Prices vary for the premium version, but it starts at around $19.99 a month, and then the price per month goes down after that if you get a three or six month membership. READ: Cheap Date Night Ideas. It’s much easier to connect with your partner by thinking about how you feel about them than by thinking about the dating app. I feel happy and my confidence is higher when I spend time thinking If you want to go on virtual dates with strangers and use Facebook as a networking platform, Facebook Dating is the best place to do that. Facebook Dating is a free dating service that launched in the U.S. In September 2019. Anyone with a Facebook profile is eligible to join Facebook Dating and expand their reach in the local dating scene. You can only access this free dating service through the Facebook app, and you’ll have to create a new dating profile to get started.

Manila (CNN Philippines Life) — Your smartphone is a great, terrifying thing — it holds infinite possibilities, one that includes being able to swipe through countless dating profiles that can alter how your romantic life would go.

Online dating, now commonly done via apps, is now more than just a multi-million business venture. It has slowly sneaked its way to becoming less of a taboo and more of a cultural norm. Its accessibility, mixed with the fast-paced demand of our modern lifestyles, makes it a convenient choice to look for dates.

However, the vast amount of choices can be a caveat on its own. More options mean more stress and dissatisfaction, leading to a lot of fleeting and short-lived connections. The emergence of dating apps has called for diversity too, resulting in different dating sites that can cater to a particular group of people with the same sexual preferences. Locally, Filipinos are no strangers to dating apps, as one survey found that 71 percent of Filipinos know at least one couple who met online.

Here’s the lowdown on the dating apps that are available here in the Philippines and what users have to say about them.

Tinder came onto the scene in late 2012 and has then redefined modern dating culture. The gist is simple — and would then be the standard format of dating apps that follow — you create your own profile and will be presented with potential matches based on various factors such as your geographical location. You can ‘like’ someone by swiping right or choose to pass by swiping left on them. A ‘match’ would mean that both parties swiped right on each other, and messaging ensues.

Tinder is now the most popular online dating app, garnering up to more than 1 billion swipes a day. It’s no surprise that Filipinos adapted to it — our heavy internet usage means that we spend a huge chunk of our time looking at our phones.

Francine, 22, says, “I started using Tinder in early 2014 and it was the first app of its kind that I have ever tried. It was famous as one of the best dating apps at the time, and some of my friends were on it so that made me download it too for fun.”

Nowadays, it is not uncommon for partners to have met on Tinder, and a lot of successful, long-term relationships have started from the app. Mostly, though, a lot of connections are still flings. Karla, 22, shares her experience, saying, “I dated someone from Tinder. We started as friends and it was fun, but I wouldn't say that it ended well. Now I pretend the guy doesn't exist.”

Bumble was founded by Whitney Herd, the co-founder of Tinder, who left shortly to create her own dating app. Bumble is a lot like its predecessor, but with a more radical approach — women are to message first or the matches will disappear within a 24-hour time period. In a same-sex match, either person can reach out. A lot of people comment on its exclusivity, as it is still not available on Google Play, leading to a more concentrated pool of matches.

Camille, 23, says “Last year, I just started embracing my bisexuality more and actually tried to meet girls on Bumble because I have this impression that people on there are generally cooler.”

Bumble isn’t also exclusive to dating, as there is an added feature called Bumble BFF, for finding friendships and possibly networking. Karla, 22, states that Bumble is a good platform for good conversations, saying, “Some people in Bumble usually use the platform because they just really need company or someone to talk to.”

For some men, however, the app's distinct feature is discouraging. Nat, 22, says, “For women, I guess it helps them to be more assertive. But for men, you’d have to be patient, so it makes you lazy to use the app after a while.”

Grindr is a geo-located dating app for gay, bi, trans, and queer people constructed to help them meet other people in or closest to their area. Upon creating an account, you can add a small photo with or without a bio, and are immediately presented with a list of people nearby.

Grindr is notoriously known to be more of a hookup app. John, 22, says, “What I feel makes Grindr stand out is that it’s the most popular app that is exclusive to gay men, and that it’s more convenient in that most people usually know how things go down on Grindr, which is primarily hookups and sexual things as opposed to more platonic, ‘get-to-know-you-first’ kinds of things you get on places like Bumble and Tinder.”

