Nobody likes paying for subscriptions. So many services these days are $10 per month here, $19.99 per month there, and it all adds up to more money than you ever expected to spend on software and services. To build a sustainable business, however, subscriptions are king. They help make revenue more predictable so that development can continue and the operation can expand to serve more users. Though we at Encamera are also not fans of subscriptions, we recognized that there was an advantage to our revenue predictability if we removed our pay-once-use-forever lifetime plan. This turned out to be true, and the revenue became more steady. This was good for us, but we got a lot of feedback from users that they wanted the lifetime plan back. It turns out - just like us - our users are just plain sick of subscriptions.
This is why, starting today, we are re-introducing two lifetime plans that will both help sustain our business and make our users happy. We now offer Lifetime Unlimited and Lifetime Limited purchases. Lifetime Unlimited is a one-time purchase of $149.99 —it allows you to use the app with no restrictions, forever. The price is steep, certainly, but this is for the die-hard security and privacy users who want to support the development of Encamera and never pay again. Then, there is the Lifetime Limited plan for $49.99. After paying once, you will get access to core premium features forever, and enjoy unlimited albums and image uploads. After purchasing, any major features released in the year following will be yours to use forever. When we release a major update after the year is up, you will need to pay a bit more to get another year of upgrades. The price for upgrades after the first year will be $9.99, which will also be a one-time fee.
How Lifetime Limited Works
Think of this like traditional desktop software: you pay once and own what you get, plus any new features we release in the next 12 months. Here's an example:
You purchase Lifetime Limited on January 1st, 2026
All features available on January 1st are yours forever
We release a new feature on June 1st, 2026 (6 months later) — you get it forever
We release another feature on January 2nd, 2027 (1 year + 1 day later) — you don't get it automatically
To access features released after your first year, you can pay $9.99 for another year of updates
You'll always have full access to the features you already received — they never expire. You only pay again if you want the newest features we build. This way, you only pay if we release something you actually want to use.
We see the Lifetime Limited plan as a win-win for both our users and for us. You will only need to pay if you see value in the new features that we build, and the app will have the same core functionality forever. We will continue to make the app more stable and usable, and all users will get those updates. Only large new features, like photo editing, shared photo albums, and lockdown mode will be restricted by this new plan, and only if they are released one year after you purchased your Lifetime Limited plan. Our subscription plans will remain the same and will offer premium access for as long as the subscription is active.
We are not investor funded — we are funded by you, the users. This makes our decision process different from those who are looking to scale as fast as possible for the most return. We're really excited to give our users a way to reduce their number of subscriptions by one, and we appreciate the feedback that many of you have given us. If you've got feature requests, please add them to https://encamera.featurebase.app/, and don't hesitate to contact us at support@encamera.app. If you like Encamera already, leaving a review in the App Store is a huge help to us!
Alex & Mihai
