I think the pricing is fair too. I'm just doing some quick math.

• 24k users on day one

• if they all paid 16$ for a year that would be $384k a year

• if just 1% of that user base buys sync for a year that's 38k a year ($3200 before any taxes or other costs)

• potential donations to lemmy (2 of the $16 dollars) cuts down to $2800 a month

• cost for infrastructure to run the app is unknown but it comes out of that $2800 for the app subscribers.

In this 1% case, that is not a lot of money.

With an app of this calibur, if there are more subscribers we would see rapid growth as it's still in its early days an needs more subscribers. Apps stagnate when they hit their growth limit.

I think you'll get the most on your return on investment if you choose to pay. SYNC is a great app and I will gladly pay for continued development.

Note: I also do think that ads are imorral. If sync made enough off subscribers to provide an experience without ads to free users I think it should be considered.