this post was submitted on 02 Aug 2023
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I installed Sync to try it out, and noticed the subscription model for no ads, and for basic features like push notifications and exporting a list of your subscribed communities. $2/month or $100 for a "lifetime" subscription. Immediately uninstalled it, yes it has a beautiful interface but I've never been fond of subscription-based apps, especially for FOSS services. A low one-time fee would be acceptable to me, like the $4 fee for Toot! for Mastodon.
The silly thing to me about the subscription is, they say it's to "cover the monthly running costs". What running costs do they incur if Lemmy is free and open? I'm genuinely curious, if anyone knows please tell me.
The app itself uses cloud services and apis. Those cost money. Lemmy and lemmy instances cost money to run as well, and it is struggling to stay afloat with donations according to a post I read from the lemmy.world admins.
That being said, I am sure syncs monetization is setup in a way to at least make the creator a few bucks on top of paying for the services. Also, the ultimate tier on sync that is like ~~100~~ 20 dollars a year basically adds access to some "advanced apis" providing translations and site previews.
Edit: 20 dollars a year not 100 for sync ultra. Also, it's 20 dollars to remove ads forever. I think there was talk about a lifetime sync ultra for 100 dollars at some point and I got confused.
I believe you are confusing the lifetime price with the yearly one.
Thanks for the correction. You are right. I think I got confused from another thread about sync. I looked it up and fixed it.