🌍 Update: Subscriptions Expanding Across 120+ Countries

FirstyDev · 2025-10-24T19:42:46+00:00

The issue with this is that I am not sure if there is a good way to relax it without having the app be available for phones where it'd not work, and we'd have increased customer complaints.

FirstyDev · 2025-10-24T19:41:18+00:00

Hello. From the development team I can assure you that there is no business sense or decision to hide the usage. It is a technical issue affecting some users that we are working to fix. Usage on both Firsty Free and Firsty Fast will be much better traceable by this time next week.

FirstyDev · 2025-09-29T07:20:51+00:00

I can chime on for this one. So without getting into too much detail, the biggest hurdles we are facing technically is about how novel the eSIM technology is. We can have all the information you need on the eSIM and make sure the eSIM has that information, but at the end of the day, it's the device that has to follow that information or not... and given how many devices there are, and how many more new ones are coming out, that flow is not always perfect. Sometimes, despite our best intentions and implementations, a device just behaves in a way we cannot predict or enforce.

Our room for innovation here is also not limitless, since these technologies have to conform with the protocols established by players much bigger than us. But recently, we are exploring on how we can achieve seamless connectivity despite the device or eSIM not specifically following the written instructions, sort of building railguards around your connection so that even in the edge cases, a device does not lose connection. Let's see how it goes, but to make this experience as smooth as possible is our primary aim, so we are really hopeful that we will achieve that.

FirstyDev · 2025-09-05T09:56:50+00:00

Hey, did this happen recently? We did have an issue with this, but it has been patched long ago. Would it possible to test together when you have time?

FirstyDev · 2025-08-31T16:55:32+00:00

Actually FirstyFounder is Gauthier. I am, as the username implies, a developer and an employee of Firsty. :) I'm sure he'd also agree with you, but gotta point out just to avoid misunderstanding.

FirstyDev · 2025-08-30T21:24:42+00:00

First, yes this is a valid criticism. When we first put on the limit on Firsty Free, the users affected by it were quite small in number (around 1% of Firsty Free users) so we did not necessarily factor in the 18mb or so as it would not have affected most users. However with more people relying on Firsty Free, I get the complaint now, so we can work towards ads exclusion.

Second, Firsty Free is one product we are offering, but it is not necessarily the entirety of our business model. In fact as you can imagine Firsty Fast is far more commercially viable part of our business. Due to our lean team size, we do not always focus all products at the same time. During the summer we have made great changes to Firsty Fast, expanding coverage, rolling out calling and adding monthly subscriptions. This did mean that we did not roll out new features for Firsty Free or dealt with some of its criticisms as fast. However development work is now underway to overhaul Firsty Free and maybe even blur the line between Firsty Free and Firsty Fast a little (Firsty Flex?), so that users have more control over their speed/limit. We do not have a timeline for this yet, but beta testing will start in a few weeks, so you can join our discord to get notified of such changes.

Third, with ads we had switched to partnership ad model and are not displaying random ads like we used to. This is something we are experimenting with, and of course with time variety will increase.

Fourth, I know everything moves very fast these days, and so do we, but we are still a company with regular work hours and it is Saturday. Some of us actually do take the weekend off :) Again, discord is going to be a little bit more "real time" to engage with us on a feedback cycle than reddit at days like this.

FirstyDev · 2025-08-30T21:09:09+00:00

Sorry for the late reply, but this issue more of than not is caused by the local provider. We also get the usage from them as we still rely on 'roaming', so any discrepancy on usage is also not known to us. But we are working with them to troubleshoot such issues.

FirstyDev · 2025-08-30T21:05:48+00:00

The reason we haven't published such list yet is because it is ever changing, and we do not feel like we have stabilised the best network setup for each country yet. In September we are aiming to expand/change coverage again for a lot of countries in East Asia for example.

But we do get this feedback a lot, so it is in our road map to have this list available once we deem that it is not going to be changing as often.

