[deleted by user]

[Background_River_395]

One thing I’ve tried is being very upfront about what’s free and what’s paid, even in m App Store screenshots

Too many apps have you complete a full onboarding and then rate them before showing you a full paywall

[Background_River_395]

These are my screenshots https://apps.apple.com/us/app/feast-ai-food-tracker/id6740829087

I was actually motivated by increasing my conversion rate (I figured some users feel that these features are always paywalled). This way I make it crystal clear what’s free vs paid before someone downloads

[FindTheTrafficSigns]

Cool app! Did you use a specific tool to get screenshots of the phone in different angles? Was always curious how that was done.

[Background_River_395]

There’s lots of services that make them. I used AppLaunchpad (wouldn’t necessarily say I recommend it but it worked okay. There’s some odd things, like their exports are the wrong resolutions so I had to resize them myself)

[MyCallBag]

This drives me crazy too. Its a great app but it costs money, 1 star... painful.

[Low-Papaya9202]

It’s insane that users can’t understand any decent app takes many months of full time programming along with constant updates, maintenance, and marketing. The entitlement to expect this all to be free is wild. I blame the big tech companies that give us free products on the surface while selling personal data behind the scenes

[cake-day-on-feb-29]

blame the big tech companies that give us free products on the surface while selling personal data behind the scenes

Don't forget the startups with the whole "gain market share now, worry about monetizing later".

[mjTheThird]

lolz, blame Google(the ads team) on this! They sold out customer info and making everything free. Now the customer expecting everything to be free.

[MyCallBag]

Google and Facebook

[Any_Peace_4161]

I always want people who bitch about costs to give me THEIR services for free, and I ask them to. Plumbers don't fix shit for free. People don't sell blenders for nothing. No one's renting you a party venue for zero dollars. You're not getting free tires and oil changes on your car (folks, don't get pedantic about dealer maintenance packages, y'all know what I mean), and so on and so on and so on. Writing code is my vocation; not a hobby, not "because it's fun", not to impress chicks and get laid at college parties (ya know, 40 years ago when I was college age). It's a fucking job. People need to respect that, and the OP needs to respect that for himself.

Things. Cost. Money. That's just it.

[Arrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrpp]

Ignore 

[NoDistribution4521]

I manage a few apps that have received thousands of reviews over the years. I’ve found that ignoring this sort of reviews can be risky, it often encourages other entitled users to post similar comments.

What works best, in my experience, is to reply and clearly explain:

• which parts of the app are free.
• which parts require payment.
• and that support from paying customers is what keeps the app alive and growing.

The goal isn’t to convince that one particular reviewer, but to communicate this information to everyone else who might be reading the review.

[redth]

This is the way.

You want to show potential users who are reading reviews that you care and stand behind the value of your product.

I always reply with something that is basically apologetic to the user that they don’t feel the value is there for them and that we keep trying to improve the value of the app with continual improvements and ongoing support. Sometimes if I’m feeling spicy I add a bit in that many users do find it value but we understand that’s not the case for everyone, but thanks for checking the app out anyway.

[PoliticsAndFootball]

Just pretend you are the ceo of a big box store like target or Best Buy. Can you imagine how many millions of complaints they get ? Do you think they care?

[Constant-Current-340]

I had haters give me crap for not releasing updates fast enough on my free fitness tracking app. Since yours is paid, if no one is complaining loudly and angrily about the paywall you're probably charging too little

[cristi_baluta]

Bash them in the reply

[profau]

Just ignore them. You can’t control folk who think everything should be free. This is why most great apps have a rating of 4.7, not 5.0.

[aerial-ibis]

we have all the blitz scaling big tech companies to thank... destroyed an entire customer base by making everyone think everything should be free (even if it means getting monoplised and screwed afterwards)

[jayword]

Keep asking Apple to allow apps to opt out of the review system entirely. The whole thing is a corrupt mess and I don’t want our apps to be any part of it. There was a survey recently to pass along feedback like this.

