Hello everyone!
We're happy to announce that Simply Plus is officially ready for the public. After a long time developing and testing Simply Plus we're finally able to release it.
You can subscribe and manage your subscription in the Simply Plus Subscription Portal here (https://plus.apparyllis.com), where you will be able to choose between a monthly subscription and a yearly subscription.
A couple of changes have happened to Simply Plus since we announced it in August of last year. Back then we had shared that Simply Plus would be available as an in-app purchase, but after consideration we've decided against this, and have instead decided to create a dedicated subscription portal, where everyone can login with their Simply Plural login details and manage their subscription.
How can I subscribe?
You can visit our documentation website where you will be able to see how to subscribe to Simply Plus on the subscription portal.
How fast will I get my in-app-benefits and badge?
After subscribing you should receive an email notifying you that your payment went through, as well as that your subscription was activated. You should then receive the in-app-benefits and badge immediately. If you had the app open at the time of subscribing, you will need to restart the app to start using the benefits.
How can I use my in-app-benefits?
You can visit our documentation website where you will be able to see how to use the features that Simply Plus has to offer.
Do Patrons still get badges or in-app-benefits, now that Simply Plus is released?
For now, nothing will change to Patreon, and patrons will continue to get badges and in-app-benefits by pledging to Patreon. However, as we've shared in the blog post from last year, giving out badges and in-app-benefits to patrons is a manual process.
To reduce our workload and to allow us to focus more on development, we'll stop giving out badges and in-app-benefits to new patrons in the future. We'll make an announcement before this happens.
Why we have decided against in-app-subscriptions
In-app-subscriptions are handled by their respective platforms, Google handles their own, and Apple handles their own. This makes cross-platform support for subscriptions more difficult, as people who use both Android and Apple for their devices will have issues managing their subscriptions across platforms.
Furthermore, in-app-subscriptions prevent the ability for web-only users to subscribe to Simply Plus, leaving them unable to support the app's development and services.
In addition to this, Google and Apple both are forcing a higher percentage of fees per subscription compared to using our own subscription portal, lowering our ability to fund the development and services from subscriptions from in-app-purchases.
The Simply Plus Portal allows us to have a streamlined website and consistent experience across all platforms, where people are able to subscribe and manage their subscription.