Portal - Escape Into Nature 4+

First of all this app is really great. I appreciate I can use parts of it for free.
My problem with is solely with the pricing model. I am not interested in paying a subscription and even if I would the price for the subscription is to high for me. The life time license would be an option if it would be around 30-50 EUR but not at the current price. I see that you provide a lot of content and therefore justify the high price but I don’t need all this content. E.g. I would love Spatial Audio but do not care about the smart home integration. One way to monetize that would work well for me is to use in app purchases to unlock single features/portals. This way I can cherry pick what I pay for and you can continually charge for new development. Of course you probably considered this already. I hope my feedback is helpful and thanks for creating this app.

👋 Hi whyareallbamestaken,

Thank so much for sharing your thoughts and suggestions with us - please know the time and effort to do so is most definitely not lost on us, and is super appreciated.

Delighted to hear that you're a Portal fan and that you're enjoying our free offering. We have actually got some pretty cool plans for our free offering (what we call our Open Access program) - well, at least we think they're cool - so please do keep your eyes peeled for that when it lands. If you haven't already done so, please check out our (relatively new) Mac app here: https://portal.app/mac and you'll get a vibe with what we are planning with our free offering on our iPhone, iPad and Apple Vision Pro apps.

With regards to your thoughts on price, we do totally understand. In fact, one of the driving forces behind our decision to maintain a free offering - without any time or usage restrictions - is we want the benefits we know Portal can bring to people's increasingly indoor lifestyles to be as accessible as possible. In many ways we believe a lot of the global environmental and ecological issues we face today can be traced back to our modern lives becoming extraordinarily disconnected from nature, to a point where we no longer see ourselves as part of nature but a part from it. This view and perspective has led us to develop an extractive and exploitative relationship with nature that's got the world in the trouble we're in today. And we firmly believe that bringing nature back home and into our lives, we can reconnect on a deeper level and hopefully repair our relationship with nature and how we see ourselves. Our ambition through Portal, is to do this virtually and hopefully allow people to experience and enjoy the magic of nature, at times and moments in our day when it's not possible to actually be out in nature. The hope is that will inspire a reconnection and encourage people to spend more time in nature. Science is increasingly demonstrating that even just looking at nature, or listening to it has the capacity to reduce anxiety & stress. To aid focus. To improve creativity. To help us relax. Help us sleep. Help us heal. It has even been shown to naturally lead to more altruistic behaviour. So that's where we are at this very early juncture in Portal's development and, believe us, we've got lots and lots more to come. But for Portal to have the impact we hope it will have in the world, in not just the positive impact it can make in individual people's lives but a larger ripple effect, we are striving to make Portal as accessible as possible...and we know pricing is a big impediment to that.

The major issue for us lies in the fact that we are a small team (of 4) that's self-funding and bootstrapping Portal's development. We don't want to seek external investment and beholden to the whims of external partners who are more profit-oriented (we've gone down that route in previous businesses) and equally we don't want to go down other funding routes like the inclusion of adverts or asking for our customers' personal details to then sell on to third party marketing companies - as this is in essence adopting what we see as the same exploitative and extractive behaviours that we are advocating need to change.

We do all the filming, content production, app development and R&D ourselves, which I know can be hard to believe, but is incredibly expensive - especially as our goal is to create ultra high quality experiences that are as true-to-life as possible that genuinely make you feel as though you are actually there in nature. To achieve this we use the latest, cutting-edge technology which is pretty costly and we also have server costs which can very quickly spiral. It's ultimately why our prices are what they are at the moment (which whilst on the premium side are comparable with other wellbeing apps in the App Store) but we are hoping that as we continue to grow we'll be able to reduce our prices with scale.

We have, as you rightly suspect, looked at other options such as piecemeal payments for individual portals and/or features but our research into other apps that have adopted this business model in the past has indicated that this is not sustainable. It's fine if the app is a side hustle and you're not solely reliant on the revenue to keep you in business, but it's a very different proposition for us. We've even investigated a "pay what you would like" subscription model, but again our research has indicated that this hasn't been successful and isn't conducive to a sustainable business with long term plans (plus it's not really compatible with the App Store's payment infrastructure). Notwithstanding, we are looking at other options, whilst still maintaining our free offering, and hopefully in the not too distant future we'll be able to find something that straddles the needs of a bootstrapping business with significant on-going costs and our ambition to make Portal as accessible to as many people as possible, so it can make the most impact in the world.

We do understand that that just might not work for people, who want more than what we currently offer with our free Open Access offering - we can only apologise for that. But for those that are happy, able and willing to support us on the journey we are on, they can rest assured that we are committed to continuing to develop and grow Portal into a force that makes a real and meaningful positive difference in people's live and hopefully the wider world too. That's the hope and dream that we are determined to achieve!

I hope that helps explain things, and where we stand currently. Again, we really, really appreciate your feedback and hope that we can in time deliver on what we hope to achieve.

Many thanks,

Stu, Andy, Nick & Tim - Team Portal.

Way too expensive. 43 dollars/ year. Must be a joke? And why not have a one time premium fee instead? I would have paid if priced reasonably. A bit messy layout.

Hi roggakrg18, thanks for taking the time to leave a review and we're sorry to hear that our current pricing structure doesn't work for you. We do understand that subscriptions aren't for everyone and it was a difficult decision we took after a lot of debate within the team. Most people don't realise we're actually a very small independent team building and funding the app ourselves - until 4 months ago there were only 2 of us working full time on the app (and now we're 3 + 1 part time)! We believe it's this independence that has allowed us to create an app that's truly different from others, but we're really only just getting started and have huge plans for what's coming next. We believe remaining independent will help us to take more creative risks, be more ambitious and continue to build an app our users love and we can be proud of. The problem is the reality of building apps is that they're incredibly expensive and often only undertaken by corporations or startups with huge budgets or investment - especially if like us they're doing all of the new filming and content production themselves with cinema-quality equipment :) We refuse to include ads in the app as well which further reduces our options for funding the development. The subscription pricing is a way to allow us to keep pushing the app's development and continually invest in content production in a more predictable and sustainable way than we've been able to do so far. We hope it will allow us to create a better app for our users and it's aimed at those who use Portal regularly (every day or every week) for which the price should actually be a fantastic deal for sleeping more soundly, focusing more effectively, or relaxing and reducing anxiety. If you haven't already done so, we'd recommend that you try our 7-day free Membership trial and hopefully you'll experience the positive benefits that we believe that Portal can bring to people's lives. We do understand that our pricing structure is less attractive for those who use Portal less often and we are keeping an eye on other options that we may be able to offer to ensure the broadest access possible while still allowing us to continue the development of the app. For now we've tried to offer a generous free tier with 6 portals available for free and all features enabled. Ultimately, we believe that this approach will allow us to build a better app for our users in the long term but we do appreciate your feedback as we're always keen on taking onboard any suggestions to help us improve. If you have any other thoughts or suggestions please do feel free to drop us a line at hello@portal.app. I hope that helps explain things and thanks for getting in touch. Best wishes, Nick.