Nitrodesk and MKDevelopment Show How To Support The Android Market
I, and a lot of others, were really annoyed when Google made the decision to switch from a 24 hour refund period to a 15 minute refund period for market apps. You can see complaints. Personally, I won’t buy an app without a trial period. 15 minutes is too short to determine if I want an application.
I’d like to highlight two developers who are doing something smart and providing extended trial periods for Android apps. Nitrodesk offers a 5 day fully functional version of their Exchange client Touchdown. Not only is Touchdown a good Exchange client that beats the pants off Androids native Exchange client, but the 5 day trial is more than enough time to try before you buy. They have been doing a 5 day trial since at least December 2010.
The other one is MK Development that makes TVShowFavs. It’s a decent app that show information and schedules about TV shows. I can’t say that I use it a lot and I wasn’t sure if I would buy it when it sent premium. It was free during the beta period, but last week, they switched, without warning to a paid model but they offered a 14 day, fully functional free trial. That motivated me to buy a key, $2.99, because I want to support developers that provide trial periods. But then MK Development received a lot of complaints for making switching to a paid model. I mean come on, it was beta, you had to know they were going to charge at some point. So in response what did they do? They made a ad-supported version that contained most of the features and a premium version. After the 14 day trial, the app would switch to a ad-supported version unless you bought a key.
That is a great move by MKDevelopment and more than fair to their customers.
I bought my premium key today.
