Ulysses Fucked Up

Dan Merfeld
Aug 24, 2017 · 4 min read

Recently the makers of Ulysses, a popular Mac writing app, announced that they were switching from a one-time paid pricing model to a subscription-only purchasing model and, well, let’s just say some people didn’t take the news too well.

As David Sparks pointed on his blog, within a few days of the announcement the reviewed ratings of the app on the App Store plummeted to just 2.5 stars, with most of the reviewers sighting the recent change in pricing as their reason for their one-star review. I agree with David, leaving a one-star review on the store because you don’t like how it’s priced out, is misguided.

Unlike the aforementioned, who’s disappointment lies with the pricing model change itself, I find myself disappointed in the lost opportunity by the makers of the app.

Before we get into. Let’s not lose sight of the goal — which is for customers to have access to great software and for developers to be incentivized to provide such software. There’s no value in criticizing unless that criticism is constructive.

There’s No Pleasing Some People

When you provide a product or service to a group of people long enough, someone is going to get pissed about something. Don’t bother looking for it; they’ll make sure you know. This is just the nature of people, there’s no pleasing some people. However, don’t let that fact give you a reason to stop trying to please anyone. Sometimes the complaints should be ignored, other times, well, hop on it, because we’re all one snarky app review away from losing it all.

Risky Business.

Don’t underestimate how deeply unfavorable subscriptions are to people. Consumers scrutinize subscriptions far more thoroughly than their other, one-time, purchases. Imagine spending $35 on an app. Now, imagine purchasing a subscription for $3 a month, for 12 months. $3 a month seems risky for some reason.

Behavioral scientists have looked into this phenomena, and they point to the irrationality of the human decision-making process as the reason for the discrepancy in how we feel about different types of purchases. Our desire to be risk averse tricks us into thinking bad purchasing decisions are in fact good ones. Check out Piyanka Jain’s well-written explanation of this in her article on Forbes.

Mo’ Money. Mo’ Problems.

Whenever you change up the pricing model for your customers, you should consider it a deficit that you’ll have to payback to them in some form. The burden of such reimbursements rests with you, not your customers. It’s not a compelling argument to say, the benefits of a subscription model are that it will keep us in business. That’s an excellent argument to be made, just not to your customers.

To your customers, it’s just not a good reason. After all, how tragic would it be to them if your company went out of business and the app went dark? Don’t overvalue your importance in this equation.

Sell Me This Pencil.

Don’t be the guy that leaves the safety of the castle so he can attempt to reason with the angry mob forming outside. We all know how that episode ends.

Logic isn’t going to win the day here. You’re not going to change the hearts and minds of the people with a single, albeit well-appreciated, blog post.

Instead of trying to convince your customers why this move is right for you, you should simplify the goal of all of your messaging to one unifying point. Explain how it’s good for them. Sell them that pencil.

Want me to put my pen where my pencil is? Okay how about something like this?

Good morning everyone! Today, it gives me great pleasure to announce that we are releasing a new version of Ulysses, called Ulysses CC. This app will allow you to benefit from more regular updates, and, get this, it will be available on both iOS and Mac for one small subscription of $4.99/mo, or you can purchase a full year for $39.99, and we hope you do, because that way you’ll save yourself 33%.

If you purchased Ulysses within the last 60 days, we’re going to contact you and give you an opportunity to switch over to Ulysses CC at no cost. Your subscription will start from the date of transfer and be valid for one full year. After that year, you’ll pay the subscription rates mentioned above to maintain your subscription.

We know subscriptions are not for everyone. We understand. That’s why we’ve decided to keep Ulysses as a stand alone app. Even though we won’t be adding new features to Ulysses, you can continue to use it and we promise to keep the app up and running well into the future, including the upcoming iOS and MacOS updates coming up later this fall.

Providing Ulysses to you all has been a tremendous honor for us, one we don’t take for granted. We hope you’ll join us on the next leg of that journey by giving Ulysses CC a try.

Thank you!

Some guy from Ulysses

Fucked up — but not FUBAR

Finally, let’s not all lose our heads here. Ulysses fucked up on this one, but they’ll be fine. The popularity of their app will win the day. Oh, by the way, I wrote this blog post using Ulysses. You should check them out. Pricing starts at just $39.99/year.


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Dan Merfeld

Written by

Digital Creator, Artist, Developer, Writer of Short Stories, Founder of TheoryThree Interactive

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