If I've purchased the desktop version must I also purchase the iPad/iPhone version?

After doing a lot of reading about whether it was the a good solution for my needs, I decided to take the plunge and I've been setting up 1Password. Getting it set up and synced on both my computers and Android phone took awhile but so far I've been quite pleased. That is, until I went to set it up for iPad and found that in order to simply read my generated passwords in the same fashion as the free Android app I was going to have to spend more money. I tried accessing them though dropbox and 1PasswordAnywhere, but that didn't work on iPad (which is understandable). I ended up pasting the few main passwords I wanted to get over to iPad into a google doc then deleting them; which felt kind of silly, but the best way I could think of.

So is it really the case that I'm going to have to buy 1Password again for iPad in order to access passwords there when I've already purchased the desktop version? I'm sure you guys have your reasons for things being the way they are -- and I appreciate all the complexity and difficulty syncing in particular bring up -- but if that really is the case then I think that the necessity of the extra purchase could have been made much clearer on your webpage. Even some small type saying "with additional purchase" would have made feel a lot less I got hit with a "gotcha."

Thanks!
-Dave

Comments

  • khad
    khad
    1Password Alumni
    edited April 2011
    Welcome to the forums, Dave!

    I'm sorry you're disappointed that each edition is a separate purchase.

    Right now our Android app is still free because it is still in beta and read-only. We didn't really want to charge folks for their helpful testing.

    Additionally, some users only use the iPhone or iPad apps, and we want to make sure they get a well-supported, full-featured app even if they are not syncing with a desktop computer, so we charge a fair price to have a supporting business model. I apologize if this was unclear in any way on our website or in the App Store. We try to make it as clear as we can, but I will see what we can do about making it clearer.

    Giving all our 1Password mobile apps away for free would certainly have made things simpler for everyone and it would have been a wonderful gift to give to all our users! It is something we put a lot of thought into and while thinking this through, we found giving it away to be cost prohibitive.

    The costs exist because each edition is a separate product and we needed to completely rewrite the 1Password code base to make it work on each platform. But the costs don't stop with just development and the costs have gone up across the board: from design, marketing, website, documentation, coordination, and probably most of all, customer support. Because of this, we decided to charge for each version separately as they have cost a lot of time and money to make it available.

    One caveat that is often over-looked is our generous (we call it "sane") licensing mode. Many companies charge per computer (regardless of platform) which greatly increases the cost of ownership and this is not something we wanted to do. To make things as simple and fair as possible, we elected to license 1Password on the basis of per user, per platform. Having licenses associated with a person instead of a physical machine is more natural and, in our opinion, fair. This means you can use 1Password for Mac on as many Macs as you can afford and similarly for 1Password for Windows.

    In the end, we decided that in order for the 1Password iOS apps to be vibrant products going forward, they have to have a supporting business model. The last thing we would want to see is the iOS versions wither on the vine due to lack of financial support from users.

    I'm sorry if I couldn't give you the answer you were looking for, but I do hope you understand the reasons behind this. Thank you for your support of 1Password, we really do appreciate it!

    If we can be of further assistance, please let us know.

    We are always here to help!
  • TenFresh
    edited April 2011
    Thank you very much for the thoughtful reply. I guess I honestly just presumed (without looking carefully) that there would be a 'lite' read-only version of the ipad app after reading about the Android one -- or that my purchase of the desktop version would come with a discount code or the like for the other. But I do appreciate all the points that you mention, thank you for laying them out.

    It's my bad that I didn't research that point careful, but I guess I'm still just surprised I didn't come across it in all the reading about the functionalities of 1password -- as to your credit, so much of the copy on your site is so clear and upfront. Even something like this little change to the copy on your stie would have made it clear to me what I was (and wasn't) getting with my purchase of the desktop version:

    "Now you can take your information with you so that it's always on hand. Mobile versions of 1Password are available for purchase for iPhone OS and Palm OS and more data portability options are coming."

    Thanks again for your excellent product and exemplary support!

    -Dave
  • khad
    khad
    1Password Alumni
    Dave, thank you for your kind words and understanding. :-)

    I will try get this updated to be clearer. Thank you for bringing this to our attention!

    Have a fantastic weekend.
  • house_mouse
    house_mouse
    Community Member

    Hi Gentlemen, I'm so glad I read these comments as I am considering buying the iPhone app. I'm currently trialing the free PC version.

    Cheers,
    Ian

  • Megan
    Megan
    1Password Alumni

    Hi Ian ( @house_mouse ),

    I'm glad you found the answers that you were looking for! If you do have any further questions, we're here to help :)

This discussion has been closed.