2, 2017 at 11:29 am

    The previous post was garbled! What I was trying to say was that While a ” Hail Mary” pass might work, throwing the baby out with the bath water is not a wise move.

65. dk1234 on March 2, 2017 at 4:30 pm

    Keith, The free version doesn’t satisfy the needs of THIS basic user, since I do need to sync, and from what I believe this isn’t available with the free version.
    I personally would be thrilled to just maintain what I now get with PI4, and I would be willing to pay a modest subscription ($10 a month?) to have that.

    • dk1234 on March 2, 2017 at 4:43 pm

      Aaacckk I meant $10 a YEAR!!!
      Obviously.