Voice Dream Reader for iOS is now $59.99/year

The bugs get fixed. I'm currently reading a bookshare book on my old stream, backing up by 15 seconds wasn't working with my version of voice dream on any voice I tried with the current IOS beta.

I'll definitely check out Speech Central, if it can do what I need, I'd pay for it too.

I bought Voice Dream Reader years ago. I just updated to the latest version, and so far haven't seen anything about a subscription, so I'm assuming current users won't have to worry. I hope that's the case anyway.

I will not pay $60 a year. I purchased it when it was the old price if that honored as good of an app as it is I won't buy it again.

I love this app, but can't afford to pay that subscription. I bought it years ago, and hope that I won't have to delete it.

I didn’t know the good folks over at voicedream had taken up smoking crack. Nothing else could explain thinking $60 a year is a reasonable price for a simple reading app. I very much hope their new found crack habit doesn’t stop existing customers who paid for their app from using it. That would be a very foolish move and a guaranteed way to alienate their customer base they worked so hard on obtaining.

Hi all, Voice Dream Team here. Existing users should not be affected and will continue to have access to the app. We are migrating to a subscription model only for new users. If you have any issues please feel free to contact our support team.

Without continuing my sarcastic tone, maybe you’d like to reconsider your pricing model. At launch Disney Plus cost $60 a year and although it has recently increased in cost I’m not certain voicedream reader should be priced equivalent to a TV network. Great existing users won’t be expected to pay the new pricing model but I’d seriously advise having a bit of a re-think. $1.49 a month or $15 a year might be something people wouldn’t freak out at but you must understand everyone wanting their subscription models to provide enough of an income to afford a Lamborghini, Ferrari and a beachside condo isn’t sustainable for the general public. The revolt is already starting to happen. People want to buy and own things not rent their lives from 200 different providers on a monthly basis. It’s just an opinion but I thought you should understand how an average user is feeling. I’m sure you know people who rail against every single company wanting a cut of cash every month for products. If anyone else in this forum would like to disagree with me and say $60 a year for a reader is reasonable then feel free but thats most definitely not how I feel. I don’t use reader but occasionally do use scanner and if it moved to a subscription model I’d definitely be deleting all my voicedream apps on principle. I know you aren’t proposing that and appreciate you jumping on this before it gets out of hand.

I personally wouldn’t be one of those who thought a subscription is okay for a reasonably static app, I was trying to think of a price that wouldn’t have people freaking out. I still wouldn’t be in on any subscription model. I recognise there are ongoing costs to maintaining great apps and for that reason I’d rather pay up front with the understanding I’ve paid enough to support the developer and they will keep updating the app to attract new users to cover ongoing costs. To give you an idea of what I’d be willing to pay, I’d have paid $20 for scanner because it’s a great app, I wouldn’t consider any subscription model. If I got value from reader, I’d pay another $20 for that. What are other peoples opinions.

$60 can be hard for some people to manage all at once. Perhaps a monthly or quarterly option could be made available. I do think $60 a year is a bit steep however. Subscriptions aren't set in stone, if not enough people can swing that $60 then it could come down.

Hello. Voice Dream Reader is one of those real treasures which I would happily pay a subscription for. With this sort of app, there's a saturation point where you simply can't keep banking on new users to support upkeep and development. If we consumers want apps like this to stick around, we need to support the ongoing costs. Frankly, I've seen too many great apps disappear from the app store because everyone got so used to rock bottom prices. As consumers, we need to get used to supporting the ongoing costs developers face and that can't fall exclusively on new users who don't yet appreciate the value of what they have. People like Winston who have shown as much dedication to accessibility and such excellent responsiveness to users deserve more than a one time payment.
The initial price of Voice Dream Reader really can't be made high enough to support ongoing costs. New users would never pay it. Subscriptions let developers thoughtfully develop and app and have a reliable income stream from people who have come to truly value their work. I don't subscribe to many apps, but Voice Dream Reader has been developed with such good care that I'd be happy to pay a more reasonable subscription. My top end would be something around $40 a year for a reading app like Voice Dream Reader. It's about what I pay for Ulysses. having an app which handles so many different kinds of documents in such an accessible way is really valueable. I enjoy ebooks which I purchase as epub or pdf files. It also comes in very handy for email attachments. Having OCR capability is very nice icing on the cake. I can certainly do most of these things with other apps, but nothing brings all of these capabilities together anywhere near as well as Voice Dream Reader.