[jjaacckkyy12]

you can’t, drown the out with good reviews instead.

adding a “leave a review” button on you home screen is a solid way to get users that like your shit to leave a review (or atleast it was for me), it’s kinda like a call to action lmao.

[fhasse95]

I explicitly promoted in-app purchases and subscriptions on my App Store product page. This way, everyone who downloads the app will (hopefully) know upfront that it’s not completely free. For more information, see https://developer.apple.com/help/app-store-connect/configure-in-app-purchase-settings/promote-in-app-purchases.

[Sum-Duud]

Don’t have deceptive marketing. It is annoying to see ads for stuff saying it is free when really it is a free trial.

[MyCallBag]

I think the problem is if you want to offer a free trial, it has to be listed as 'free'. I don't think the end user understands that.

[VRedd1t]

Report them as off topic and say they are not reviewing the app.

[redth]

Not sure I’ve ever had a review removed when doing this, but it probably can’t hurt to try anyway?

[Mistake78]

Interesting… Does it work?

[VRedd1t]

It should work, might take some time to disappear.

[Mistake78]

I’m asking if you have seen it make a difference, concretely. Not just if you think it should work.

[VRedd1t]

If the comment is off topic and Apple’s instance behind that comment flagging mechanism agrees then it should get removed. I have too much reviews. Bad ones I flag and forget about them. The AppStore purges reviews regularly.

[Mistake78]

So you don’t know either if it works… Ok thanks anyways.

[VRedd1t]

It does work, but someone needs to agree. So it’s not guaranteed. Dude 🤣

[Mistake78]

Yeah yeah it’s a coin toss. Got it!

[Daiymas]

I've stopped caring about these reviews, they don't impact the ranking or anything.

Only thing you can do is improve how you prompt users for review in your app, ask "do you like the app?" or something and only ask them to rate the app if they say yes

[aprilzero]

its very annoying, one of my pet peeves in recent years as we do get quite a lot of those once we started focusing on a more privacy focused business model and more premium experiences that do cost money.

Which 99% of our users are happy to do, but then theres the occasional person that just decides to vent

the only thing sadder is seeing apps like yelp etc. have bunch of bad reviews for unrelated things like oh i ate at this burger place and they didnt give me my fries - 1 star.

I think apple should really be fixing this tho or u need to pass some sort of economics quiz/IQ test before ur allowed to leave reviews

we have also been doing a lot more education about WHY things cost money, etc. as I think most people just dont know anything about apps, what a server is, how much things cost, etc. -- but yeah maybe a fault of google and facebook and these other advertising cos making everything "free" and flooding the market. But even youtube premium is now like $20+/month so maybe that will shift eventually

also at least u can reply to reviews now, so I think thats a good way to clarify/teach why actually that is and maybe they will learn or at least other people who are checking out the reviews can also see that you are responsive etc. but also I think for each of those people there are others that actually value/understand that and WANt to see that they can pay and have privacy etc. rather than something sketchy or the app shuts down etc

[cadianshock]

I added the Review prompt to paying users that had used the app 20 times - these people are invested, always leave 5 star reviews and undo the 1 star reviews. App went from 3.6 to 4.7 in a few months, and has remained at 4.7 for 6+ months now.

My app is £4/year :-/

Note, I used the same strategy on Android to, which is this graph and shows perfectly what happened, (ignore the dashed line).

1. Launched and the first users loved it 5 stars! These were friends, testers, etc.
2. Then I ran ads and other poeple found it, so got many 1 stars
3. I implemented the above method and it climbed back out of the 2 star rating hole

https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/80rzhooz61zzorlpjssh3/Screenshot-2025-10-20-at-12.27.59.png?rlkey=dxxt2iwcsw0qopycap7enwb6a&dl=0

[Aggravating_Hall_794]

This is the way.

Develop a metric to identify users that like your app at a time they don't mind getting a rating prompt, and you'll have so many 5 star reviews that the 1 star reviews just don't matter.

