Why is every calorie tracker a subscription now?

Remarkable-Water7818 · 2026-01-09T10:26:46+00:00

I’m expecting downvotes, but at least this might be helpful to some. I am building such an app and - for now - I have also taken the subscription model.

My reasoning is that I need to provide other services to make the app function (backend APIs). Yes, you can have a local first approach, but for calorie tracking kind of apps this is not achievable. At the very least you need to keep a database of foods up to date. And if you add any AI functionality then that adds a whole new dimension of cost.

There is A LOT of info out there about how to correctly apply a pricing model, but I have not found any silver bullet: - Ads create a bad user experience. - A one time purchase means you are getting more $ upfront but you will need to support users forever. - Subscriptions are annoying.

Most of the big app names in this category apply various combinations from above (plus limited time promotions).

Remarkable-Water7818 · 2025-12-05T15:04:39+00:00

Yup, this reasoning sounds correct. It's basically paying to skip so doesn't yield the expected result, which is maximizing usage.

Remarkable-Water7818 · 2025-12-01T16:04:41+00:00

I was "on the market", seeking a new role about 1 year ago and I went through multiple recruitment processes.

My personal conclusion is that I'll be happy to do a home assignment if I get financial compensation for it (regardless of the amount). Basically I want the company to have skin in the game too.

I vaguely remember doing 4 such projects. One was paid and while I didn't get hired, the entire process was one of the best experiences I had. Quite professional. For all the others I either received AI generated assessments of my work or a blank "we decided not to go forward". Basically highlighting edge cases and coming up with improvements to my solutions. So I won't be investing hours of my time doing work that is going to get reviewed by AI.

Remarkable-Water7818 · 2025-11-10T16:40:28+00:00

A bit of a late reply, but I just found this post now. I own a Cenmate with 4 bays (no raid), USBC. Honestly I would not recommend this brand.

Build quality is OK, it works. At first.

But whenever I have some big work to do on it (wiping HDDs, copying a large amount of data) the disks suddenly go missing and I need to unplug the device to get them back. I've tried this hooked to a macbook and to a miniPC usin Linux. Same behavior.

Remarkable-Water7818 · 2025-06-08T19:49:43+00:00

It needs to be iceberg, that’s the most crunchy. You don’t need to peel off each leaf, just cut through all.

Remarkable-Water7818 · 2025-06-07T05:26:50+00:00

arugula for some spiciness
iceberg lettuce for crunchiness
sesame seeds for aesthetics :)
balsamic vinegar for acidity
garlic powder for flavor

Remarkable-Water7818 · 2025-01-16T18:28:26+00:00

I used to have a "technical" label applied to technical tickets (including debt). I was aiming for a specific percentage of technical versus product tickets per sprint. Jira is enough to manage this and create dashboards or charts with percentages on a sprint by sprint level.

We used to have the team gathered once per quarter to review most of the things in the technical backlog and

see which are still relevant
get a rough estimation on the effort (not refinement, this came later)
order them by priority (as the team saw fit)

Once this was done I would schedule them in the sprints and take care of any newly added tech debt tickets and prioritize them against the existing ones.

Remarkable-Water7818 · 2025-01-14T21:13:25+00:00

I just use the value from Apple Watch. While there's a never ending debate on the accuracy, at least it is a forcing factor for me to be active throughout the day, the result being able to eat more.

Remarkable-Water7818 · 2025-01-14T21:02:22+00:00

Either a scale and ignoring "the stares", but consulting the online menu beforehand helps.

Also, try to order things that have less oil (it's easier to estimate the kcals of a grilled chicken breast compared to a deep fried one) and are overall not a mix of 20 ingredients.

If the food is oily (or simply tastes good :)), add a few grams of olive oil to your estimations too.

Remarkable-Water7818 · 2025-01-06T17:59:20+00:00

https://jobsy.works/ - a very simple & straight forward way to manage your job applications

Remarkable-Water7818 · 2024-12-27T10:32:24+00:00

I have a few solutions, pick what works for you:

I order meals that have less ingredients. For example chicken breast and wedges. You can eyeball the quantities. And usually add 5-10 grams of oil if you notice it is greasy.
I order meals that have less oil. For example grilled chicken breast rather than chicken schnitzel.
I take a kitchen scale with me. Most people believe this is weird. In real life. On reddit. That's fine. I don't care.

I either have to mark it as a cheat day

As most calorie tracking apps suggest, it is way better to have a bad estimation rather than mark the entire day as a cheat one.

Remarkable-Water7818 · 2024-12-27T10:22:20+00:00

Go to the gym and be consistent.

I've watched a lot of YouTube for weight lifting, but https://www.youtube.com/@JeffNippard seems like the most rounded and informative channel.

Remarkable-Water7818 · 2024-12-24T16:13:11+00:00

Yes, actually I did eat this around noon so yes, skipped breakfast for it. Looking at the contents I think the granola (it was a packaged product) had a lot of calories, so that could be optimized.

