Jamie, Doyle, Adam, and Jared from the team at Exodus 90 meet to discuss Bishop Varden's reflection on the effects that Antony's asceticism had on his life and nature.
“I hate Hallow. I shouldn’t need to pay to pray”
Something we get a lot.
Almost always from folks who have never tried the app.
But why do we have a subscription? Why not just make the app free?
Well - a few things:
1 - you don’t need to pay to pray. You don’t need an app to pray at all. We’re just here to help if we can.
Plus there’s a completely free version of the app. No credit card required. Nothing. Thousands of sessions available for free always.
2 - if we are serious about building great content, paying faith creators what they’re worth, and building great tech, we have to fund it somehow. We were never gonna sell data. We didn’t think ads made sense in a place of prayer. So we landed on a subscription: we’d try to build a premium product, and for folks who could afford to pay for it we’d offer a subscription option to support the work and unlock additional content.
(We give away subscriptions to anyone who can’t afford it)
It’s interesting, people are used to buying religious books and even audio books, but most apps are free & folks expect free when they come to an app.
Funny thing we found though, especially recently, is people actually liked the transparency of the subscription v all the free apps on the App Store - something we’d hear often:
“if the thing is free then be careful - they’re selling something and it’s usually you that’s the product”
3 - most importantly, we found something we didn’t expect. If people signed up for a subscription they were 3-4x more likely to build a daily habit of prayer.
If people were forced to answer the question of is this whole daily prayer thing something I’m willing to invest something in, even if it’s just $5 or $6 a month, they were way more likely to actually stick with it - and that’s all we cared about in the end - people praying more.
Couldn’t be more grateful to all the Hallow subscribers out there - y’all are the only reason we’re able to do this work at all.
I want to give a special shoutout to all the other Catholic apps running the #AppStoreGauntlet every day especially:
@HallowApp, @AscensionPress, and Laudate. Knowing that you guys are reaching literally thousands of new people every day is such an inspiration. And I'm so proud to be in your great company a couple days out of the year.
All glory to God. Have a blessed St. Michael's Lent, and I'll see you on Michaelmas Day! ✌️✌️
On Day 1 in the final push, we managed to creep one spot higher to the 19 slot!
During the lead up to Exodus 90 in January, we topped out at 22. So this was a big win.
St Michael, St Francis, thanks for all your help to make the St. Michael's Lent campaign a success!
St. Michael the Archangel has always been a special patron of Exodus 90:
-- We were founded on his Feast Day (by sheer chance that I can only chalk up to Providence)
-- We've prayed the St. Michael Prayer at the end of our fraternity meeting since the very beginning
Exodus 90 launched our first St. Michael's Lent program in 2022 and we're excited for our 3rd year running that starts 1 week from today.
St. Michael's Lent is a devotion that's changed my life. It's helped me overthrow my Idols and break free from my Pharaohs.