Grindr is also known for its many controversies — offensive speech is one that is commonly found within the app. “You may find traces of homophobia and misogyny from many of the users there,” says Brian, 22. “It's up to you whether you give these people the light of day or not. I see it as a good opportunity to educate people on how to properly treat others, especially since many of its users are discreet men who have no idea where to place themselves in the spectrum and see Grindr as the only avenue to explore.”

Using the same interface as Tinder and Bumble, Her is exclusive for lesbians, bisexuals, and queer women. Her frequently tops online lists of the best dating apps for queer women, and it is proudly created by queer women themselves. Carla, 23, says, “Basically, I was there for its exclusivity. It was efficient for me because I was only attracted to girls, so I was glad that there was a platform that offered that.”

Her is popular with college students, as a lot of young women use the app to explore their sexuality. However, Carla notes, “What I didn’t like from it was the tendency that people were still more on the experimental side of things. A lot of girls I talked to were exploring whether they were really into women and as for someone who was no longer in that stage, I had to sort of skip most of those conversations.”

OkCupid dates back from 2007 when it was exclusively an online dating website. OkCupid is sort of the middle ground between a dating app and a hook-up app, as you are given a thorough questionnaire about your personality and preferences that can match you to a more suitable partner with the same inclinations.

OkCupid is all-inclusive, and it isn’t targeted to a specific group of people. Elle, 23, says, “I like how thorough and liberal it is. The thing is, I don’t think it’s as quick or popular as some of the other dating apps here in the Philippines, so there are fewer people for me to choose from. I also feel like it is more used by people a lot older than me.”

To say the app industry is booming would be an understatement.

Millions of apps already live in the Apple App Store and Google Play store, and thousands more are launched every month. A study conducted last year by App Annie found that when people are on their phones, they’re spending the majority of their time on apps. And that’s true around the world:

As app developers, we eat up these stats like Corn Flakes!

We have a passion for apps and love seeing the joy our apps bring to people.

To be honest, we could sit here and research mobile stats and data all day—and have fun doing it—but numbers serve no purpose in our business if we don’t understand the why and the how behind them. And today, we want to look at the why behind mobile app pricing.

Free apps, subscription apps… what’s the deal? What are customers drawn to? How do you decide how to price an app? Those are the questions we want to answer!

A separate study we came across by App Annie projects that in 2020, global app store revenue will grow to $101.1 billion.

That’s a huge market.

Apps are becoming more and more valuable to consumers, which is also making the market harder and harder to penetrate. That’s why taking the time to understand consumer psychology and pricing strategy needs to be part of your business plan.

In this piece, we’ll look at the various pricing strategies for mobile apps and what you need to know to make the right decision for your own app.

Let’s dive in.

Free

Who doesn’t love free? I can hear my mother now: “You don’t get much for free these days.” And it’s true—you don’t! That’s why it’s always a pleasant surprise when something is labelled “free.”

But do consumers expect apps to be free?

Offering a free app is definitely one of the most effective models, especially if your plan is to attract a lot of users. But how do you make money?

Well, maybe that’s not the goal of your app—not directly, at least. There are two types of free pricing strategies. Which one you choose depends on the purpose of your app:

Completely free: These apps usually act as add-ons to an established product or service. The goal is not to make money directly from the app, but instead to drive people to other revenue streams. For example, your app may offer coupons to purchase a product on your website, driving people there for further nurturing.

Companies also create free apps to facilitate customer service and to aid customer retention efforts. Banking apps, for example, make it easier and more convenient for clients to manage their finances on the go. On these apps, customers can often receive or activate additional offers, such as a free overdraft or credit limit increase. Those services ultimately make money for the bank (and keep customers happy), even if the app itself has no price tag.

In-app advertisements: These apps are platforms for ad revenue. Advertisers rent space within your app, and people see those ads when they use your app—but the app’s still free to download.

If you’ve ever used a gaming app, you’ve probably used an app with in-app advertisements. The Weather Network app is another app known for displaying ads throughout the interface.

What To Keep In Mind

With a free app, you can usually gain users quickly. A good free app can quickly drive consumer awareness and engagement, and maintain it. But if you don’t gain you desired user base—and you’re relying on in-app ad revenue—it will be difficult to keep your app running and profitable.

