This is probably going to be annoying, so I apologize to everyone that created an account on Canny. We should have imported everything over, so if you had an account there, you may have to reregister. The Canny account will close soon in favor of this board.

In order to track votes, I did have to import names and emails, but I don't think this actually creates an account here.

I wanted more people to add their ideas and upvote features, but Canny forces you to create an account on their system, which I imagine blocks a lot of people from sharing requests!

Here, you can upvote anonymously, leave reactions anonymously. Guest accounts also mean there's much less friction when you want to leave a suggestion. I hope with these changes, it'll be easier for the community to leave feedback. 💖

Please join me there:

As of now, we have around 2.25 million users, with less than 1% ever having made a purchase. The average number of journal entries at the moment sits at 21, with the user with the highest number of entries at around 55k, and the lowest at 0. That means the 100 free limit is 5 times the average number of 21 entries.

Storage and hosting fees for journal entries is our highest cost. And with every single day that passes, business users are creating 200-300+ journal entries per day. It's not a small amount of users that do this either, and most of them are not paying customers.

This app used to run on deck purchases. With the rise of counterfeit decks you can get on Temu, that revenue stream is basically almost dead. I tried taking them down; I even paid thousands of dollars to own the Chinese copyright for these decks, and somehow even that does not solve the problem. For every one that gets taken down, a new one comes up. It is no longer worth it for me to create tarot decks, because the pain of seeing them get stolen and knocked off is too much.

Without those sales, this app is not sustainable and has not been for quite some time. I've constantly delayed this update because I know I'm going to get massive anger and lots of low reviews for this. I've been feeling deeply apprehensive for a long time, but it has to be done. I've already gotten my first death threat as of July 5th, even though only 1% of users have gotten the update so far. Fun times!

I gave myself about 6 months to see whether I could cover costs without having to set limits. I made a bunch of new features for premium. It was not enough. It doesn't matter how "creative" I get; the amount of core free features we provide is so much more than what most users actually need.

The reality is that if nobody to pay for the app, nobody will. We gave away so much for free. And we still do.

I know it’s frustrating, I get it. When you’re used to getting a free service it’s a hard pill to swallow that you will need to pay. That transition is never going to go well.

I started soliciting feedback for this change starting in March, but it was mostly through newsletters and if you were not subscribed I can understand how jarring it feels. I admit that's where I could have done better.

To make sure this doesn't happen again, and , not just folks who are subscribed to the newsletter -- can get their feedback heard, I'm also going to be working on an in-app messaging system, probably some form of integrating this canny system into the app...

To reiterate, these changes are needed so that at least the costs do not keep spiraling.

Most tarot apps lock many of their readings behind a paywall or advertisements. In Labyrinthos you can get , with any of the available spreads, as well as custom ones. The reason so little folks pay for the app is realistically, . We have generous free features, and have kept it that way without ads. But it can't stay that way unless the costs for keeping this running are put under control.

And once again, ! You never have to pay an extra cent to do this. I personally don't think it's that big of a deal if there's ways to keep your journal entries, especially in a pretty PDF format.

I hope this gives everyone at least some understanding about why this needs to happen. This has not been in any way an easy decision. It's deeply affected my mental health this year and I am struggling.

No entries will be deleted, you just can't save more until you go under the limit.

Exports are always free, and you can do them whenever you want from the profile tab. You don’t need to keep track of journal entries; if you reach a limit while trying to save, you’ll be prompted to export the oldest logs until you have just enough space to save this reading. Or you can purchase upgrades. You will not lose the reading on the screen.

Plaintext and secure JSON readings have no limits on bulk exports. PDF processing is somewhat expensive computationally, depending on what device you have, so there is a 10 reading limit so it's not so taxing on your devices. All these export features are released together with the limits. For free users, that means , they will just live off the app and somewhere safe on your computer instead.

Right now, I also want to state, that while I am the lone front-end developer / illustrator / UI UX designer for this project, the only way some new features can be built is also having a back-end developer. I have a lot of things I'd like to do in the future, some of which was already requested by users.

So far, the person who has filled that role has been my lovely husband, Luis, who also has a real job that provides me with health insurance and stability so I can muck around with Labyrinthos. That means everytime I need his help, this poor man has to dedicate his weekends -- on top of his 9-5 job -- and that sucks. I know I make this app, but he has made making this app possible, and that is no easy feat.

Ideally, I would like to be able to make enough to actually hire a back-end engineer to do this work, so it's not dependent on charity. But that requires funds.

I know, I know, business people are HORRIFIED when they learn about this. Let's face it, I am not a business person. I am a maker that truly believed in tarot as a therapeutic tool, and was overly eager to share what I had built with others. In the beginning, hosting fees for 1000 users was trivial.

These are upcoming changes and development is currently completed.

iOS release is scheduled for May 1st as a phased release (meaning auto-updates are gradually pushed out in a 7 day time period). Android release is delayed because of reasons below.

In previous notes I mentioned it would be free, but I'm now not entirely sure when it comes to Android. It seems they may have started charging for this feature. Android's documentation now goes to a page that says we only have 60 free minutes a month: https://cloud.google.com/speech-to-text

Android's version also seems like it may not work offline, while Apple's does.

Part of what I want to do even as the app changes, is not Even then, I'm still building new free features.

I think I'm going to have a lot of quesitons about this in the future, so I wanted to be transparent with folks on how this decision gets made.

There's only one question that is currently asked right now:

Ongoing costs are costs that are continuing and do not have an end. They can be monthly or annual charges that we have to pay in order to keep things working. In other words, things that my monthly bills, not just keep them at the same baseline. A side note that if I am able to decrease the baseline, it means I can make more features free in the future.

come in three major categories:

Examples of things that , assuming that they do not get more complex. Depending on how well app monetization goes, I can also then have enough money to invest in things that are one time fees.

