Pier 2.0 Goes Paid — and You Pick the Price

Pier 2.0 shipped today, and with it the free promo period that ran since 1.0 comes to an end. The pricing model is a little unusual: pay what you want — $0.99 minimum, $6.99 suggested, you type the amount at checkout, no tiers. One-time purchase, activates on up to 5 Macs, includes every 2.x update.

This post covers three decisions: where the paywall line goes, why PWYW, and what happens to existing users.

The line: looking is free, acting and insight are paid

The worst thing a paywall can do is cripple the product. Pier’s gating follows a single rule: everything read-only stays free; actions and insight go Pro.

The free tier keeps Pier fully functional as a resource monitor: the ports list, the process list, system stats, the live menu-bar readout — everything a 1.x user ever “looked at” remains unlocked.

Pro covers two kinds of features:

• Actions: killing processes, starting/stopping Docker containers and Homebrew services, managing Launch Agents;
• Insight: the service-identification chip on each port (is that 3000 a Vite or a Next.js?), working-directory display and jump-to-editor, Docker container name resolution, and the menu-bar badge for failed Launch Agents.

The nice property of this line is that it explains itself: the free tier answers what is happening, Pro answers what this thing is, and here’s the button to deal with it. A non-paying user still gets a complete monitor, not a demo that nags.

How to lock things: disable, don’t hide

Every gated feature stays visible in the UI, grayed out, with a · Pro suffix on context-menu items. The kill button deliberately shows a gray stop.circle instead of lock.fill — a screen full of padlocks looks terrible.

Two reasons not to hide. Honesty: users should see the full shape of the product before paying, not discover it afterwards. And conversion itself: a hidden feature generates zero purchase intent; a button sitting right there that you can’t press does. The companion piece is a Pro comparison card in Preferences — five Pro features, the price, a buy button — which disappears once activated.

Why pay what you want

Solo-developer pricing is fundamentally a guess — there’s no pricing team, no A/B test with meaningful sample size, and the $4.99-vs-$9.99 debate happens entirely inside one skull. PWYW outsources the decision to the only person with a real answer: the one paying.

Only two numbers in the mechanism actually matter:

• The $0.99 floor filters out pure $0 freeloading (that’s just the free tier again) and guarantees any amount clears payment processing fees;
• The $6.99 suggestion is the anchor. Most people don’t want to think about what to pay; the suggested price is their default answer.

The other decision was no subscription. Pier runs entirely on-device; no server burns money on behalf of old users, so monthly billing doesn’t match the cost structure. Buy once + paid major upgrades (all of 2.x included, 3.0 is a separate conversation) is the more honest trade.

Existing users: a one-time goodwill reset

Users who installed during the promo were in an awkward spot: if the trial clock starts at first install, many burned their 14 days months ago and would hit “expired” the moment they upgraded — the worst possible greeting for your earliest users.

The fix is a one-time reset on upgrade:

// One-time v2 trial reset: for promo-era users, trialStart is the day
// they first installed Pier. Going straight to expired would be brutal.
if Keychain.get(K.v2TrialReset) == nil {
    Keychain.set(String(Date().timeIntervalSince1970), for: K.trialStart)
    Keychain.set("1", for: K.v2TrialReset)
}

Everyone gets a fresh 14 days from the first launch of 2.0. The marker itself lives in the keychain, so deleting and reinstalling the app won’t trigger a second reset.

Takeaways

• The paywall line must fit in one sentence. “Looking is free, acting is paid” beats a feature matrix — every time a new feature needs a gating decision, the rule decides, no meeting required;
• Minimize the visual cost of the lock. Gray-and-suffix is the floor; a wall of lock.fill icons shoves “you haven’t paid” in the user’s face;
• Every ounce of goodwill toward existing users has to be written as code. “You get a fresh 14 days” is a sentence; the v2TrialReset keychain marker is the actual promise.

There is no correct price. PWYW is just admitting that, and handing the question to the market. Ask me again in three months.