2Do Developer Fahad Gilani Talks About the App’s Future

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The developer behind 2Do app, Fahad Gilani, has released a blog post today talking about the challenges his (one-man) company is facing and what the company plans to do moving forward.

Over the past 8 years, the company has been developing and supporting 2Do on various platforms, and have been using the free updates model. However, this model has begun to lose its lustre. Over the past several years, in-app purchases have been making developers quite a bit of money.

Recently, developers have started to advertise their apps more as a service, which more-than-likely means going towards the subscription based model. Gilani also said that another option for developers is to offer a free trial and then introduce a one-time cost after the trial is over to gain full access to the app.

“I take pride in the fact that all updates, both minor and major, to 2Do all these years have been free – mostly because I can. But free updates one after another do not contribute to sustainability, severely hinder growth and add big question marks to the future of the product in question. In the post-app-store boom period that we’re in, the problem really is two-fold: discoverability that would lead to user-retention, and a payment-model that works for both users and developers alike.”

In the post he discusses two options that standout as possible solutions: Advertising and the subscription model. For a successful run at running an ad campaign you need high cash-flow injected into the ad-generating system. For the subscription option, Gilani says that this is an easy one to dismiss because apps like 2Do are not suited for a subscription model. Face it, no one is going to pay $2.99 per month to have their app store a list of text.

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From here on, 2Do will adopt the new trend. Starting with Android and then slowly moving to other platforms, the app will go free for all. Gilani describes what to expect in his blog post:

– 2Do as a free, full-featured app. Trial will last 2 weeks.
– After the trial expires, app will resort to a fully working app, but will lose: Sync, Backups, Alerts
– User given the option to buy a one time only, in-app purchase to continue after 2 weeks
– Existing users will not have to pay again

For folks who have already paid for the app, nothing will change and you won’t have to pay again. If you want to chime in on the announcement, Gilani is inviting everyone to send a tweet to @2DoApp.

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