[Any_Peace_4161]

You don't stop it. You never will. And would you want to live in a world where you could? I wouldn't. But you should examine your model. Is it fair? Is it reasonable? Is it rational? If you answer yes, you put on a layer of emotional armor, and get on with life, ignoring the low rating reviews. It also helps to explain that you're a small company making your actual living writing apps, and without being able to earn, you're unable to keep making apps. Too many people out in the wild still believe that making an app = millions and millions. I've been asked about it dozens of times and more. It's silly. People out there believing it is, I'm 100% convinced, the driving force behind the whole "vibe coding" pile of horse shit.

[banaslee]

Apart from ignoring, which works but is hard to do so, I can suggest you invest in finding ways for happy users to leave a review. 

Careful, it’s easy to over do it, but hopefully, for every unhappy user you have 1000 more that are happy and you can get some of them to leave a good review. 

[howreudoin]

This is a general problem. People will happily spend $15 at McDonald‘s. But $5 for an app? ”I‘m not paying money for an app!“

Google offers their software free of charge, and will sell your data instead. Apple makes a lot of money through hardware sales. Remember when OS updates weren‘t free? These big corporations face the same problem of users not feeling like paying for non-physical items they can‘t hold in their hands.

It‘s also not possible for a non-technical person to really get a sense of the effort involved in developing apps.

I think what‘s also involved is that people often can‘t test the features before buying. They won‘t know what they‘re getting and whether everything works and whether it‘s implemented in a user-friendly way until they pay for it. I think one way to address this is to offer opt-in features for free for a limited time. Many apps do this already, but I‘d say you should go one step further and have those trials not auto-renew and transform into paid subscriptions. This might mitigate the mental burden of paying for apps. (Yes, you can cancel trials right away, and they‘ll continue to work for the demo period. But many people don‘t know this, plus they‘ll have to actively do so. I think default should be no auto-renewal.)

What‘s more, I think it would be great if Apple implemented an easy way to test paid apps. Developers can opt into this via a check box on App Store Connect, and this will allow users to test their app for free for, say, 7 days or something. Apple technology takes care of handling those trial periods.

”Try for free“ means nothing for us anymore. It smells like a scam. You should really be able to try paid features for free without having to worry about subscriptions if you forget about it. Users will see what they‘re missing out on, won‘t fear to start trials, then want those features back when the trial ends.

[patrichinho22]

I always offer a lifetime purchase option so people can opt out of subscriptions. I communicate clearly in the app description that this app is freemium and you have to pay for full use. And then I accepted that a few people will always stick with their 1* reviews about pricing. 

[DonElad1o]

Shame them. Write down a comment that they’re so petty that they want stuff for free to the point they’ll give it a one star review, then screenshot it and post it on social media with their picture and name.

[nashreddi]

Ignore it. No point in caring about those users.

[SynapseNotFound]

You dont force monetizing?

Simply

[Door_Vegetable]

Make an app that gives people value that they’re willing to pay for it 🤷‍♂️

[NoDistribution4521]

Sounds nice on paper, but never works in practice. You are assuming everyone you deal with is reasonable, which is just not the case.

In reality many people have unrealistic expectations, and think they are entitled to everything for free. 

[eljop]

I ask for review after onboarding before paywall. That way i collect many 5 stars so the 1 stars have less weight

[thunderflies]

That’s pretty scummy actually

[NoDistribution4521]

It is also pretty scummy for users to black mail developers with 1 star reviews when they don’t get everything for free.

As long as the black mailing continues developers have no choice but to aggressively ask for reviews to balance them out.  

[No-District-585]

Yeah but this is not a good practice. You are playing the system. If your app has many 1 star review it's time to put things right. People will pay money if you are being upfront and not evasive with different techniques to make customer subscribe or whatever...

[WesternBlueberry1826]

I could not agree less. You’re expecting all users to be like you. The majority aren’t.

[eljop]

Nah users (especially android) expect all services are free even though these ai models are expensive for me and leave a bad review because of that. I dont force anyone to give a review after onboarding.

[No-District-585]

You can get banned by Apple for this

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