SpeechAI - Text to Speech 4+

Great sounding voices, but…

Initially it appeared that I couldn’t do anything with the app without paying - and I left a 1-star review saying that. The devs responded and said that there is actually a free trial/demo so I went back and looked again.

First, the bad:

They use a super shady tactic to try and trick people into paying before they see the app. When you first run the app, they throw up a page telling you to choose a subscription - and it really really looks like you can’t do anything until you choose a subscription package. But when you look really, really closely, there’s a very VERY faint outline of the word “cancel” in one corner (nearly invisible) and I couldn’t even read the text in the other corner. But if you can see them and tap them, they will dismiss the screen. I hate tactics like this which are clearly designed to trick users into paying immediately (and continuing to pay until they figure out how to cancel). i really wish I could post a screen shot here to show how difficult it is to see the text (and I’m on a 13 Pro Max with a large screen). I’m honestly not sure how it passed app review. I think it’s a super shady practice and a poor business decision - because a lot of users will just delete the app as soon as they see that. They should make the trial/demo much more obvious.

The next complaint is that pricing is very unclear - and the descriptions in the App Store don’t match what is available in the app. The app sells subscriptions that give you “pages” - but nothing defines what a page is. The App Store states there are ways to purchase unlocks for individual voices - but the only thing for sale in the app are: Monthly subscriptions that give you X “pages” per day, and bundles that let you purchase 3 to 1,000 “pages” - but again, there is nothing that explains what a “page” is… So I don’t know if it’s 1000 words or 10,000 letters or what?

Also - there is (apparently) a free 7-day trial, but to claim it, you have to agree to a $10/month subscription that kicks in automatically if you don’t cancel by day 6.

There does seem to be a “free” mode in which you start with 6,000 characters that apparently replenish daily. Most of the voices are locked in this mode and there doesn’t appear to be any way to unlock them without a subscription. It’s very confusing that the free mode uses “characters” and the full mode uses “pages”. Also - probably a typos, but the built-in help file states that “the character count displays how many spoken WORDS you have left” - but it’s not words. It’s characters. You can watch an ad for 500 extra characters.

There is no real “help” to speak of. I don’t think it supports SSML tags or any ability to control the emphasis of certain words or phrases - and if there is a way to do it - it’s not explained.

Still with me? Ok, here’s the good:

The quality of the Ted voice is exceptional. It’s the only one I’ve tried so far. The speed slider is a bit finicky and there should be a way to adjust it more precisely - but the default speed is good for most cases and the audio quality is first rate. It’s also super easy to save your audio as an MP3 file - but if you “Preview” the audio before you save it as an MP3 - they charge you twice for it (in terms of your remaining character count). It would be pretty easy for them to download and play the MP3 file when you tap preview - and then let you save that same file rather than generating it again.

I kinda wish I knew what a “page” was. But although the voice quality is excellent, I’m going to try a couple of different apps - mostly because that initial subscription page with the almost invisible cancel button screams out “red flag” to me. I think that a company that would do that, wouldn’t hesitate to market copies of all the text I convert to speech and any other personal data they could get from me.

Use your own judgement.