This time yesterday ⏮️
Want to relive App Growth Annual? You can! We'll be sharing recordings of all four keynotes + our six virtual workshops soon.
In the meantime, use #AppGrowthAnnual to share your highlights from the day. We're loving seeing them!
1/ Praktika is at $50M ARR, profitable, with ~40 people. The month that changed everything: $1M to $12M ARR, off one creator video the CEO didn't even like.
New Sub Club with Praktika co-founder and CEO @adampraktika 🧵
I've just updated our guidance for using RevenueCat paywalls with iPhone Duo!
Follow the steps here (or tell your agent to do so!) to make sure your paywall feels great, with the rest of your app, on iPhone Duo
https://t.co/LEh5kThmav
Thursday on Sub Club Live: @thomasbcn and @sylvainww take over the show for the best of App Growth Annual 2026.
Sold-out room, 5,000+ online, 36 workshops. They'll go through what was worth remembering, then take your questions.
🕘 Thu, 9 a.m. PT / 12 p.m. ET / 5 p.m. CET
📺 Watch on YouTube: https://t.co/R5UhRpCMiW
🗓️ Set a reminder on Luma: https://t.co/tV61tZP6qQ
What happens to subscription apps that run holiday promos? We compared ~5,000 apps with and without them.
🛍️ Black Friday promos: +20% new paying users vs. Sept–Oct
🥂 New Year promos: +14%
🎄 Christmas-only promos: no clear edge
More on revenue, timing, and paywalls 👇
https://t.co/qWxOmZKIXt
Heading to Tokyo for @FlutterKaigi? 🇯🇵
Catch our own @Y0shiU3da on stage with @AwarefyApp, sharing their lessons from implementing RevenueCat with Flutter into Awarefy.
Swing by our booth for demos, dev questions, and exclusive swag 🐈
Register 👇 https://t.co/jViOd2KvkO
Hybrid monetization (aka ‘mixed monetization’) was THE topic during @RevenueCat's New York App Week
Which makes sense, because a lot of the hard vs soft paywall conversation is still stuck on “which converts more users into paying subscribers?”
Useful question, but a pretty narrow way to think about your business
If the only way to use your app is to subscribe for $10/month, you’re doing two things:
1️⃣ Restricting your audience to people who are willing AND able to pay for a subscription right now
That’s a fraction of the people who might enjoy your app, get value from it, and generate revenue for you
Someone who won’t subscribe might happily watch an ad, make a small purchase, or become a subscriber later
With a hard paywall, you lose the opportunity to find out
2️⃣ Giving everyone the same spending decision
The person who’d happily spend $3 gets turned away, while the person who’d happily spend $50 has no reason or opportunity to spend more than $10
Fewer revenue-generating users at one end, less revenue from your highest-intent users at the other
I’ve been calling this “dropping the floor and raising the ceiling”
It’s what I’m talking about when you see me wildly gesturing up and down at a conference
@philgcarter talks about this a lot, and calls it capturing value along the demand curve
Either way: your audience isn’t a monolith, so why give everyone exactly one way to pay you?
Games have been doing this forever: ads, rewarded ads, currencies, one-time purchases, subscriptions, season passes
Those options work together
Watch an ad to keep playing, buy something you actually want, subscribe because you’re coming back every day
You can start generating revenue from someone long before they’re ready to subscribe, and offer more value to people who want to spend more
Short-drama apps are a very visible example of this today (and, after AI agents, the only category to meaningfully break into the top 100 grossing apps in YEARS)
Free episodes get you invested, then you can watch ads, buy coins to unlock more, or subscribe
In our short-drama analysis, median install-to-payer conversion by day 35 was 5.5%, versus 1.6% for other Entertainment apps
First-month revenue per payer was $23.85 versus $13.09
There’s a lot more going on here than ‘paywall optimization’
(If you ask me, paywalls will be irrelevant within a year or two, but that’s another post entirely)
It’s about finding WHAT each individual user is willing to pay for, and HOW they’re willing to pay
Then building customer journeys in your app that match those preferences
That won’t be a nice-to-have when your competitors are turning more users into payers AND making more money from them
Because they’ll use that revenue to outbid you in every user acquisition channel imaginable
Pretty soon, we’ll all need to:
👇 Drop the floor
☝️ Raise the ceiling
(PS. Let me know if you want me to share my favourite way to 'dip your toes' into mixed monetization: It doesn't require a massive overhaul of your app, and can be shipped in a few days, max!)
From shipping apps to taking over Times Square.
Our #Shipaton winners got the billboards, the live demos, and a visit from Shippy.
Not your average hackathon prize.
What a way to close out #NewYorkAppWeek! 📷
First iPhone Duo on the RevenueCat team. You knew one of us would fold 👀
Happy launch day! How’s your paywall looking on both displays?
We put together a guide to getting your RevenueCat Paywalls ready, from sizing tweaks to AI-assisted edits 👇
https://t.co/vaDP8SS0Ec
That’s a wrap on App Week
If you were in NYC this week, I’d love to hear what you’d want to see (changed, improved, removed) next year, and any other feedback you might have
It’s honestly a little wild to see how much it’s grown since we pretty randomly made this up last year, but it seems like it’s been a good one for the community
Would love to hear how we can make it even better