Ali Mahmoud

DevCleaner 1.16.1 is out.

If automatic cleanup after quitting Xcode left the app stuck on "Cleaning", that hang is fixed. A cleanup that runs past 10 minutes now stops itself, and the window stays responsive.

We've kept a free tier running as our main growth engine but it's getting expensive to maintain.

While some of our best paid users started on the free plan a huge chunk of our weekly support energy goes toward answering questions for non paying accounts.

Without clear tracking on our exact conversion rates it feels like we're spending valuable dev attention on users who have zero intention of buying.

We're considering switching to a free trial model instead.

During the year of our business I answered all the support emails myself. It was hard. I did not like it. Looking back it was the important thing we did and I almost handed it over too soon.

Analytics showed which buttons were pressed. The inbox showed which actions users wanted. These are two types of information. One day a user wrote: "I expected the export button to send the report to my accountant." Our button saved a file. No one would have ever noticed this difference in the funnel chart;. In the next month three other users had the same issue. We added an email button. The problem went away.

Now I keep a spreadsheet with four columns. The words that the person uses the screen they were on what they were hoping for and what actually happened. Patterns start to appear after forty entries. It is important to write down the words since they will become your landing page copy and button labels.

There is a risk. Support emails are more likely to come from customers and less likely from happy quiet ones. That feature no one ever asks about could be the thing that keeps everyone coming which is why I look at the email box along with the retention numbers not instead of them.