Good software requires a lot of work.

What does my app do differently than others I compete with?

Whats the most common price for apps in this category?

What would I pay for this?

What value would I return to a customer?

Take what you gather there and you have a pretty good starting point for the price of your app.

Nikos describes the process:

Most software one man shows like me dont have a clue about marketing.

So you check the competition and see what is reasonable for the kind of software you sell.

Both Flexibits and Mueller have apps available for Mac and for iOS.

In both cases, the Mac apps cost more to buy, and cost more to make.

Thats at least partially because the OS X market share is considerably smaller than iOS.

In other words, there aretonsof iOS devices out in the world, and not nearly as many Macs.

Theres another big difference between a desktop app and an mobile app: a users expectation of features.

In other words, the mission of the design of the app changes.

We designed Fantastical specifically for the iPhone.

With the Mac version, its a desktop app and we designed it as such.

All these different versions allowed us to design these apps with way more functionality and a better experience.

The same goes for the desktop app.

It comes down to basic math here.

All combined, that means desktop software trends higher in price than similaror even the samemobile apps.

Of course, that adds to the cost of the app.

Brian Mueller ran into this withCARROT Weather:

[Weather] had costs associated with its weather data API.

But it still ended up landing in the same ballpark as the other high-quality weather apps out there.

The first thousand API calls you make every day are free, period.

Every API call after that costs $0.0001 each.

Any time someones iPhones with CARROT Weather on it dials into Forecast.io thats counted as an API call.

Most developers wind up handling their own support requests, and that turns into a pretty big time sink.

Just take a look atCARROTorFlexibitsTwitter accounts for a tiny glimpse into just one of those support channels.

All that time is money.

This is the biggest aspect of pricing that I never thought of.

With free software, our expectations are pretty low.

I know it wont get updated immediately when a new operating system comes out.

I dont have any expectation of support beyond the launch, and expect the app to have quirks.

With paid software, I want better than that for my money.

I expect it to be compatible with new operating systems quickly after launch.

I expect bugs to get squashed in weeks, not months.

I also expect new features regularly, and weird quirks ironed out.

Simmons elaborates:

[We ask ourselves] what sort of value are we returning to our customers?

Ultimately, were making apps for our customers… We absolutely care about what were selling.

Support means multiple things.

It means technical support through email or social media.

It means adding in new features that customers are asking for.

Then another after that.

Its just about doing what they love to do.

Illustration by Jim Cooke.