Pricing for Emergency Contacts

Pricing is tricky for mobile apps these days. When I was developing Emergency Contacts, I knew I had a few options to choose from:

• Free — The app didn’t take too long to make, but I wasn’t sure that I wanted to just give it away for free. I thought that it had provided a modest amount of utility, so I figured that just straight up free wouldn’t work.
• Free with an In-App Purchase — I did this with Zartbonk. But since the feature set on Emergency Contacts is pretty small, I couldn’t think of what to lock in an extra purchase.
• Free with ads — I just don’t like ads in apps. I didn’t even look to see how to get this set up.
• Paid — The choice was really between free and $0.99. Since I had ruled out free, that left me here.

Figuring out pricing is hard. I think I made the right choice here, though with a more complex app, I’m not sure if I’d do the same thing.

Written by Scott Williams who lives and works in sunny Phoenix, AZ. Twitter is also a place.