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What would make you pay $10 for my web app, RoamCalc
I recently completed adding device syncing and (paid) account creation to my natural language web app, RoamCalc.
The app is a freemium app, and here is what everyone can do, regardless if they have a paid account or not:
The app is a freemium app, and here is what everyone can do, regardless if they have a paid account or not:
- 🧮 basic arithmitic
- 💴 currency conversion (32 currencies supported)
- ⏰ timezone conversion
- 📏 unit conversion (distance, weight
- 1️⃣ variable assignment
- 📱 pwa support
The app is currently in a freemium model. Without paying, you can perform all calculations, but are limited to two notes/documents that are stored on your device only.
Buying a paid account for $9.99 – 50% off my ideal, lifetime pricing – enables unimited notes/documents and cloud syncing across any device you log in with:
- ☁️ cloud/device syncing unlimited notes
- ✍️ natural language calculator
Thoughts are appreciated 🍗🙏
👋 Join WIP to participate
I usually do all the operations mentioned in the google search input form and it works well. So not sure about paying for it.
Personally for me i will just create a proejct in chatgpt and do all of that myself.
Not trying to disappoint you but i don't think i ever pay for this.
I think you have target the people who are not as tech saavy as people in wip.
also try /r/sideProject to see what other will say.
I hate to feel like I'm piling on, but I also use Google, the calculator app, or ChatGPT for these.
I'm curious. Before you took it from side project to deciding to monetize, what type of market research and product fit research did you do? Were you able to talk to people in that market to see what they need and what they'd pay and what services (or usage limits) they'd pay for?
If so, I'd definitely go back to that subset of people and get more clarity.
I just actually looked at a look at the site. I'm so not tech savvy, and it takes a while for me to get used to new tools. I'm guessing for that part, at least, that's your target audience since most people would simply go to Google to figure it out.
I think the setup you have is really unintuitive, and I bounced pretty quickly after poking around a bit.
What I suggest:
- defining your target audience - their problems and use-cases for this
- having actual conversations with them - would they use it, would they pay
- forming some kind of test/focus group where they record their screen and use the app for the first time (critical that it's the FIRST time) so you see where they hesitate, where they mess up, etc. Better still if you can invest in a heat map to see what they're actually doing on the site. Have a debrief after to ask them what they liked, disliked, and struggled with so you know what to improve. If they're frustrated or struggling, actually ask them, "At what point would you give up and go to Google or AI? And what changes would need to be made to keep you on the app?"
I personally would no pay because I always go to Claude and use the voice chat to ask for quick things like this.
What is the main use case you were thinking for this?
Other than that, I love the minimalistic style you created. However I do find it's not intuitive to use for an everyday user. If one does not follow the input rules you have in the homepage, you will not get a result (which is frustrating imo)
My initial reaction was that it's the wrong question to ask and that I already have other ways to make calculations.
But after checking the website roamcalc.com I realize it's like a web-based version of Soulver/Numi, two apps I really like. The fact you can offer this as a webpage is really cool.
Now, personally I'd still use Numi since I already have it anyway and I prefer native apps over web-based apps. But I think that you have an advantage in that web-based is more easily shareable.
So I'd focus on that advantage. Try to make it like GitHub Gists, for calculations. Promote to accountants, procurement departments, real estate agents, etc. Basically anyone working with calculations and needing to share them with others.
Also promote it in sub-Reddits like FIRE, etc. Create templates for them (retirement calculators, etc) that they can customize. Also do SEO keyword research for "calculator" and make templates for all of them. Try to get them ranking in Google.
Search for "how to calculate X" posts, turn those into templates, and share them with the author. They might be willing to link to them. Credit them on the template as well.
I think if you're able to find a specific demographic that gets (business) value from it, then you'll automatically start receiving feature requests. Some which you could charge for.
Some guesses would be team support, privacy controls, SSO, etc. But those are just GUESSES and you shouldn't build anything until people actually ask for it and seem willing to pay for it.
I'm glad you could see the vision and potential for this because I felt bad I couldn't see it beyond a simple calculator. It makes more sense now that you laid it out.
I second your SEO recommendations 🙌🏼
Thanks everyone for the comments! To address most of what people are asking: I did not do any market or user research on this 😂 I just wanted a web-based Soulver replacement for myself that had a better UI for swapping between documents.
Adding a payment gate was done on-a-whim since that was when I was adding features that could theoretically cost me money – Supabase integration – and I wanted to see if anyone would pay $9.99 for it (so far the answer is no).
This would be more useful if I can have documents shareable in some way, as @marc mentioned. So I might explore that.
Tech wise, this was mostly vibe-coded with Cusor and Claude Code in a few days. Much of the hand-holding was related to the editor parser engine and Stripe integration.