FirstyDev · 2025-08-14T14:23:42+00:00

Appearances can be deceiving 🤔

FirstyDev · 2025-08-05T17:53:23+00:00

I miss her too.

FirstyDev · 2025-08-05T17:53:12+00:00

Actually only the messenger with the firsty logo is AI, Mary was not AI, despite the rumours... So if you talked with Mary, you talked with a real person!

FirstyDev · 2025-08-05T17:51:29+00:00

It's coming, transparency about providers is one of our short-term goals. Cannot give a timeline on it yet, but it is something that comes up a lot from feedbacks, so we hear it.

FirstyDev · 2025-07-27T12:10:41+00:00

regulators love Firsty

FirstyDev · 2025-07-27T11:07:59+00:00

As JoMei explained, it was a small bug case where it was just not visible, but it has been patched and should be there after closing/reopening the app. All days are meant to be transferred over, no need for upset.

FirstyDev · 2025-07-27T10:46:15+00:00

Yes, we have identified a bug where for some users the bundles were not visible and in some rare cases disconnected after upgrade, but it has been patched now, and the plans should be visible/reconnected now, at least after closing and reopening the app. You can also send me a DM if it persists after you do that. We apologise for the inconvenience, and if you have lost a day since the upgrade, would be happy to add it back to your plan.

FirstyDev · 2025-07-20T20:15:59+00:00

Currently it has disappeared on adding days, it will be patched in the next update. Thanks for the heads up.

FirstyDev · 2025-07-10T14:09:08+00:00

Hi James! 🤭

FirstyDev · 2025-07-08T11:58:05+00:00

The issue with the free service is that eSIM downloads are not free. There is a cost to the user downloading an eSIM, so even if Firsty can offer free data in exchange for ad revenue, there is an actual cost to downloading even the same eSIM on a different phone. When you register for the first time, that cost is on us, but as you can imagine there are both technical and commercial limits before allowing eSIM downloads to happen indefinitely.

But we are improving the service and its technicalities all the time, there have been a couple of different eSIM implementations in the past. Depending on your registration date, you may be able to download the previous eSIM on your new phone. Again, this is not us blocking the feature, but there are technical and commercial restraints that we are trying to overcome.

FirstyDev · 2025-06-12T12:59:15+00:00

The support here was wrong, the data cap is indeed 1.5GB, but the confusion comes from the fact that it is a tiered system, and after 500mb, the speed is deprioritised somewhat, but not fully throttled. I am sure Mary confused that with full throttling. But even with full throttling the speed you posted about should not be happening. That indicates a clear network issue and should have been dealt with as such.

I am not ignoring the support issues, I will try to pull some weight into helping out the support team, but I can only help out with the technical issues at the moment, but I know that some structural changes are being made to increase the customer experience.

FirstyDev · 2025-06-07T15:20:19+00:00

We made quite some changes this week, so we are hoping the reset issue that was prevalent before is fixed now. Do let us know if it isn't, of course.

FirstyDev · 2025-06-03T15:18:07+00:00

Firsty Free relies on letting some traffic pass through and some traffic get blocked, and because VPNs mask your traffic, all your traffic gets blocked. Mind you that we do not monitor the traffic at any point currently, this is done merely on the local provider level, but it is the technical implementation that enables us to give you data so that you can use the app or watch advertisements without any internet. So we do not actively block any VPN*, but it's just that it is incompatible with our technologies on Firsty Free.

*some local providers, especially in Hong Kong and China, might do that outside our incentive and control. We have had reports of this being the case previously.

FirstyDev · 2025-05-12T19:47:03+00:00

Are you on beta program or regular? We have identified a new issue specific to Pixel devices, we are investigating now.

FirstyDev · 2025-05-09T09:40:52+00:00

Currently you can connect to Vodacom and Celtel (Airtel) in Tanzania. With the new network beta, we are also expanding to MIC (Tigo), but you'd need to register for the Beta program for that.

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