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21st Feb 2023 by Tim Cole

The last 2 months have been totally crazy, but the dust has thankfully now started to settle.

23.2.0 was released a few days ago and we are now fully committed (come what may) to making the 'Featuregrade' Business Model work.

Over the last couple of years Wotja has evolved very considerably, and to try to account for a very significant increase in system complexity we have had to increase prices by more than would have been the case had we not had to do that.

We've already had some useful customer feedback (thank you - we always listen and take things on board!) and we've now been able to stand back a bit and see the lay of the land.

As we said in our last blog post, "we believe in delivering the best value we can for any customer, supporter or user of Wotja".

Pricing

There are four things we know about Wotja pricing: it must somehow reflect (even if only partially) the work we put in to Wotja or we simply cannot continue to develop it; it is very hard to get right; it is very emotive and changing it mid cycle can confuse everyone!

Because of the latter two issues we've generally tried to refrain from making changes to pricing once it has been put in place. That said...

Price changes are bad, right?

That may well be true 99% of the time, but on this occasion that is not the case!

This time the price changes are good (for you!) as prices are going down.

Woah..... How can that be?!?!?!

Pricing the old 'Fullgrade' way

Remember: At launch of W23 our new 'Featuregrade' Business Model was but a pipedream, and not something we ever expected we would be able to do.

In our blog post we explained how for Wotja 23 we were in effect forced to move to a one app per App Store approach.

The above change therefore meant we would need for *each* App Store and *every year* to release *new Apps, Plug-ins and IAPs, i.e. One Time Buys (OTBs), Subscriptions (SUBs), Tip Jar Tips (TJTs)*.

As you might well imagine, we were not exactly overjoyed at the prospect of this as it would be an _enormous_ undertaking.

To accomodate the work above we therefore felt that we had no choice at launch of Wotja 23 but to significantly increase both the regular price of Wotja (by which we mean the OTB options, e.g. '23 Pro All' and monthly SUB prices (which are pegged to ~ 1 8th/10th of the regular price).

At this time all we had at our disposal was the tried and tested 'Fullgrade' Business Model. With that, we were able to mitigate a higher regular price for longer term customers who wanted to get the new version by running some great Early Bird (EB) deals. The downside of EB deals, though, is that by their very nature they have to be time limited.

Pricing the new 'Featuregrade' way!

With the release of 23.3.0 and the arrival of the new 'Featuregrade' Business Model AND a bit of time to think things through, we were finally able to properly kick the tyres on pricing and bring fresh eyes to it.

The biggest factor by far when it comes to pricing relates to time, our time. We are ALWAYS short of it because Wotja is like a black hole that time just seems to flow into. Wotja not only needs our time for it to stand still (maintenance, support etc.) but it also needs it in abundance to keep evolving...

At the back of our minds we had an idea brewing - we wondered if it might somehow be possible to bring the best aspect of the Fullgrade model (i.e. just one low evergreen 'upgrade' price) to the Featuregrade model (where we don't have to release new apps and IAP for each App Store each and every year).

To cut a long story short, we got lucky and we think we have now found a way to do it!

OTB and SUB Prices have now dropped! See $ In-App Purchases

As of today the OTBs in Wotja for Apple devices are right back where they were on the very best Wotja 23 EB deal (EB1), and SUBs have dropped back considerably, too. OTBs and SUBs in Wotja for Windows devices have dropped similarly but are just a smidgen higher than those for Apple simply because we develop on Apple, meaning that Windows is always that much extra work for us. We decided we could go even further with OTBs for Android devices as there are no plug-ins for that, and so we have!

The above change to OTB pricing is all part of us aiming to bring a "Fullgrade" approach to it, but without need of Early Bird deals (which were only really formally adopted relatively recently).

In a nutshell, what it all means is that customers who want a OTB for the next major version (e.g. for V24 next year) will be able to purchase it for no more than what it is *today*.

And finally...

All we can say is that Wotja is a niche app. If you want it to see it continue to evolve, then please help spread the word about it to welcome others into the Wotja fold. The more people there are who purchase something (be that by getting a OTB, SUB or making a TJT) the more chance there will be that we can find a way to drive prices down even more.

And, like any other small business, we are not immune to market forces so it may well be that in future we may need to increase OTB and SUB prices. But, if we do, we it will be from this new baseline and probably only at the beginning of a new calendar year.

We hope all of you appreciate the above price reductions, whether you enjoy them now or in the future.

If you have any feedback or suggestions, please do Contact Us.

Best wishes

Tim and Pete