First and foremost, thank you everyone for your thoughtful responses! Based on the feedback here we are certainly going to experiment with a lower price and it seems like $39.99/year is something that would help us with on going costs, but would also be more reasonable. Expect to see that in the App in a day or so!

We'll also be adding a monthly option shortly!

While I agree with others that 60 is perhaps a bit steep, I would gladly pay 30 or 40 a year for an app as well-crafted and supported as this one has historically been. Nothing else works as seamlessly between formats and reading preferences, nor, to my knowledge, do any other readers support as many sources for material including adding your own. Good work deserves to be supported!

So like, let's say I recommend this app to some new users. Let's say I even volunteer to pay the subscription. What do we get out of it? 11Labs voices? Microsoft neural TTS voices, like some apps on Android allow us to use? Like, I really wish Voice Dream Writer was kept up and new features was added to that instead. Ah well. It is what it is. I bought it before this junk happened so I don't have to worry about it, but goodness I hope to see better from this app in the future. Maybe a web client for when I'm on Windows? Just stuff worthy of all that money.

60 divided by 12 is 5. I looked at an app a while ago but didn't want to pay the one-time fee. I get that the people who made the app need to make money, but it can be expensive for users to pay for lots of subscriptions. It's important to think about if it's worth paying $60 every year for this app. If the app only makes money from new users and not from people who already have it, it might not work out in the long run.

Then again, some American apps over here are sometimes around $100.
Take Kae on FB reader, and Blind Square, for example

I'd heard such a lot of praise for this app that I bought the full bundle a little while ago. I've not really used it enough to get my money's worth for what was quite an expensive purchase. In all honesty, I find the interface a bit fiddly and and the voices are quite poor. But maybe I've not used it enough to get comfortable with it.

I'm not really one for subscriptions, but if I was to subscribe to an app it would have to be something that seems to warrant it - maybe publishing new content or if there's an obvious hosting outlay or something. The updates this app gets are great, but I could live without them as long as the app doesn't break completely.

It would make more sense to me for a subscription to cover cloud costs - for example, paying to have content in the cloud vs locally, or using one of the natural cloud voices. But for me personally this would still be a tough ask because I'm such a light user of the app.

It's obviously a well thought out and much loved app, so possibly I'm going to be on my own here. Moving to a subscription model, to me, means that it's only catering for a particular type of user rather than a casual one like me.

I miss the old days of software where you could opt to pay for the next major version of an app but that it would be my choice and the developer would effectively have to justify the upgrade to me. The subscription model feels like a very poor version of this where I lose out.

Having said that, I have heard the dev on podcasts talking about the reason for doing this on the Mac, and I suppose bills do need to be paid and to get a decent app does require time and energy that isn't free. I have no doubt that the motives are genuine.

But basically 60/$70 just for a subscription? That, my friend Karma is more expensive than an Apple Music subscription.

Honestly i'm not a fan of subcriptions. Another option, for those who wanted, would be to add a lifetime option where you only pay once and then that's it along side the subscriptions for those of us who would rather pay once rather than continuously both on mac on ios. Honestly I switched to speech central since learning that voice dream on the ma¢ was subcription baced, but that's just me. I'm... really not a fan of subcriptions unless I have no other choice. Voice dream is a good app but the whole subcription thing is just... not for me.

Maybe the developer could make it free of charge when downloading the app, but have an option in the settings. When you called get subscription, that mean people can choose whether they want to subscription or not

I am willing to pay for an app if it is worth the price. However, if a different app offers the same features at a lower cost, I would switch without hesitation. The deciding factors could be the app's features, interface, or any number of reasons. For example, I recently switched podcast apps on Windows because the new one has fewer bugs, despite the previous app having a cleaner interface.

I just want to add different perspective here: I'm not a subscriptions fan. It's so easy to subscribe to something, then something else, then something else...you get the idea. You end up subscribing to duplicate things, or else wasting your money. now, Voicedream I think is brilliant; but unlike contributors thus far I can afford, and would be willing to, pay $60 as a one-time purchase fee. I would much rather have that than yet another monthly subscription added to all the other monthly subscriptions I have. As it is, I bought the app ages ago so don't need to worry. But were I a new user I'd be very happy to pay a one time fee and far less happy to pay a subscription. I completely understand that the low purchase price i paid is not sustainable and I don't think it's reasonable for us to expect apps like this to be free.

Hi Voice Dream Team,

Thank you for the clarification. I'm pleased to know that existing users will not be affected by the subscription model. Just to confirm, will the new subscription include both the iOS and macOS versions of Voice Dream Reader, or will they remain as separate purchases? Thank you!

