Clarifying changes in monetization

One of our principles is 'Don't be evil' and there are lot of apps out there with unfair monetization. Every project needs income, but we will always try to be fair to our users. We believe that happy users with lot of free content would pay us willingly more in the long term without using aggressive monetization techniques. We made some changes in our monetization strategies in the both Android & iPhone app during the January updates. They have caused some confusion which we would like to clarify:

I have previously bought a paid app on Android, do I have to pay again?

A separate paid app in the Play Store was confusing for the users. It served only as an unlock key for the free version - so you always had to install two apps. Some users were confused that paid app has no UI. Managing two apps was a hassle for us - two set of ratings, statistics, localization etc. We have decided to use modern In-app Billing and unpublish the paid app from the Play Store.

And now the good news:
For existing users of the paid app, all in-app purchases are unlocked.
Even though the paid app is unpublished, you can always install it again to all your devices with your Google Account: Just look in the All Apps section of the Play Store.

What, iPhone version is paid only? How about existing users?

iPhone is a different story. Users have different habits - lot of them want to pay once and don't be bothered again. So the iPhone app switched from the in-app-purchase to the pay-for-app model. There are two reasons:

• It is the most common model used for similar apps on iPhone
• Many users were confused because of two different in-app-purchases. Many of you bought the first purchase and believed it unlocks both paid features. We agree that it was not very well communicated.

And now the good news:
Everyone who installed the app previously gets all functionality for free!

If you have more concerns about monetization (or anything else really), don't hesitate to give us your feedback.

Project Principles

Project Settle Up is run from the beginning according to those principles:

• Mobile First
• Settle Up is most importantly a mobile app. Focus of the development is to create an amazing native mobile app. Web version and other channels are secondary.
• Release Early, Release Often
• Nobody can create an amazing mobile app from the scratch. We experiment and iterate. The downside is higher frequency of the app updates.
• Answer to every feedback
• Your feedback is very important for us, not many users are willing to give feedback and simply uninstall. We have Google Groups, GetSatisfaction, automated crash reports, analytics, FB, G+ and Twitter and we are active everywhere. Although we answer everything, that doesn't mean we will do everything a particular user wants. We need to prioritize.
• Open
• We don't like proprietary formats and keeping data for ourselves. Your data is yours and you should be in control. Users can export their data in CSV and SQLite, developers can build apps for other platforms using open API.
• Guidelines
• We believe that each platform should have the best experience. We don't agree with porting iPhone UI to Android and vice versa. Both of our apps proudly follow UI and other guidelines of their respective platform.
• Team is overrated
• The project was founded by +David Vávra and he is still an Android and server developer, PM, designer, marketing guy, support - in one word a singlepreneur. While teams work for many projects, lot of projects fail because of individual issues or lack of interest of the team members. I believe I'm more effective than a small team in the long term. But that doesn't mean I shouldn't cooperate with others - a company Bioport created wonderful iPhone version using an open API and helps me with graphics and marketing.
• Don't be evil
• Every project needs a monetization but we are trying not be aggressive about it. You can use our app for free with the most needed features. We think that if people buy the app because they love it and not because they are forced to, we will have higher sales in the long term and happy users.

Do you agree with those principles?

The Story of Settle Up: How It All Began

Project Settle Up started in beautiful Prague, Czech Republic in April 2011. I was finishing my studies at +Czech Technical University in Prague and travelling with friends - snowboarding in the Alps and walking around whole Czech Republic borders. I had to think of some class project for a tough class Combinatorial optimization and at the same time I had all these receipts from our trip to mountains. Figuring out who should pay to whom was a pain. In that moment the dots connected - how about I write an algorithm which would solve this problem?

My supervisor in class liked the idea and suggested that I should work not just on the algorithm, but also create some usable interface. I was experimenting with Android apps, so Android was an obvious choice. I had the first prototype published in the Play Store in 2 weeks. It looked like this:

I have attended some Czech contests with the prototype and I was surprisingly very successful. Local tech media wrote about me and I got some initial users from the Czech Republic. I was always very open and stated that anyone can use my open API to build a version for another platform. A company Bioport took this opportunity and started working on a iPhone version. I discovered a great service GetLocalization and users started to translate Settle Up into more languages. During summer I got popular in Spain through some favorable reviews. Towards the end of 2011, the iPhone version was released by Bioport and I released first major Android app redesign:

In 2012, I was gaining more users from the whole world and Settle Up became my master's thesis at university. I successfully finished my degree and even I got a prize for the thesis. Bioport helped me with shiny new web and I was experimenting with measuring what users do in the app in order to improve usability. In May Settle Up was reviewed by +Reto Meier and +Fred Chung (both +Android Developers) and they told me what I can improve to better match new Android features and how to support tablets. I have rewritten most parts of the app and now you can see the result:

In 2013, the whole project is finally mature and contains all important features. There is a bright future ahead of us.