Drama aside, the guy signed up for the free Yelp API 10 years ago, which has since been discontinued. He was offered the option to switch to a paid API, which he chose not to consider.
Yes, Yelp was a bit clumsy in handling this, but discontinuing the free API after 10 years is totally within their rights. The developer didn't even bother getting their pricing proposal, which might have been totally reasonable (or not), considering his app is paid.
He's didn't argue it wasn't within their rights. He called them "quite rude", which seems hard to deny.
No matter the rate Yelp set, the apps economics no longer make sense. The existing customers, already paid, and he has no way to transition them to a subscription.
He mentions 100 API calls per day. If Yelp offered him a rate of a fraction of a cent per call, it might be a negligible expense that could be offset by past or future sales.
If the app has outlived its lifecycle, the end of the free API might be a signal to retire it. Blaming Yelp and making a drama out of it seems a bit much. Suppose they had given him 30 days instead of 4; would his decision really be any different?
> Suppose they had given him 30 days instead of 4; would his decision really be any different?
Possibly not, but the point of OP's complaint is that Yelp was rude, handled it poorly, and gave him an unreasonably short deadline. No one is arguing that Yelp doesn't have the right to discontinue free API access, or that OP's business model was a good and sustainable one.
But agreed: if OP could have gotten a rate that would have cost, say, 10 cents per day (or even more, like 50 cents or a dollar a day), maybe that would have been ok. And maybe he could have changed the pricing on the app for future purchasers to a subscription model, some small token amount like $1/mo or even $5/year.
But also consider it's pretty crappy to give someone such a short amount of time to make the decision as to whether or not that new business model would work, and if it's worth it to put more development effort into the app to enable that new pricing scheme.
Well, don't read the comment that you reply on. ;)
The only interesting part of the story is to what extent others actually learn sth from it (that lesson should be trivial, but nowadays it obviously is all but common sense). And I guess: Not very much. They will 'give a fuck' here how bad the world and all is, and then continue in their naive way tomorrow.
There's a tangible difference between shitting on a person who chooses to share an experience, and shitting on a person who is shitting on a person who shared an experience. If you choose to read irony or hypocrisy in it, that's your own issues with context. ;)
> He mentions 100 API calls per day. If Yelp offered him a rate of a fraction of a cent per call, it might be a negligible expense that could be offset by past or future sales.
Except, elsewhere in this thread:
> the prices they quoted were ridiculously high (thousands of dollars a month).
No problem. He can just dust off his business contract with Yelp and have the courts set them straight. No contract? Then why would one expect the world to cater to their whim. Yelp promised nothing and he got exactly what they promised.
I guess you didn't read my blog post because I addressed everything you wrote. The issue is not that it went paid, it's the 4-days notice. They are perfectly in their right to start charging for their API, they just can't give us 4-days notice.
Well they can do whatever timeframe they want of course. And I can write about how rude it is. 4-days (really 1-business day in the original email Friday->Monday) is not a reasonable timeframe within which to threaten to cutoff an app with real users.
Just killing your app is an emotional, not a rational, decision. You have a human responding to your emails, so here's a business way to handle this situation:
Dear Yelp,
Your decision to discontinue the free API was unexpected, and it’s difficult for me to switch to the new one within the given very short 4-day timeframe. Not only is this not enough time to estimate how your new API pricing will affect my business model, but it also requires some engineering work to switch my app to the new API.
Given my 10-year history of working with Yelp, I would appreciate it if you could send me your new pricing proposal ASAP and also give me some time to consider it. If accepted, I would need additional time to implement it.
It's just not worth it. I have a full-time job and many other projects and apps I am supporting. I don't want to work with a company that provides long-term API users 4-days notice about a major change and threatens to cut you off in that time period. As you saw in the blog post I did write back to them and did not get any kind of response indicating flexibility (did you read my whole post?).
Also, the money is very very low stakes. This app sells dozens of copies a year. Not hundreds or thousands. It's just not worth it financially. It sold 467 copies over 10 years. People who used it loved it, but it's not a money maker.
> I don't want to work with a company that provides long-term API users 4-days notice about a major change and threatens to cut you off in that time period.
If you don't want to deal with the slightest inconvenience don't run a business and don't take money from customers. You owe it to your users to care at least a bit.
> If you don't want to deal with the slightest inconvenience don't run a business and don't take money from customers. You owe it to your users to care at least a bit.
I did care "at least a bit" which is why I kept updating the app for 10-years despite it not making almost any money. How many indie apps survive that long? But based on the pricing they quoted me it would be a money-losing venture to continue (see slide 3 base monthly fee $229 from the deck they sent me):
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Cb_8laDpxZdfwJPtYBmibZgvLZ8...
And we have to decide what we work on when we are just one person. If it's money-losing and they don't treat you well it might not make sense to keep doing it.
That said, as I expressed in the blog post I do feel really bad for any of the users that bought the app and I want all of them to get a refund from Apple as explained in the post. They can use these directions:
https://support.apple.com/en-us/118223
Yes, Yelp was a bit clumsy in handling this, but discontinuing the free API after 10 years is totally within their rights. The developer didn't even bother getting their pricing proposal, which might have been totally reasonable (or not), considering his app is paid.