I think that the proposed $39 a year is not unreasonable. For me, this app does everything that I want it to and has not caused me any problems. Hell, it probably does things I haven't even figured out yet that would make things easier. Now for the comment that I'm sure will direct the hornet's nest to my attention. While I think $39 is a reasonable price per year, for as much as I use it, perhaps there could be a premium add-on feature for say, $10 a month, that would allow access to neural voices? Fair warning, I know nothing about how they are supposed to work or how much they cost, only that they certainly are not cheap. Even though I am grandfathered in with my previous purchase, I'd probably strongly consider paying an additional fee per month to have access to some of those neural voices.

Although some folks here do not agree with the decision, we appreciate the feedback and we're reading through every single response here several times over.

A few additional notes:

1) The subscription allows us to justify further development and more expensive items like better voices. Expect more of this in the future!

2) The app offers a free trial now, where as it didn't before. Some users would pay to download the app and never use it after the first user. Now users can try the app for 7 days and see if it fits their needs at no cost. We view this as a net benefit.

3) We know subscriptions are annoying, but it incentivizes developers to retain your subscription every single year. It's no longer a one and done process, but every year (or month) is an option for you to unsubscribe and we know that we need to deliver a world-class product for our subscribers to stick around.

4) Yes, the Mac & iOS apps will have synchronized subscriptions. That will be coming soon!

Again we appreciate all the feedback. Please feel free to message us here, via email or in the app. Thank you!

Will the free trial this put it on the MacBook? M1 MacBook, 2020.

Offer a one time purchase or life time license. Please and Thank you.

I’d rather pay more and own than have a stack of subscriptions eating hundreds to thousands of dollars a year. It’s just not a sustainable relationship once everyone jumps on board and they are all jumping on board. I know companies would rather collect a monthly fee but people have had enough already. The only options are everyone uses less stuff or companies start realising this just isn’t going to work. If every single service, app, store, club, building, bank, financial service, entertainment service, transport, food company I use want a subscription its pretty obvious thats not going to work long term. Another query I have is if the price was $60 a year then at the first sign of resistance it’s suddenly $40 then how is that linked to cost and a reasonable profit? Products need to be linked to cost not be as much as the market will sustain otherwise we’ll all end up in a pretty nasty little world with everyone trying to grab and get a much as they can instead of charging what something costs plus a reasonable profit which every company is entitled to. IMHO. I hope you can see I don’t mind paying I just don’t want to fund that previously referenced crack habit.

Even though I bought the app years ago, I would happily pay a subscription if we had new and improved voices.

From what I've seen, most companies realise this isn't sustainable. Most companies do have subscription yes, however they also have a perpetual option as well, most, at least, if we're talking software.

Yep some have realised but others are pressing forward into the exciting new world of constantly monetising every single customer every single month. Have you heard BMW want $15 a month for heated seats then more for heated steering wheel. Where will they stop. Voicedream wanted to charge the same as a Microsoft office subscription for voicedream, fine they are good and useful apps but not MS Office and thats before we even get into MS not offering the option to buy their product outright anymore. Voicedream have gone from charging $5 for their products to $5 a month. If I assume a reasonable lifespan of 70 years and I start using voicedream at the age of 13, thats 684 * $5 = $3420 for what cost $5 last week. There has to be a sensible place closer to $5 that still allows voicedream to make a product, support it and make some profit to make it worthwhile. Not everyone with an app gets to be a millionaire. Not when I have to pay $3420.

honestly, i don't want to debate this subscription model, one never convinces the opposing side. i just want you to know i spent some time trying out speech central, and it is really really good. hopefully this info is more productive than arguing about some developers' business model.

Hi,

For me, VoiceDream is the best app!!! It manages all formats (Audio and text) and the progress is synchronized on iCloud! I can never change, and I totally agree with the comment that said we can't rely on users who have already paid. I already pay for the subscription for the mac, so I assume the subscription would already be synced?

Matthew

I swear, voice dream is US$59 in Australian dollars, there will be no one purchases
They’re bloody OCR apps to lower the price or a completely free, and better speech apps like speech Central

It would be about $90, more or less. I mean its 59.99, which for all intent and purposes is $60 so... yeah, that'd be about 90 in australian currency if your curious. As stated though if the price drops to $40 then it would be 60$ in australian currency.

If it keeps working and improves, I don't mind paying more, but give the option of upgrading or not.

I'm not a fan of the subscription, the only advantage is that if something (like a IOS bug, for example, hint hint) comes along an makes all the voices unusable if you jump around in the file, I can simply stop paying.

If I am going to subscribe to something, I expect a lot more out of it than a one-time purchase. When a major problem occurs, and it doesn't work anymore, steam will start coming out my ears.

CH

Upon checking the Australian app store, I found that the cost of the app is $99.99 AUD. This amount can be rounded up to approximately $100 AUD per year. It is important to note that the extra voices are still listed as separate purchases. It is unclear whether these voices are included in the annual purchase.

kool_turk Said

Upon checking the Australian app store, I found that the cost of the app is $99.99 AUD. This amount can be rounded up to approximately $100 AUD per year. It is important to note that the extra voices are still listed as separate purchases. It is unclear whether these voices are included in the annual purchase.

Oh heck, no! That is mad, plus the voices overhear oral like five dollars Australian, so if I want to purchase every single voice in the catalogue, plus the app purchase itself plus the monthly subscription, my sensors are indicating that that would be around 200/$150/$250/$300
You can get an old chrome book for cheaper than that...
That is actually not cool.

I understand the point of subscriptions; I also don't like subscriptions. What makes me sad though is that the developer couldn't step up to the blind community and say "listen guys, we're moving to a subscription model, but current users shouldn't be affected. Thanks for all your support." I mean, this app has been with us for a long time and it has won an Applevis award or two during this time. The community had to find out from a 3rd party. Yes, the dev doesn't have to explain or justify his decision to the Applevis community, but it would have been nice to find this out from the dev himself. Call me sentimental; call me stupid, but I have been using this app since the beginning and now I'm worried about what will happen if I get a new iPhone? I will and cannot pay such a heavy subscription and this app is now effectively out of the hands of people who need it in 3rd world countries -- not just blind people, but also people with other reading disabilities. Is this the end of Voice Dream reader for me? No, but I saw in another topic that the dev sold it to someone else (all of this unsubstantiated rumors at this time) and if this new company starts bothering existing users, the app will be removed faster from my phone than South Africa's electricity provider can burn through money, because there are similar apps out there that can perform the same function. Maybe not all of them in one app, but that's life.

I just have to ask. Bro when they made the Mac app you had a post talking about how your app is free. Nothing against your app, but why do you seem to toss stones in others direction?

What would've been nice was to give a date for when the subscription model would start thus giving those that wanted the app a chance to get it before the new subscription model started.

That is a shocking decline.
Not more blind people were playing Mortal Kombat because Mortal Kombat is more popular LOL.
I’m just gonna search up the Australian price on the App Store, be right back,

That's a harsh decline indeed.

What a huge bummer. I’ve been a VDR fan and supporter for ten years now. The fact that we all had to find this out indirectly and there’s still so much that’s not being made clear to us is really rotten and doesn’t make me feel good about the new people running the show. I used to recommend this app to my friends with non-blindness reading disabilities and I told them the $10 or $20 was absolutely worth it. But $60 a year? Absolutely not.

If VDR was doing more than it does, I might pay a little every month for it. Like, $2 at most. It’s a text reader, after a point it’s not doing anything I can’t do using Books or Safari on my phone for free. I love that I can save my collection of over 600 books in folders so I can easily find them and read them in the background while doing other stuff. That’s worth buying a good app once (which I did).

Whenever subscriptions start up, x seems like basic stuff starts going down the toilet really fast. And given how this news has been so poorly handled, my trust in the new people who own this thing is gone already. Which is a shame, it was nice to have something reliable and consistant even when everything else changes quality with every update.

Well. I guess I won’t be sending friends to VDR anymore and I’ll be looking at my other options for the day a great app gets flushed away by yet another company that bought something amazing just to trash it for a quick buck.

Personally, I have no problem with a subscription model: I use VoiceDream Reader for so much and if paying $60 a year, or even better $5/month which might be a bit more manageable helps to keep development happening, I'm all in. That said, I know a lot of students depend on this app to assist with reading, not just blind kids but kids with other reading disabilities. I also know that because of how schools purchase products, a subscription model could be problematic, especially if needing subscriptions for multiple students. Is there a plan for schools and other situations where subscription purchases can be challenging?

However this unfolds, I can't be more thankful for what has been one of my most valuable apps on my iPhone and I wish the team continued success.

If you've already purchased the app, it seems like you won't have to worry about the subscription. However, for those who haven't bought the app yet, like myself, we would have to pay for it. I wouldn't mind subscribing, but if additional voices aren't included and require an extra fee, the total cost could be **more than $100 AUD**. This price seems more appropriate for a suite of apps rather than just a single reading app.