Someone mentioned Scanner Pro! I really hope that doesn’t go subscription. I use that ... all the time. Lol. They’ll have to pry the version I have out of my old, fat, dead hands.
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PDF Expert 7 subscription - alternatives?
- Thread starter Wildkraut
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The developers of Twitterific made this move. They updated the paid app to the new crap version with ads and subscription model. I can't get the old app back (spare me the speech about the iMazing tool). There is no viable solution to avoid this on multiple iOS devices. I won't check every update for anti-consumer behavior of the developer, that's a design problem of the App Store. And i think the App Store policies should be way more regulated by the government, because the current situation clearly helps Apple service category growth. They aren't a neutral gatekeeper.
Readdle's support couldn't give me a clear answer about the future of the mac app and the other iOS apps. So i guess i start testing something like iannotate 4. Any experience?
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I need to start testing alternatives. Good point about checking updates - I don’t and blindly update all the time. :/
Exactly my point in prior posts here and what deleting Readdle's apps now accomplishes. Get used to another app/system and move on early befoe it hits suddenly. Not supporting a greedy developer who decides editing PDFs is $50/year suddenly just because; that the $20 they billed upfront before (PLUS $80 for the Mac app), which was perhaps fair pricing, is not good enough anymore. A subscription while not using any of their server resources for this type of app is really deplorable.
Im not paying monthly for mundane apps that use none of the developer's resources/server. The only one I possibly get charging for is Spark since it does use server resources and isn't "free" to them to keep operating; but their whole explanation of the business model was the paid teams account will cover the costs. Whether that is truth or lie will surely come to light (I wont be waiting for it though.)
And not saying the future of their apps is leaving it open to all going subscription someday very soon. If they will do if for a mundane app like a PDF editor (that they already charged upfront for as was with no regular maintenance costs!), why not free Documents or free Spark or Scanner Pro (upfront to subscription)?
If you look at the app store stats, they got 39 negative reviews the day this model came out, yesterday and so far today, more negative reviews than all of 2019 total. That says a lot on what people thing of this
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FYI
I wrote to Readdle support team today:
[...] Next step of Readdle is that new features will only be available in the Pro version, than I have to pay again for PDFexpert Pro on my Mac followed by the rest of your applications.
They responded:
[...]I'm sorry for the disappointment - it's true that new features will be added under subscription, but we are going to do our best to justify it and include fundamental features, like OCR, Dark Theme, form creation etc.
So behold, these Readdle products are gonna cost you lots of money in the near future. Time for me to move on.
I wrote to Readdle support team today:
[...] Next step of Readdle is that new features will only be available in the Pro version, than I have to pay again for PDFexpert Pro on my Mac followed by the rest of your applications.
They responded:
[...]I'm sorry for the disappointment - it's true that new features will be added under subscription, but we are going to do our best to justify it and include fundamental features, like OCR, Dark Theme, form creation etc.
So behold, these Readdle products are gonna cost you lots of money in the near future. Time for me to move on.
Already this subscription thing is burning me out. At one end, I could see why they'd do this to get more $ for development but at the other end, I'm done paying subscriptions. Everyone wants a small cut and I'm bleeding out like *!&$.
Sad because I used Readdle apps a lot. I recommended them to handfuls of people (who bought them). I rely on PDF Expert. Sigh.
My guess is, for those of us unwilling to pay the subscription fee, enough will pay it for it to be rewarding for them.
Day One went subscription and ... while I love the app, pay the subscription, development has not increased, if anything the opposite. It is a solid app tho. Things like 1Password - I can do that as it is server/web based.
The only other app I'd pay a subscription for is Notability. That thing is my lifeblood. I went out of my way to pay for the themes to support them. But while it does nothing server side and uses iCloud, I would not be happy if they did.
Readdle?
Looking elsewhere. All I need to do is sign PDFs with my Apple Pencil on my iPad.
[doublepost=1565292261][/doublepost]Wow you're not kidding... those negative reviews, lol. Damn.
