Subscriptions are slowly taking over the software industry, and there's a reason for that.
One common misconception is the thought “You make software only once and sell it a million times”.
Well, that’s a nice idea, but in reality, very few software companies don’t have millions of *paying* customers. Being a small 2-person company, we obviously don’t 😉. And, even if we did, our costs increase with each new user because each new user consumes Cloud resources. Last month, for example, there were 2.7 million recipes stored in the OrganizEat Cloud Servers. We must pay a fee to store this data in the Cloud. OrganizEat is not like a simple calendar app or note-taker app, that has no ongoing costs.
Take OrganizEat, for example. The service we provide is something called “Web service”: it means that it requires constant usage of the internet. Every time you save a recipe from the web: our Server has to access the original recipe webpage, and process the recipe information to import it. All of this is called “Web Traffic” and we have to pay for each and every such operation to our servers providers.
It also involves Cloud Storage: we must pay a fee each month to store your recipe data and images in the cloud so that you could share them with others and across your own devices. All those high-resolution recipe photos take up a lot of space! It also takes internet traffic: we must pay for every read and write operation too, which means that every time you sync to the Cloud, it costs us money. Providing a service like this, that involves recurrent costs of ut – and at the same time not charging for it repeatedly – it’s simply not economically sustainable.
But, “aren’t you mostly done developing OrganizEat?” This is another common misconception about software. You’re never really “done” developing software. The concept doesn’t exist. In our case, the OrganizEat feature set has expanded to the point that it is a challenge to just maintain it all and keep everything working. For example, the recipe import from the web is fantastic – but for that feature to work, we must continuously make changes to the source code every time a recipe website changes.
Every year, there’s a new version of the Android, or iOS Operating System. Each time the OS changes, we must shift OrganizEat too. Modern mobile devices go out every year – we must add support for them all the time so that when you’ll upgrade to a new phone, your OrganizEat app will run smoothly on it. Software changes tremendously fast these days, and just keeping the existing service working is costly.
To summarize everything we’ve said so far, in software, two unique issues are preventing it from being a “product”:
1) Cloud Storage costs & Web Traffic costs, that increase with each and every user 2) Rapidly changing technological environment, which means that software is never “done” being developed (unlike a bag of chips for example…)
4 Responses
Hello,
I’ve been searching and trying out many recipe keeper apps for over 2 month but nothing brought all the needed features together like OrganizEat, I really would like to congratulate you guys on the beautiful app interface and ease of use.
My only concern is where is our data saved? You say “cloud” but this doesn’t sound reliable enough, many “cloud” providers keep popping up to disappear again in less than a year taking down with them all stored data.
Thanks for putting all this together.
Good luck & prosperity for years to come !
Hi, thank you for reaching out! We use Google Cloud platform for the storage. It considered very reliable 🙂
I love love your app. My granddaughters taught me how to use it three years ago. I always have my recipes on my iPad wherever I go. I hope your app remains alive for many years, but what happens if your company were to fold, what guarantees that my recipes remain safe and I have access to them for all eternity?
Hello,
Thank you for reaching out to us. I hope you are enjoying the app, and hope that it serves you well.
OrganizEat exists since October 2014. We released our first iOS version more than 7 years ago, and we’ve been constantly improving it since then: iPad, Android and Computer versions, custom user-generated folders, colourful skins, meal planner and grocery list, shared accounts, and many more: all of these features were added to the app along the way, following our user’s feedback – and also our understanding, that constantly making the app better is the only way to ensure we’ll continue making money 🙂
We obviously cannot forecast the future, but I can assure you that as far as we can see now, we certainly have no intention to abandon the app. We have invested a lot of time and effort, and it would be very painful for us to shut it down. On the contrary, we hope the app will remain successful enough to keep us going on, and improving our product.
If you wish to help us, tell about it to your friends, rate it with a positive review, and so on. These things really help and we are truly grateful for such help 🙂
But you are right, things happen, and unfortunately, sometimes companies go out of business.
We are working on the ability to export the entire recipe collection into an HTML file. We are doing it not because we are shutting down OrganizEat, but because many users think it would be nice and ask for it. It is not ready yet, this is a large and complex feature that takes time to develop.
But even today there is an option to print recipes from within the app. So even if the company will be closed according to the worst-case scenario, and the app will no longer be available on the App Store: you will still be having it on your phone, with the recipes inside. You can then print your recipes, as your own “worst-case scenario” backup option. You can export them as PDF files, through email.
I hope my answer was helpful.
Please don’t hesitate to reach out to us again if you will be having additional questions!