Run It Disc Golf Pro
Run It Disc Golf has been free since the day I put it on the App Store. Starting with this release, part of it is behind a paywall. I figured explaining why is better than it just appearing in the app as a lock screen/paywall without context.
What does Run It Disc Golf actually cost?
In general, the app is relatively cheap for me to run. With the 300~ users it currently costs around $80 per month for servers/build services along with Apple’s $99 a year developer costs. If it were to scale to 1-2k users I would need to bump up some of my servers (specifically APIs) to handle that volume.
This doesn’t include any advertising spends (currently $0 but I would love to start putting some money to that per month) and costs for having a booth at DGPT tournaments. Depending on the tournament I can be spending anywhere from $250-$900 for a single event.
This cost right now isn’t something I am that worried about as this is truly a passion project but until I can start making some money the statistics and data science part of my app is a big bottleneck.
Currently, I have been picking the brains of a couple of data science friends within my network and doing a ton of research to build out the prediction features within my app. I am unwilling to trust AI on the most important part of my application.
What is staying free?
Tournament and Course Insights
Tournament Review of your own rounds
Two saved gameplans
Analysis of your last two events
What does Pro buy me?
Field Scouting
Your full history in Analyze instead of the last two events
How to “Close the Gap” during tournaments
Live win probability during tournaments
Per-event breakdown when you compare yourself against a friend
Why no lifetime unlock?
Initially I had planned to include a lifetime unlock price. It felt like the best consumer option and I basically built it out but started looking at the costs to keep all of this running.
It is so awesome to me that 300 of you are using this app on a weekly basis. The problem with charging once is the server cost will always be there. So if you pay me once and then use the app for three years, I’ve lost money on you. I tried to work out a price that would cover it and anything high enough to actually work felt worse than just charging monthly.
Where is the money going to go?
Obviously offsetting all costs to start. If I ever get past that I am going to try and hire a data scientist on a part time basis.
I am a software engineer who has done a deep dive into statistics. Everything from rating projections, per hole difficulty, win probabilities, and score simulations (to name a few) has been days to weeks of research testing and bugging my friends. I want to be able to pay someone to fact check me and not feel bad about picking my friend’s brain when we’re out on the course.
To be clear about the scale here: 300 monthly users at $3.99 is not a salary. If the app never gets to a spot to hire someone else I will hopefully still keep the lights on and keep shipping updates in my free time but every handful of subscription is one more thing I can pay for instead of skipping.
