TL;DR — Pensieve has recently become a paid app. Everyone gets a 30-day free trial, and after the trial, you need a subscription ($2.99 USD per month - less than the price of a cup of coffee) to continue using the app. This ensures that the recurring costs of running the app are covered and that Pensieve is built for you.
Curious to know more? Read on.
Hi! I’m Josh. I’m an independent software developer. Throughout my career I've built video games, VR apps, and productivity tools. When I’m not working on Pensieve, I like to figure skate, canoe, and read. I’ve lived all over the world, and I currently reside in Portland, Oregon. This is me:
Photo by Matthew Thogerson.
Pensieve began as a hobby project in 2013, back when I was a digital nomad. I built an app that I needed for myself and I put it on the App Store so others could benefit. At first it didn’t cost any money to run Pensieve, and everything was groovy.
Over time, the software landscape shifted, Pensieve got better, and more people began to use the app. As those changes happened, it did start to cost money to keep Pensieve running. I loved that people found Pensieve to be useful, so for a while, I bore those costs myself. But the costs are adding up, and the demands of growth and app development require funding beyond my ability.
The mission of Pensieve is to help people remember important actionable things, to feel more inspired, organized, productive, joyful, and live in the moment, distraction-free.
All of the features in the app are built with this mission in mind, and the decisions I make about how to support the app financially must also be in alignment with this mission.
Building software in Apple's ecosystem requires on-going support as Apple releases iOS updates and launches new devices, and it costs money to fix bugs and develop new features. Even if I were to stop making updates to the app, it costs money just to keep Pensieve operating as-is.
What are the costs? Running servers, delivering emails, transcribing speech-to-text, cloud data hosting, maintaining an active Apple Developer subscription, and business fees are among them. As Pensieve grows, more people use it, and new features are added, the operating costs will increase, too.
Here’s a breakdown of the expenses described above. As you can see, just delivering emails quickly and reliably comprises 45% of the total costs. The remaining 55% is distributed among operating expenses, app development, and business fees. The funds to cover these expenses have to come from somewhere.
Revenue to support Pensieve could come from a few different sources: