Hi AppleVis,
This is Karthik from Envision. Thank you for being a community that has been supportive of our efforts and being a solid source of encouragement when we were starting out a little over a year ago. Hence, I am thrilled to bring to pieces of information to you today:
1. We just kickstarted our super summer sale today which means we are slashing prices across all our plans. The monthly and annual prices are now down by 50% and the Lifetime plan is down by 75% (actually 78.5% to be more precise). This is mainly done to reflect some of the new cloud credits we have been offered and also to validate certain aspects of our pricing strategy in the long term.
2. We know that many of you who were early adopters of the app probably already exhausted your 14-day free trial. Hence, if you are curious to see how the app has since evolved and what features have been added/improved, we have provided an extended 14-day free trial to all our existing users. So you can really see our latest version of the app before deciding if you would like to dip into the summer sale or not.
I'll be checking in and replying to comments all day today, so please feel free to ask for any clarifications or provide any feedback that you may have.
Thanks and regards,
Karthik from Envision
Comments
a couple questions
I am a current subscriber. Does this summer sale apply to me? IE, if I were to upgrade from my current monthly plan to something else, would I get the deal? Also, I am in the manage subscriptions section, and I only see the six month and annual subscriptions. I do not see lifetime. Where would one find this, or do I need to cancel first to make this option populate?
This is a fantastic app, and I am happy to support it, deal or no deal.
Yes, you can upgrade at a discounted price!
Hi, yes it is possible if you would like to take advantage of the discount by upgrading to a higher plan. If you want to buy a Lifetime Subscription, you need to do that from within the subscription page of the app itself. Since technically the Lifetime Subscription is considered an In-App Purchase and not a recurring subscription, you will not be able to see it in the subscription setting of iOS. As soon as you purchase a Lifetime Subscription, we automatically terminate your existing recurring subscriptions of Envision.
I hope that provides some clarity. Please feel free to reach out in case of more queries or clarification. I can also be reached at karthik@letsenvision.com if you would like to speak privately.
thank you
Your instructions were perfectly clear. My lifetime subscription has been purchased. Thank you for the quick response! I am certain I will be using this app yet today to read cooking instructions for my lunch. :-)
I snapped up the lifetime
I snapped up the lifetime purchase due to the heavy discount, but I do have a few questions. why does envision need to be logged in through facebook, google or its own account. and as I used facebook to log in then bought the lifetime purchase does this mean that I must log in now using facebook if I ever reinstall envision, as in future I would like to transition to sign in with apple for most services I use. I always thought inapp purchases were tied to my apple ID.
secondly how will you fund future development, I mean its nice in theory to be able to buy a lifetime license especially for us as the user, but if we as users buy a lifetime license then you won't make more money from us, and obviously app development, cloud services etc have to be paid for. or is it a case that those who pay for annual subscriptions sort of subsidize for those who buy a lifetime license.
response to last post
i am curious on this myself.
Thanks for the questions
Hi Alex,
Thank you for the questions. We use a login account creation as it provides us with much more flexibility with respect to free trial periods and account extensions. It also proves useful for cross-platform migration (users who shift to Android or would want to use Envision on Web when we launch it). You're correct in stating that the subscriptions itself are attached to your Apple ID, but it is also linked with the login, hence you will have to log in with the same method should you reinstall the app. Once Sign in with Apple launches, we will make sure that users are able to migrate or merge with that. We are still waiting for more documentation about that from Apple at the moment.
With respect to our business model, I will divulge as much as I can. There are mainly 4 factors behind this significant sale:
1. One of the big drivers for running this sale was an offer of a limited amount of free cloud credits from our cloud service provider. This meant we have reduced cloud costs in the short term and we wanted to pass this reduction down to our users.
2. The second reason for reducing the price significantly for this sale is to understand and validate whether the economics of more people buying with a small margin will outweigh the economics of a few people buying with high margin. So if this sale proves that the cost was the major factor holding a significant number of people back, we will use the insights of this sale to rework our business and pricing strategy around it.
3. The reason for the significant discount on Lifetime Subscription is because looking at the technology trend closely for the past year, we are now more confident that we will in the near future be able to bring more and more functionalities of Envision offline without losing on accuracy. This will end up reducing our dependencies and costs for servers in the long term, allowing us to serve a larger user base with marginal costs.
4. We are also currently working on porting our software to work on wearable cameras and smart glasses. We have successfully built a few prototypes and will hopefully be sharing more information about that soon. Since, the margins on the hardware sale are generally higher, we believe they will subsidise/compensate for the low margins in the long term.
That's what our thinking currently is. The short answer is we are experimenting and validating what the best pricing strategy. And we are doing that out in the open with the community, just like we always have with our development. We will keep you updated on our learnings from this and share more insights when we have them.
I hope that provides a clearer view. Feel free to reach out for further questions/clarifications.
