After much deliberation I’ve decided to take Diving Buddy from a paid-only app to being a freemium app. This means the app itself will be free, and some of the calculators will be In-App Purchases (IAPs).

There’s been a lot of controversy regarding IAPs lately - mostly when used in games. I tend to agree with most of the issues. If you take a look at the iOS App Store Top Grossing chart, the top few apps haven’t actually changed in the last year or so. How do the games do this? Well, their IAPs are built on top of the “consumable” IAP - this is essentially the “bag of coins” you might see around. Many users will buy these over and over.

Diving Buddy uses the “non-consumable” IAP, meaning once bought, the IAP is bought forever. You will never have to re-purchase. The other great thing is that the calculators in Diving Buddy fit perfectly with this model; not all users will want all calculators, so they need only be the ones they want. For those users that do want everything, they can simply buy them all at a discount.

As this post goes out, Diving Buddy is in review. Once the update goes out, the app will be FREE. All References and Guides within the app will also be free. The Maximum Operating Depth (MOD) calculator and the Weight of Air in a Cylinder calculator will also be free. The other five calculators will be IAPs.