Regulating the app marketplace

[mglasco]

How is the app marketplace regulated? I feel that most apps are unnecessarily overpriced, charging ridiculous subscription fees while providing minimal sustainable value.

For instance, Better Coupon Box, says it's free and seems like it has good features. The reviews are all great. I installed it to find out that if you want to customize and control the frequency of the popup, there's a $100 subscription. $100 for a popup app to prevent it from popping up every single visit? I noped right out of that.

Meanwhile, you can purchase the Modal Pop app for a $13 flat fee, but it took me some searching to even find that app, and it has zero reviews.

I understand that it's to Weebly's advantage to have more developers and apps working on their platform, but it feels like the functionality of the vast majority of these apps do not validate the cost, particularly the ones with ongoing subscription fees (which is most of them). 

Someone could easily end up with a bunch of subscription fees if they aren't careful or don't have time search around and compare. Are we sure reviews aren't being generated by app developers? Can we push free or reasonably priced flat fee apps first? Can similar apps be recommended when looking at other apps to encourage comparisons?

I love Weebly, but the prices of apps are the platform's biggest negative to me. 

[fligtar · Accepted solution]

Hi @mglasco,

Thank you for your detailed feedback!

While we review apps for compliance with many technical, user experience, usefulness, and policy requirements, we don't currently regulate the price that app developers charge. We do encourage experimentation with different price points, and certainly hope that apps at high price points that don't have many installs will consider lowering their price or increase their offering's value to users.

It's common for apps across platforms today to value recurring monthly revenue much more highly than a one-time payment, which is why you'll find so many subscription-based apps in the App Center. I do think a subscription model makes sense for certain apps that provide regular, ongoing value, whereas others seem more appropriate for a one-time fee.

This is not to say that we will never have price guidelines in place -- and feedback like yours is definitely helpful in knowing when we should and shouldn't put policies in place. The app that you've mentioned is actually violating one of the few price policies we have in place, which is that apps can only list themselves as "Free" if they are completely free and have no premium features.

If you take a look at another app using our new Pricing section, you'll see that we make pricing a lot more transparent now by clearly indicating which features are free and which are paid. We will reach out to the app you've mentioned to take care of the misleading price.

In regard to your other concerns:

• We have safeguards in place to ensure app reviews are legitimate, and that they are not coming from the app developers themselves or affiliated parties. We actively monitor this and take action when appropriate.
• Apps that have not received reviews past their first few months are indeed harder to find in search results, so I would encourage you and anyone else to write a review of apps you like, as it really does help and incentivizes the developer to keep supporting it.

Thanks again for your helpful feedback -- it really does help us understand what our customers care about and when it's time to address particular problems.