Hope this helps folks understand a little bit more about my thought process!

Well, this has become my weird little log of developer updates, so I figured I'd share this here.

As a side note, I really wish people would see the amount of effort I'm putting in to think about my users. I'm trying so hard to keep everyone happy, while also having the boot of capitalism on my neck.

In case you're wondering why I've started pushing premium, deck sales are no longer enough to finance the app. I think it's a mix of economic factors, the easy availability of counterfeit decks (including mine unfortunately), and on the positive side, a ton of new deck creators that are doing amazing work. With counterfeiting, I don't have the motivation to make new decks anymore. I've seen the writing on the wall for a while now, which means that this app is no longer sustainable as entirely free. For 7+ years (and more, if you include Golden Thread Tarot) I've offered it without needing to monetize at all - not even ads, but this is no longer the case. More and more people are coming into the app, using resources - sometimes to build their own businesses ontop of, and I'm here footing the bill.

People are not nice about this transition. I know it sucks when something you love has to monetize, but I'm human, and I deserve to pay my rent and eat too. Anyone telling me that I don't, only makes me feel like I be more greedy, and I be cynical, and I be charging up the wazoo for the work I'm doing, because it reinforces the idea that I have nobody looking out for me except myself. If you came here, and you found the app to be , but then also get angry at me when I'm trying to survive, just like you -- it means you're not just fine with exploiting my free labor, but you feel entitled to it. And maybe that means you're the kind of user that I don't want around. I'm happy to continue serving free users, but I'm not okay with this kind of attitude and verbal abuse.

Honestly, my mental health is in the shitter because of this. I have always gotten verbal abuse from strangers on the internet, for ridiculous reasons (they disliked a reading they got, they hated that I moved a button, they hated that I changed the UI), sometimes going as far is threatening to kill me, chop my legs off, hunt me down and rape me, but I have never gotten as much as I have now.

Why do I have to remind people that I am human too? Is it because people think that it's like a giant team making this with venture money? I don't get it. I get frustrated at companies sometimes, but I don't think I have ever told a customer service person that they were a "cunt with a broken brain" or any other vile thing people have said to me thus far.

It is not easy. I sometimes want to just pull everything I've built off the internet out of a mix of exhaustion and spite -- a digital suicide, if you will.

Have you guys ever heard of the Ruby programmer, _why?

He made a bunch of coding tutorials that were so whimsical, playful and downright weird. Then he mysteriously deleted everything he made off the internet one day.

I do not have the same talent as _why? Not even close. But I've thought a lot about him since I first started getting that kind of abuse. I've wanted to do something similar for years and years. I still do.

You would think that I would have grown some thick skin by now, but I think that will never happen. My personality isn't built that way. I absorb negative feedback like a sponge, and I automatically think that people who say nice things to me are just making platitudes. That is a me problem. I, like everyone, am a product of a very specific trauma, and I am a work in progress.

In the meantime, I still need to exist in this godforsaken hellscape of a planet while sustaining my meatbag body in meatbag space. So here I am, trying. Lately, my only coping mechanism has been responding to positive reviews, so at least I have to be forced to read them, to try and absorb some positive stuff to counteract the negative stuff. And no, there is no separation between me and "the business". I am "the business" because I make everything here.

You know, a long long long time ago, before Labyrinthos, and when there was only Golden Thread Tarot, I kept getting told from other folks in the tarot space to charge for it. But my stubborn, stupid self thought there was value in being able to offer a free resource out of misplaced idealism. I do not think that anymore. I think the cost is too much, and not just in a financial sense, I mean in a soul-sucking, spiritual sense. If I could go back in time, I would tell my past self to charge. There is no honor in giving away the things you make for free. Nobody values free things. If you give yourself away for free, you're just opening up space for folks who only want to use and exploit you.

If you're someone out there reading ths, please don't become me. Charge what you're worth.

This is like the 3rd time I've written out some form of this, after I told myself I'm just going to close this chapter and move on. But I keep getting retriggered, and I'm now starting to think that there's no way to move on, but only through.

Hello! It's my first time trying this changelog thing. Probably should have started earlier, but oh well. These are upcoming changes and are in the final stages of testing.

Trying the app without login has been something that folks have given me 1-star reviews for since the beginning of time. Changing this turned out to be not so horrible to do?

As storage and data costs continue to rise, I think it would also be a nice small way for users to try the app and then if they hate it, I'm not saving any data. Hooray!

In case folks were wondering, we needed to setup accounts because the app is built on a hybrid platform, meaning one code base compiles to both android and iOS. This means I don't have a great way to store data permanently on the device (for example on iCloud). Years and years ago, I was only storing on the device, and data was constantly wiped whenever there was an app update, or a system update from android or iOS.

Please take a look at this thread about one of the most commonly requested features: autosaves for everything. I would love love love to get feedback on this. It explains some limitations on why this feature is blocked and what I'm nervous about, and possible solutions.

Another alternative big group of features is some journaling updates.

Also planning to release another Lo Scarabeo deck in April! 💖 Just as an FYI, because we already have an agreement with them, they're a lot easier to work with than a new vendor. That means decks can go up faster. I know folks have voted for different decks, so please don't be disappointed. That data gives me numbers to show potential partners in the future, but I still want to keep up momentum by at least featuring a new deck each month. With new vendors, I have to basically do a whole sales pitch and chase them down (even though I'm giving them money, lol) which is a bit stressful and never a sure thing.