Visualizer v3

The latest change does many things, so I decided to brand it as “v3”.

Most important change: I’m switching the sponsorship model to subscriptions via Stripe.

As you read in the previous post(s), Visualizer has quite drastically changed from what I thought it would be to what it is. It now has over 1.200 users and over 200.000 uploaded shots. It became a serious thing, so I want to move away from GitHub Sponsorships and create something that is 100% legal and entirely under my control.

So a couple of changes are coming to the free plan:

  • only see/search the last month of shots
  • no longer able to customize chart colors

Premium will get you:

  • chart customization
  • unlimited shot visibility
  • search across all public shots

And also these shiny new things:

  • adjust the timing of the comparison shot, aka sliding timeline
  • attach images to your shots

Timing adjusting in practice:

The main reason behind creating sponsorships was covering the costs of Visualizer hosting. That goal has been achieved and exceeded. So now I have a grander plan: I would like to see Premium cover not only hosting costs but also my feature development. I have many ideas, and I’d love to spend more time on Visualizer. But if I want to work on it more, I need more time, and that clearly can’t come out of my free time if I wish to make any progress. 😅

One thing I’m looking at, for example, is Visualizer use in cafés. I came across Flow a while back and realized that all (and more) its device provides is contained in Decent shot files. So building that kind of service on top of Visualizer for cafe users should be achievable. If you run a cafe and use Decent, please get in touch. I’d love to discuss how I could help you.

So let’s talk cost. I had two sponsorship tiers: $2 and $5. About 10% of supporters chose the latter for no reason other than they’re not just amazing; they’re incredible people. Now I want to have a single plan, so I decided to split the difference and go with ~3€ net. I want it to be 100% legal, which means my business will be issuing invoices. That requires me to pay taxes and Stripe fees, so the final number is 5€/month. But if you choose the yearly option, I give you two months for free, so you’d pay 50€/year.

This is how the cost distribution looks like for me:

Premium Plan Cost

I want to thank and reward all past sponsors, so anyone who supported me will get the same amount of months of free Premium plan. And if they chose the $5 option, I’ll double the amount of free months.

I hope you like all the changes I made and decide that Premium is worth it for you. But even if it is not currently, I’ll try my best with the future features to change your mind. 😅

P.S. As I’ve mentioned, this is a considerable change. So if you encounter any bugs, please open a GitHub issue or email me.

Thank you! 🤗