Users downloading a free app typically expect to deal with ads, but they still want the ads to be relevant to them and to the app. Making sure the ads in your app are interesting and non-disruptive is a good way to keep users happy. Google AdMob is one such service offered to both Android and iOS developers that allows you to filter your app’s ads by user relevance and ad format (i.e. banner, full page, etc). Customization and monitoring are key to not irritating your users and driving them to bail on the app.

Freemium

With the freemium pricing model, the app is free to download, but there are additional tiers, features or incentives within the app that users can choose to pay for.

There are three main types of freemium apps:

1. Users download the app for free but must pay to move up in levels, access premium features, get boosters (for e.g. extra lives), or use in-app currency. These are all common in gaming apps.
2. The app comes with all features and functionalities for free, but for a limited time. After that, the user must pay to continue using the app as they have been.
3. The app is free and contains ads, but the user has the option to pay a one-time fee to have the ads removed.

A good example of a freemium app is HoursTracker, which functions as a mobile timesheet. The basic app is free in the App Store, but users can pay to upgrade to the Personal Edition or Pro Edition.

What To Keep In Mind

A freemium app can go over well … or not so well, depending on how it’s positioned. Some people expect a free app to have full functionality and are disappointed when their access is limited.

This exact problem caused an uproar back in 2015. As a result, Apple dedicated an entire section in its app store to games with no hidden in-app purchases. They called it “Pay Once & Play.”

If done well, a freemium app could act as an infinite source of income for your company; but, just like with free apps, freemiums work best when your goal is to attract a lot of users. Unlike free apps, however, your users will want more out of your app if they’re expected to upgrade.

For developers, this pricing model can prove to be a lot of work, as you’re forced to continually add upgrades and improvements while managing user purchases.

Offering a decent number of free features and not deluging your consumers with upgrade notifications (though you do want to demonstrate the value of the paid features) are two good ways to keep your freemium app in good standing.

Paid

This pricing model is the simplest: People pay once to download the app, then it’s free to use.

App prices usually range from $0.99 to $9.99. Once users pay, they own the app and all its features.

One example of a successful paid app is Draw Something, the super-popular drawing game app. It cost $3.99 at the time of writing this post, but was still #19 in the Word category of the Apple App Store and had a 4.5/5 star rating.

What To Keep In Mind

Paid is a fairly common app pricing strategy, but it’s also one of the least effective. Think about it: Your user typically can’t get a feel for the app before being asked to shell out money.

When people have virtually no basis upon which to make a purchasing decision, aside from the description in the app store, it’s all the more important that your marketing efforts are exceptionally strong. A potential consumer will want to know exactly what they’re getting by downloading and using your app, and what makes it better than a free equivalent.

One approach many brands take to position their app with potential long-term users is to offer a 7-day or 14-day free trial, at the end of which users must pay to continue using the app. Allowing people to try out the app with no pressure or commitment to purchase is a great way to encourage users to dip their toes in the water and see what you’re all about.

Users will also have much higher expectations for your app than for a free app. If you manage to attract a user, they’ll likely be a loyal one. They’re more likely to rate and review your app—but that could be a bad thing if they don’t like what they’re experiencing.

Paymium

If you understand freemium and you understand paid, then you should understand this model—it’s simply the two blended together.

The user pays for the app, but there are additional features that can be accessed for an additional cost.

If people love free so much, why in the world would they opt to pay multiple times for an app?

Glad you asked! If your app rocks, it rocks—and you might as well leverage its appeal.

Ellen Degeneres’ popular party game Heads Up is one paymium app that successfully draws people in. Whether or not you watch Ellen, you know who Ellen is, and you either own the app, have played the app, or have heard of the app. It costs a minimum of $0.99, but you only get so many card categories to play with. There are dozens more card categories you can purchase within the app… and since the game is fun, you usually end up purchasing a few. As of May 2, it’s #1 on the iOS top paid apps list.

What To Keep In Mind

This pricing model works best when the value of the app comes from its content. You have to showcase the benefits not only of getting the app to begin with, but also paying for additional tiers and features.

Games that people are familiar with, such as Mindcraft, The Game of Life and NBA 2K18, do great with a paymium strategy. Their leverage comes from great marketing and strong reputations.

This is one of the least common strategies, but does have the potential to provide great revenue streams for your business. It’s recommended you are clear with users upfront to avoid causing frustration.

Like freemium apps, paymium apps require continual involvement from the development team to stay relevant, up-to-date and engaging in order to entice users to come back and make additional purchases. High-quality design, content and functionality are of utmost importance.