Hi thanks for your very
Hi thanks for your very comprehensive reply. its good to know that hopefully I can migrate from facebook to sign in with apple when that becomes available.
and thanks for explaining about your current business thinking. It all makes complete sense, for me it was certainly pricing that lead me to not purchase before now. also I wasn't that impressed with object recognition and text reading results when I tried the free trial, but I thought well its on sale now, so if I get it now it means I can take advantage of future developments. One area I think your app should look at is recognizing currency coins, as far as I know there are no apps out there that recognize coins. I suggested to the cash reader developers that they should look at coins as well as notes, but they said it would take a lot of work to train there neural engine for coins even though it was possible, and they preferred to concentrate on notes. I do understand there point and cash reader is a great app, but you would certainly corner the market if you could also recognise coins as well as notes.
Hi
Hi, what’s envision? I searched for it on the App Store but got tons of other results. I’m not sure if I am missing something? Or if it’s under a different name? I would like to check this app out. Thanks
Here's Envision
Hi X2,
Envision AI is a smartphone app that uses artificial intelligence to read all kinds of text from any surface, recognise faces, describe scenes, find objects, scan barcodes, detect colours and so much more. We believe it is the best all-in-one tool in the pocket of a blind or low vision user for all of their visual recognition tasks.
You can find it on the AppStore under the name 'Envision AI'. Or, here is the link to download it from the AppStore: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/envision-ai/id1268632314
It's a great app
Envision has taken over as my primary OCR app of choice, and I've got quite a few at this point. Seeing AI is still great, and I notice people praise it the way they used to praise the very, very lackluster KNFB reader, but I do find Envision to be just a bit better. I've currently got the monthly subscription. I may opt for the lifetime now though. A question I have is, if I were to upgrade to the yearly subscription, I assume the discount would apply only for the coming year, not subsequent charges, right? Same with the monthly subscription? You'd get a month 50% off and then it goes back to full price. Is that right?
One thing I was wondering too. I noticed the Ipad version of Envision pretty much takes up the same space on the ipad's screen as the iphone version. Are there any plans to optimize it for Ipads in the future?
Keep up the great work.
agreed about Envision and OCR
I agree that Envision works better than Seeing AI for reading documents. However, I like Seeing AI's bar code scanner, as, to my knowledge, you have to know where the code is to point and shoot with Envision, and often I do not. I have not tried Envision's handwriting ability yet. I also like the scene descriptions that Envision gives too.
Thanks Remy!
Hi Remy, thanks a lot. Yes, you are correct. These are introductory discounts meaning they will only apply to the first purchase period (first month for the monthly subscription and the first year for the annual subscription).
Our app is currently not fully optimised for the iPad, but you can expand the current app on the iPad to occupy the full-screen size. You can do this by pressing the "expand" icon which is on the bottom right corner of the screen. I don't remember what the VoiceOver label for it was, but If you can't find it I can look it up. We do plan to optimize our app fully for iPad (and also for Mac) in the future.
a subscription query
if someone purchases the lifetime license, does that mean it would be a 1-time payment?
Yes, Lifetime Subscription is One-Time Payment only.
Yes, Lifetime Subscription is One-Time Payment only.
Cross Platform Subscription
Thanks for all the detailed information on the app, pricing, and potential future of the service. I am considering purchasing the life time subscription, but had a question first.
I do a lot of testing, demoing apps to clients, and have also covered Envision on YouTube. I have also recently picked up a Pixel 3a XL Android phone.
I have created a new 14 day free trial account through the IOS app. If I signed up by E-mail directly through Envision, could that E-mail address be used cross platform? Like I could pay for the life time subscription on my iPhone, and then use the same E-mail login on my Android Pixel phone? Or would I need to buy two subscriptions, one for each platform? I'm thinking of something like Netflix. I can subscribe directly through Netflix, and then watch on my computer, Android phone, XBOX, or iPad.
Thanks in advance for the clarification.
Lifetime Subscription are cross platform
Hi Jesse,
If you buy a Lifetime Subscription on iOS, you will be able to use it on an Android Device as well. As of now we may the cross-platform activation for users manually upon request, but will be automating it in subsequent updates. Hence, once you have purchased a lifetime subscription, do shoot me a mail at karthik@letsenvision.com and I will make sure it works on your Android device as well.
I hope that helps.
Thanks and another question
Hi, thanks for the App Store link, I got it. I just had one question. Where is the sign up button? I’m a new user and I looked everywhere for it, I clicked on login with email and all it says, if you don’t have an account will create one for you. But that’s it. And I entered my email in the text field and a password and click the submit button hoping it would create a new account but it didn’t. Am I missing something? Or do I have to go to your guises website? Any help would be highly appreciated. Thanks
Signing up
Hi X2,
You are correct when you click Log in with Email, enter an email and a password, an account gets created for you with that email and password. You should have received a confirmation email about the same at your email address. Please check that and then try logging in with the email and password that you had entered. If you continue to face issues, please email me at karthik@letsenvision.com and I will help you resolve this asap!
Compare to Voice Dream Scanner
I have Voice Dream Scanner, which has many good features, is easy to use, and provides highly accurate results. I appreciate your special sale. However, why should I consider buying Envision A I, too?
Envision AI consideration
While one highlight of Envision AI is it's fantastic OCR, that's not the only thing it can do, and while Seeing AI does many of the same things for free, there are some that Envision AI does better. My suggestion would be take advantage of the free trial and decide from there. You have two weeks to play with it. Might as well, right?