Why Our Companion Apps Cost $9.99 a Year
A pricing philosophy — the app is the premium product, the free tier is a trial, and nobody gets nagged.
We build companion apps. ViewPane is a mobile front end for Frigate NVR. DockPilot is a mobile front end for Docker and Portainer. Both of them sit on top of self-hosted software that already has a perfectly good web interface. So why would anyone pay for them?
The honest answer: most people won’t. And that’s fine, because they’re not who we built the apps for.
This is the philosophy we land on every time, so we’re writing it down.
The free tier is a trial, not a crippled product
A lot of mobile app pricing follows a familiar pattern: give users a hobbled version, then nag them every screen until they pay. We don’t do that. Our free tier exists for one reason — to let you confirm the app works on your setup before you decide whether to keep using it.
What that means in practice:
- No nag screens. No interstitials. No “upgrade now!” popups.
- No artificial usage limits that punish daily use.
- Free-tier users get a useful product. They just get less of it.
If someone uses the free tier forever, they’re not a “lost conversion.” They’re a person for whom a browser tab works fine, and that’s a legitimate choice. We don’t need to convert them — and we sure don’t need to annoy them.
The app is the premium product
The thing we’re charging for isn’t “unlocking features.” It’s the entire experience of using a phone-shaped app instead of a browser tab. If you live in your home lab — if you check your cameras three times a day, push deploys from your couch, debug containers from the kitchen — the app is materially nicer than the web UI for that. That’s worth $10 a year.
If you check your dashboard once a month from your laptop, it isn’t. And that’s a perfectly correct conclusion to reach.
$9.99 a year, on purpose
The price isn’t a coincidence. We picked it for three reasons:
1. It’s under a dollar a month. Below that threshold, almost nobody cancels for cost reasons. Cancellations come from “I stopped using this,” not “I can’t afford this.” That keeps churn driven by genuine fit, not friction.
2. It compounds. $9.99 a year, kept indefinitely, beats $4.99 a month for three months and then a cancellation. Subscription products with high cancellation rates get evaluated harshly by app stores and by the developer’s own analytics. Low churn means we can plan.
3. It pays for the support burden. Self-hosted users are technical. They file thoughtful bug reports and feature requests. We’d rather support a hundred paying users well than ten thousand free users badly. The price selects for the cohort we can actually serve.
The same model across every app
We’re applying this consistently. ViewPane: $9.99/year for Pro. DockPilot: $9.99/year for Pro. Whatever companion app comes next: $9.99/year for Pro. One subscription tier, same price, same philosophy.
The simplicity is the point. Users don’t have to evaluate whether they’re on the right plan. They don’t get upsold to a higher tier. They don’t get downsold when they try to cancel. There’s the free trial, and there’s Pro. Done.
What this means if you’re using one of our apps
If you’re paying us $9.99 a year, here’s the contract on our end: we’ll keep the app up to date with the platforms it sits on top of, we’ll respond to your bug reports, and we won’t ever change the deal on you. The price doesn’t go up for grandfathered subscribers. New features don’t get carved out into a higher tier. Pro is Pro, forever.
If you’re on the free tier, the contract is different but just as honest: the app will keep working, we won’t degrade it to push you toward paying, and if you decide it’s not worth $10 a year that’s a totally reasonable answer.
Or: it’s two coffees a year
If the philosophy doesn’t land, here is the shorter version. $9.99 a year is two coffees. Buy me two coffees a year and we keep the app in its best shape — bug fixes shipping, platform compatibility holding, docs current. That’s the trade. If two coffees a year is more than the app is worth to you, the free tier is yours forever — no nag, no countdown, no degraded experience.
The framework
Build the thing well. Charge a fair amount for it. Let people opt in or opt out without getting in their way. That’s the whole framework.