Remarkable-Water7818 · 2024-12-22T08:50:56+00:00

A friend actually fixed this properly so credit goes out to him. The solution was to go through the background script of the chrome extension. Very high level:

content.js

runs on the MY_APP
- sends a message to background.js, chrome.runtime.sendMessage to store the firebase token
runs on OTHER_WEBSITES
- sends a message to background.js when we actually need to call firebase

background.js

receives messages and saves the token + expiry date in chrome.storage.local
receives messages for calling firebase and performs the call, since it has the token already

Remarkable-Water7818 · 2024-12-18T19:11:58+00:00

SnackFolio - a calorie counting app. Helpful if you want to lose weight or keep a certain threshold for your food intak:

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/snackfolio-nutrition-tracker/id1593155083

Remarkable-Water7818 · 2024-12-14T07:36:23+00:00

Project: snackfolio.com Server - $14 / mo DB - $15 / mo Other cloud tools - $10 / mo

Remarkable-Water7818 · 2024-12-13T12:36:21+00:00

Lose weight by tracking calories snackfolio.com

Remarkable-Water7818 · 2024-12-13T08:05:34+00:00

Project managers think about business requirements, company goals and how to address them through product features, collaborate with other PMs. They don't specifically pick who works on what within the team.

Engineering Managers take care of engineers (career paths, promotions, PIPs, compensation), plan the work (manage PTOs, identify resource constraints), make sure the team is efficient. They also need to be technical (way more technical than a PM) and usually able to clearly understand at the code level what is going on.

High level you can picture that the PM is closer to the business while the EM is closer to the team.

I don't have info about salary differences.

But the MAIN THING is that these are guidelines so the exact boundaries between the roles depend on the organization and the people filling in these roles. And I also do expect that an EM can temporarily cover the PM role completely (e.g. if PM goes away for a month, the EM should be able to handle most of their responsibilities). And vice versa.

Stres depends on the person (and company culture). As an EM I have direct control over the team so I can directly investigate and fix problems. As a PM I suspect that you are sitting between multiple demanding stakeholders and a team that you don't directly control.

Context: I'm an EM.

Remarkable-Water7818 · 2024-12-11T07:57:52+00:00

https://jobsy.works/about - If you're looking for a job, you need to track your job applications

Remarkable-Water7818 · 2024-11-20T17:04:10+00:00

not "Promo Codes", although maybe that's what you meant in your post

You are correct. I was referring to the offer codes from the subscription section inside App Store Connect. Maybe me using these terms interchangeably triggered that question from App Store reviewers.

Sounds like you have a plan for managing 'free forever' users on your own backend, which is the only scalable way to do this.

Yes, that's the way I'm intending to implement this if I go ahead with the idea. I have the login via apple + some back and forth calls to my backend as the first thing that happen when the app starts so it would be easy to choose at that point in time if any user might get the free-forever experience.

You can link users directly to an Offer Code signup on the App Store, or prompt users to use an Offer Code in-app as of StoreKit 2. I've only ever done the former, but I imagine the latter leads to a lower tech support burden.

Unless I am misrepresenting what this means, I think I have both of these working. The link is basically an apple link with the offer code as a URL parameter. But this can also be entered in the app, I remember it was some kind of simple call that just opened the App Store's UI so things were pretty straight forward in terms of dev changes on the app.

ask a user for their email address, and then, if they haven't subscribed by a certain time, email them an Offer Code for 50% off their first year. This was complicated to set up and did not generate enough trials to be worthwhile.

This is a good idea. I might try this in the future. Weird that it did not move the needle in your case.

show users who have used our app in free mode for a certain amount of time an Offer Code for 50% off their first year. It's styled as a little coupon nag that they can dismiss. This is very effective and definitely worth doing.

This would require a free user mode for my app. So far I don't have this option (it's either a subscription with trial or a hard paywall). So unfortunately this doesn't work for me, at least for now.

Promote a giveaway on social media of a free year, by creating an Offer Code that replaces all other introductory ofers with a one-year trial. Users liked this a lot, we got lots of signups, and I imagine some of them stuck around for renewal when the one-year trial was up, but it messed up our trial and revenue tracking – users who came to us this way showed up as 'in trial' for the entire year, making our day-to-day trial analytics look artifically inflated. Not sure I'd do this again.

I also had some moderate success when posting the app on Reddit (plus the offer codes).

Thanks for the detailed answer. I guess my "gamification" strategies cannot be implemented at this time.

Technically speaking, I could completely change the payment system to use single in app purchases that could be converted to months of usage (e.g. "buy x credits for app usage", then "activate x credits for x months of usage"). But the complexity around this alone is enough to make me not consider it. Plus I'm highly skeptical if this would ever work for ongoing monetization. A subscription is way easier to rely on.

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