Mastodawn

Simon B. Støvring

brrr’s onboarding flow is virtually nonexistent because I don’t think it needs to be any more complicated than this.

brrr is so simple. Its killer feature is everything that’s not there.

Simon B. Støvring Feb 26

Come on, Apple. Let's get this on TestFlight.

Simon B. Støvring Feb 26

One down, one to go.

Simon B. Støvring Feb 26

Two for two.

If I am to release brrr, then I’ll need to come up with a pricing strategy. Even if it’s a simple app, I’ll need to ensure that I cover my costs and ideally earn just a little. Choosing a strategy is difficult, though.

Current ideas include:

- First N pushes are free, then $X for 1,000 pushes.
- First month is free, then $X/year.
- One device is free. $X/year for multiple devices.

A tip jar and one-time purchase seem risky for an app with hosting costs.

Honestly, I'm leaning towards the first month being free and then charging something like $6.99/year. No monthly option. It’s a pricing model that’s as simple as the app, and a price point where I think most people who’d use it won’t mind too much. Or so I hope.

A colleague convinced me that I needed to add an additional feature to brrr. Tapping a notification should show it in the app to prevent accidental taps and missing the notification.

When people try to send pushes without an active subscription, I could just return an error, but I feel like I should also do something more fun.

Like, I could send a push saying people need to start a subscription or scramble the text in the notification.

But I fear that any such notification might be sufficient for some users to deduce why they would have otherwise received the notification 😄

Maybe I should take a page out of Festivitas’ book and have people name a fair price, but this time use it for a subscription instead of a one-time IAP 🤔

https://testflight.apple.com/join/55qZ7dRn

Do you want to help me test brrr? 👇

Learn more about the project on https://brrr.now

Join the brrr • just push notifications beta

Available on iOS

maique

Feb 28

@simonbs Can confirm… 😊

Rob Feb 28

@simonbs Looks like I’m holding it wrong (escaping?) 😉

@rob Huh, interesting! I haven’t seen that. Can you share your request with me (without the secret in the URL!)

Rob Feb 28

@simonbs Might be a HTTPBot (cURL import) issue; when manually entering raw JSON in the body the notification displays correct (spaces instead of escape codes).

Will check with Proxyman later today and report back.

Rob Feb 28

@simonbs Confirmed: it was the curl importer of HTTPBot not handling your example correctly by trying to send the body as URL encoded…

@rob Thanks a lot for checking! I'm not sure I can do much about that, but it's unfortunate if this is a thing many people will try.

Michael Brown Feb 28

@simonbs the loading spinner on the “Welcome to brrr” screen took around 20s or more before seeing the example `curl`. Is that normal? I thought something was broken….

@mluisbrown There’s room for optimizations in that flow. Most of them will come from upgrading the plan on my hosting provider, I think.

@simonbs cool stuff

@Himalaya @simonbs Care to share action? 😊 thanks

Himalaya Feb 28

@maique @simonbs here you go: https://directory.getdrafts.com/a/242

Drafts Directory: Send brrr

Example actions and other extensions for Drafts, the quick-capture notes app.

maique

Feb 28

@Himalaya @simonbs Thank you much 😃

Michael Lysons Feb 28

@simonbs Works great on my phone using Shortcuts.

Himalaya Feb 28

@simonbs what’s the character limit on this?

Christian Tietze Feb 28

@simonbs love the idea, everyone can give as much as they want -- but can you even do that?

@ctietze I don’t know. I could with a one-time purchase but I dont know if Apple will allow it for subscriptions.

Stephen Kelley Feb 27

@simonbs send a notification every minute for an hour telling them they need to upgrade to get it to stop.

@stephenkelley

Nils Feb 27

@simonbs For a potential free tier you could just let it say something like „New message. Click to show its content“ and then in app show the full message + an upgrade text + button. If the free tier limit is reached I would throw an error

@nmann That is exactly why I think it’s a good idea to send a notification even when the user isn’t subscribed: it’s a chance to get them onto a subscription.

Sami Samhuri Feb 28

@simonbs Only send it once every few times it’s supposed to go out so they can’t rely on it.

Billy Adams Feb 27

@simonbs Just out of curiosity, how would the web-hook be invoked/triggered here?

@billyadams For the agent to send a notification? I’m actually not sure. My colleague uses it like this but I don’t know how he set it up. I suppose it could just be part of AGENTS.md that it should make a curl command once it’s done with specific tasks.

toto Feb 27

@simonbs I would go as simple as possible. 1 month free then 7$/year. Simple
for you and simple for the users.

@mrtoto Indeed.

Colin Feb 27

@simonbs Maybe gate the number of pushes over a time window (per day, per week)

@hoagie Yes, that’s an option too. I just fear it’s hard to structure in a way that’ll get enough people to pay. I mean, if people don’t put much load, I won’t have high costs, but I think people still need to pay a bit for the occasional push.

Brendan Thompson Feb 27

@simonbs @hoagie whatever you do make sure your costs are always covered.

Did you write the backend in Swift too?

@BrendanThompson @hoagie No, it’s written in TypeScript. I really like working in that language.

Amy Worrall Feb 27

@simonbs I don't have a use for this right now, but I’d _like_ to have one!

For me I'd rather $X for N pushes. I assume you'd offer options of auto top-up or manual?

One device being free sounds dangerous, some people might be happy with that and end up costing you a bunch. (And also you could just open 5 free accounts for your 5 devices -- anything that can send one HTTP call can send five!)

@amyworrall Indeed. I’m not too happy allowing a single device for free either.

As for the automatic top pup, that’s why I don’t like that option either. It gets complicated.

Kevin C Feb 27

@simonbs Maybe:

First N pushes are free, then tiered subscriptions based on usage level:

- $X/period for 1000 pushes per period
- $Y/period for 10000 pushes per period
- $Z/period for unlimited pushes

Maybe too complicated.

But most people hopefully understand subscriptions that also include actual server costs.

@somelinguist That could work. I’m just hoping for a pricing model that’s as simple as the app, so I’d prefer not to have tiers 😄

Adrian Mester Feb 26

@simonbs any way I can get an invite?

Michael Sliwinski Feb 27

@simonbs Where’s the TestFlight link? 🤪

@michael Soon!

clokey74 Feb 26

@simonbs how would one get on a test flight beta 😂😂

Himalaya Feb 26

@simonbs how do we sign up?

I can’t believe its not @twcau Feb 26

@simonbs App review machine go burrrr…

Rob Feb 26

@simonbs Status: “Waiting for TestFlight invite”.

But seriously: I hope you do a public beta and will share an invite link here or on the landing page.

Justin Scholz Feb 25

@simonbs do you mind if I build nerd chat roulette on top of it? 😂

@jmovs Probably not.

Alwyn Soh

Feb 26

@simonbs I understand that you don’t store any information on your servers. But would you allow the app to store the messages locally? In case of accidental dismissal of notifications, we could check what was sent.

Arne Rossmann Feb 25

@simonbs looking forward to this. Have already ideas for smart home integration in mind

Mike Roest Feb 25

@simonbs this looks really cool, however when I went to search for it on the appstore (not realizing that it hadn't actually been launched yet). The namespace is really polluted with apps who's screenshots very much pointing towards converting your phone into a self pleasure device.

@msroest Haha, that hadn’t occurred to me 😆

Trevor Kay Feb 25

@simonbs Maybe also a share button because sometimes the Universal Clipboard is jank

@trevorkay Good point! Although, it has always worked really well for me.