Subscription

One last pricing strategy to consider is a subscription-based model. Users pay a monthly or annual fee (sometimes auto-renewing) to continue using your app.

Some app categories using this strategy are newspaper apps, dating apps and music streaming apps like Apple Music.

This model is not yet widespread, but it’s been gaining momentum over the past couple of years. Apple, for one, is fully on board with subscriptions, even offering an incentive to companies who pursue that pricing model.

Normally, Apple receives a 30 percent cut from App Store purchases, but for subscriptions, they’re offering to take just half of that—a 15 percent cut—once subscribers pass the one-year mark. That means the goal for subscription app makers is figure out how to keep users on board longer than a year—which, let’s be honest, should be every app developer’s goal.

What To Keep In Mind

Clearly, there’s an opportunity to make way more money using this strategy than any other. You’re always making money, even if you aren’t consistently gaining more users. A subscription isalso somewhat of a softer approach than asking for direct payment, as it makes the user feel like they’re paying only as long as they continue to find value in the app.

Those who choose to subscribe to your app show commitment to your product. This model presents a chance to build long-lasting and loyal customers—as long as you continue to provide reasons to stick around: relevant updates and new features added periodically.

So now comes the hard part.

Clearly there is some serious revenue to be gained in the app market, but what is the best approach to monetizing your app? Which pricing strategy do you choose?

Think about apps as you would any other product. They all follow the same laws of supply and demand. The right price is whatever price people are willing to pay. You have to play for the market.

The way apps differ from other products is that the sheer market saturation causes a very short shelf life. People may download an app, but getting them to reopen the app day after day and week after week is the main challenge. You really need to work to keep your users engaged and coming back for more.

The wrong price could break that deal before the download even happens. Potential customers could be turned off by what they perceive to be a shocking cost, or they might delete an app they’ve downloaded after receiving too many pop-ups or simply not getting their money’s worth.

At the end of the day, you have to consider many different factors before making your choice, including:

• The purpose of your app
• Your business goals
• Who your users are
• Market demand
• The upfront cost to build an app
• The cost of maintaining your app
• What your competitors are doing
• Whether your app will be iOS or Android

You’ll need to answer these questions before going any further with your pricing decision.

That’s not to scare you; it’s to drive home the importance of thinking this through before hitting the marketplace.

Generally Speaking…

The value of your app should ALWAYS outweigh the price.

If you choose to assign a cost to your app, know that user expectations will be higher. Is your interface up to par? Are you on top of bug fixes? Users want any app they purchase to provide exceptional quality, even if it’s only $3.99.

If you have a free app, think about how many users you expect to gain. Can it run on advertisements alone? Does your product or service allow for additional features you can affix a cost to?

Or, if you have many apps, maybe you’ll consider an app bundle.

What Others Are Doing

Dating App Cost Comparison

App Annie surveyed 1,200 app developers late last year to see how companies currently price their apps. The results show that in-app purchases and in-app advertising lead the pack:

At the same time, those developers revealed that if they were to change their strategy, they’d be interested in a subscription-based model.

You may have to test multiple pricing strategies before you land on the right one. Remember though: Offering a free app with paid add-ons, or starting at a higher price and then reducing it, will go over way better than trying to increase the price at a later date.

How Consumers Are Responding

Dating App Price Comparison Sites

A consumer survey conducted by Gartner in 2016 showed that average in-app spending was up 26 percent over the previous year to a mean spend of $11.59, while upfront spend ticked up only 4 percent to a mean spend of $7.67.

This demonstrates that users are willing to spend in-app. That’s good news for app producers because there is so much more room to make money on upgrades and add-ons.

More food for thought: The survey also found that millennials ages 25–34 tend to spend the most out of all other age groups on both types of transactions, and that women spend less money on apps overall.

Dating App Reviews

The app market is growing quickly and it shows no signs of slowing down soon.

It’s more challenging than ever for apps to break in, stand out and remain relevant.

Keeping up with trends and user expectations is the number one priority for ensuring your app gets in front of the eyes of thousands.

The pricing strategy you choose should reflect the value of the app, meet market expectations and achieve your business goals.

Dating App Price Comparison

Keep this information close by as you proceed into the development stages of your app. Download a PDF version of this post now!

Dating App Price Comparison Tool

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