Knitandnote: Knitting App

I spent days cataloging my yarn stash after having to move it into storage. I loved being able to see what i had on hand without having to dig it out of my basement. After not crocheting for a while, i went to the app to check if I had the yarn needed for an Etsy order. I was asked to log back in and give them my demographic information… then hit with a $100 annual subscription! You guys are insane if you think your target market has enough money to spend $100 on an APP after spending all their extra money on a bunch of yarn! I've never left an app review in my life but i have never been this annoyed and frustrated with an app. Not everybody wants their stuff on the cloud of connected to and email you can spam for your mailing lists. Stop forcing consumers to pay for a subscription for a service they don't need. I saw they replied to another review with, "none of your data has been deleted or taken away. Everything you've added is still safely stored in your account. The change is about access to functionality, not ownership of your information.” The issue is, you’ve locked my information in a similar manner to RANSOM-WARE. I would’ve loved to have gotten a copy of my yarn stash to store on my OWN physical drives but why would they do that if they can charge their long time users $100? Don’t spend your money on this app, if you want a community go on internet forums or in person events. If you want to track your stash, don’t use a service for a glorified excel spreadsheet. If you’re reading a pattern, use a free PDF viewer.

A few recommendations for this app to truly be wonderful. One, the option to buy patterns individually in the app instead of subscribing. Some people just don’t like subscriptions and that should be okay. Second, a button added to all patterns available in the app to request it in another specified language. That way the designer can see how many people want it in specific languages and decide if it’s worth it to publish that version. Right now you can’t communicate with the designers via their patterns at all. Also, in addition to that button, maybe a messenger feature to ask the designer modification questions too. Those things the designers could review and potentially offer feedback or even additional patterns! Okay and then also in the pattern details a section underneath the yarn that says what weight the yarn is. That way we don’t have to look it up every time to see if we have a yarn that would work already. Really loving the potential in this app though. It’s def a much better format than the ravelry website

I have been using the app for a few months and loved it. Didn’t subscribe since I didn’t want to spend the money and I didn’t mind the ads, however I’m incredibly disappointed now because when I opened the app today, it shows that a lot of changes have been made regarding the accessibility to several tools of the app, which are now ONLY available through an annual subscription. It’s a little bit infuriating that after months of using the app a certain way, I now have to pay to use the same tools that were available before. I can’t add more patterns and I can’t upgrade my yarn stash without subscribing. If it was like this from the begging I wouldn’t have an issue, but because it was free for so long, putting restrictions now feels wrong and it makes me want to delete the app altogether. It’s sad because so far I’ve really enjoyed it and recommended it to a lot of friends, but now I certainly won’t recommend it and highly doubt that I’ll continue to use it myself. I understand that it’s a way for the developers to make a profit (which I assume was almost nonexistent before), but as I stated before, making such significant changes after months of regular use is not the right approach. Investing in advertising or adding other components to increase engagement and subscriptions would’ve been far more beneficial than current decision.