This is why I block nearly all adverts. I wouldn't object to ads that don't track me, or autoplay sound/video, or obscure the content, or waste my bandwidth.
I was always bummed the VW one liter never materialized. At first, it was supposed to get insane gas mileage. Though I did see in a magazine that the new microbus is supposed to come in a few years. It looks pretty cool.
I feel bad for the employees. Getting laid off sucks, I hope they all have better jobs soon.
In terms of TTG as a company, they got what they asked for. It's too bad it didn't happen before they hired their first non founders.
I'd been watching TTG since before they had a name. The rumors were that the devs from the cancelled Sam & Max game left Lucas to make a Sam & Max game. This was second only to Star Wars for me at the time.
I bought it as soon as a physical copy came out. (I don't remember if episodes came on disc or if I had to wait for the season). TTG had built DRM into the game that prevented you from using it in a virtual machine. TTG's website had made it sound like the DRM wouldn't prevent anyone with a physical copy from playing.
I contacted TTG. Their rep seemed to be reading of some BS script. He was condescending. He treated me like I didn't know what I was talking about for not wanting to use wine or dual boot. I returned the game to the store* and acquired a copy that had been patched to repair the DRM. After that, if TTG came up in a conversation I made sure to give the person a heads up that they'd just need to pirate it anyway.
* This was a small store, their policy defined games rendered unplayable by DRM as defective. This policy caused them to not carry future TTG games.
I did forget something. Your site works with uBlock Origin set to block all third party stuff. It is astounding to me the number of sites that can't load their content without what feels like terabytes of external libraries. (I have limited bandwidth, so my default is to block.)
Hi Martijn, I find it encouraging how engaged you are.
I believe you aren't trying to hide anything. The formatting does make it hard to read though. For me, the button to try a charged price was covering up part of the notice that it's billed annually. The layout really ought to be adjusted so that the button cannot cover up the fine print. The font ought to be a color with more contrast from the background so it's easy to read.
The level of service you offer for a free plan is impressive. Kudos on giving users a full featured trial, I agree that most services don't do that. For instance, I skipped over Tutanota because basic features like filters required a paid subscription. Filters are important to me, I'd like to test them before I upgrade. On the other end, msgsafe.io offers enough of their features on a paid account that you can test the service before committing. (Though their page suffers from the same problems I initially mentioned about yours, I can't read it at all. I don't have time to screw with the CSS to make it readable, which is why I've yet to sign up.)
I agree about your prices. Less than $50 annually for the lowest paid tier is a bargain for what you provide. I really do hope you become profitable enough to drive Ferraris. The tech sector needs more companies that put their customers before profits.
I appreciate that you're not Google. I wholeheartedly believe that you and everyone else working on this should be making good wages. It's only fair. I intend to try out your service as a way to see my phone's history from my computer. If it works well for me, I'll upgrade to whatever plan meets my needs. Your prices are more than fair. (It'll be sometime in the next week or two. I screwed up my phone by kneecapping some Google packages, I haven't had time to fix it yet.)
I completely agree with what you're saying about annual billing. Transaction fees can be outrageous. I would prefer that the price is presented in a way that clearly communicates what I'll be charged before I get to the checkout (of course taxes wouldn't be added till then, but that's standard). If you put something like "$x per year" in big font and "$y per month" as the smaller print, I'd know ahead of time that the billing is annual.
Personally, I don't do money back guarantees on trials anymore. A few years back I signed up for a 30 day trial of Amazon Prime while going through the checkout (I had never had it before). Three days later my credit union's fraud department called, Amazon had charged for the full year two days into my trial. The fraud department told me it wasn't an authorization. I went back and forth with Amazon to cancel Prime, they made it a real pain. Ultimately, I had to cancel my card, get a new card, and have my credit union place a block on any transactions from Amazon. That 30 day "trial" wasted at least 40 hours of my time.
As a suggestion of a great trial experience, look at Mullvad (https://mullvad.net/en/). You can get started on a free trial in less than 60 seconds if you have VPN software installed. I tried it once, halfway into my free three hours, I signed up for a paid account. Personally, I would be more comfortable with your service if I could sign up without giving personal data like I did with Mullvad. You seem trustworthy to me. However, I think your service has the potential to be huge. Sites like Twitter, Reddit, and Facebook could really benefit from buying a company that provides a service like yours. I wouldn't want my history to end up in their hands with my name attached (I don't use any of the three sites). Even if you don't plan to get bought, it isn't impossible. (After all, Michael Dell went public.)
I know I sound picky, but I feel feedback should be. Then you can decide which gripes are worth addressing and which ones are just me being a grumpy SOB.
I like the idea, I could really make use of it. But have a concern on how prices are presented. There's big (font) monthly prices, and the text saying it's annual is low contrast, and partially obscured by the try it now button.
This is a huge red flag to me. What other fine print can't I see? I don't have color perception issues, but the background/text combo gives it the appearance of that light-grey text that's impossible to read.
Also, why not just give the annual price if that's how it's charged? (Admittedly, I don't know how it's charged. When I clicked the try now button hoping for an upfront number, I was prompted to sign up. I closed the tab.)
I know these aren't huge issues. But, you are selling a service to track people. For me to trust a service like this, they can't come out the gate looking like they're hiding their price.
I'd think the negative connotations with their brand have something to do with it. Between drivers committing crimes and stories of engineers being harassed, I sort of feel like Uber ought to be on the corporate sex offenders' registry. They might have found too many people share similar views for their liking.
Not all of us have become serfs. I haven't bought a Foo Fighters album since "In Your Honour" had DRM that made copying it to my mini disc player difficult. I've enjoyed their albums since though.
I fully believe artists deserve their share of the wealth created from their work. Unfortunately many artists' work impossible to financially support without also supporting DRM.
In all fairness, I don't know if the Foo Fighters still use DRM. It was irritating enough at the time that it became a lifelong grudge for me (same thing with Civ and any Tell Tale Games title).