Sad because I used Readdle apps a lot. I recommended them to handfuls of people (who bought them). I rely on PDF Expert. Sigh.
My guess is, for those of us unwilling to pay the subscription fee, enough will pay it for it to be rewarding for them.
Day One went subscription and ... while I love the app, pay the subscription, development has not increased, if anything the opposite. It is a solid app tho. Things like 1Password - I can do that as it is server/web based.
The only other app I'd pay a subscription for is Notability. That thing is my lifeblood. I went out of my way to pay for the themes to support them. But while it does nothing server side and uses iCloud, I would not be happy if they did.
Readdle?
Looking elsewhere. All I need to do is sign PDFs with my Apple Pencil on my iPad.[doublepost=1565292261][/doublepost]Wow you're not kidding... those negative reviews, lol. Damn.
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Looks like I can still sign stuff in the "free" version of PDF Expert. Still feel slighted having paid $.
if you do alot of work with PDFs like I do, paying Readdle’s subscription is cheap when compared to what Adobe charge. The alternative is to pay a one off fee for other apps like PDFPen or use Ios markup feature. We all have choice and if an app is good enough and i use it alot then I will happily pay a subscription fee. if i do not then i wont pay for a subscription, for example, Ulysess is a fantastic app but I wouldn’t use it enough to justify paying a monthly fee. if I was a developer all the hard work that goes into creating an app might well be compensated for the income generated by one off sales. But to then continually support the app with security updates, bug fixes, adding of new features, supporting new versions of IOS, for free is not going to entice me to do this. Hence why alot of apps do not see regular or no updates. Where i think some make a mistake is asking for annual subscriptions and not allowing people to have monthly ones with option to cancel at any time but then re-subscribe again should they need it. The alternative to subscription apps is for the developer to release annual refresher app with updates but for a cost.
On iOS as far as I can see PDF Expert 7 has the same functionality as version 6 that I upgraded from. So far so good. I won't take a subscription, so I'm glad I can still use the app with the same functionality.
The devil is in the details. There is no PDF Converter and Scanner Pro integration anymore and the favorite tool bar is hidden behind the subscription. Marker switch needs also way 3 clicks instead of one (i reported this as bug in the beta version, but nobody seems to care).
I still wish they kept the Affinity route with a higher upfront payment and regular updates. Now they are Adobe light, but without the good stuff like fillable form creation, cmyk conversion and pre flight etc. Real features, that Readdly still has to deliver. I still remember the support email from three years ago, where they promised that OCR for scanned pdfs in the next feature update.
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The main reason I bought this app at such a high price was because I expected them to maintain and provide uprgrades. That represented fair value. If my current version will be obsolete in a few years then that is not good value and I feel really bitter about it.
The problem is that they keep saying that you keep the existing features if you paid for their one-time plus version. That may be so but all new features will only be added to the 7 Pro version so eventually we all have to pay 53 euro's per year for a subscription to keep a decent version working.
Same here. No werking pdf converter anymore. I pais for that one too. Is iAnnotate good alternatieve?
They have it on their feature list, but i also asked about experience in the previous post. I am bit hesitant to spent 10-20€ on multiple apps. I rather wait 2-3 months how this Catalina/iPad OS Catalyst project plays out until i finally switch.
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Hi there! Thank you so much for using and recommending our apps! As a member of the Readdle team, I want to assure you that in PDF Expert 7 you can use all the features you had before, without a subscription or any additional payments. You can still sign PDFs on your iPad as long as you wish. It would be great to know what you think about the new version!
As for the new business model, it allows us to bring updates and new features more often and deliver more value to you on an ongoing basis. At the same time, the subscription is optional, and we'll always make sure our users have access to the features they already paid for before.
As a member of the Readdle team, I want to assure you that we'll continue maintaining and updating the app for all users to make sure you always have a stable product which performs well on the latest iOS versions and devices. We're already working on iOS 13 updates including dark mode and iPadOS productivity gestures. They'll be available for free since the first day of the official iOS 13 release.