Some people may wonder why we made the decision to charge for some of our tools.
When it came down to it, it was an easy decision.
We are physician owned and physician run. It is our primary mission to deliver tools free of B.S.– No ads, no pharma, no corporate sponsors, no directives.
Developing software isn’t cheap. Developing software of the quality that physicians expect is downright expensive.
That’s it. If we want this platform of tools to continue to grow and be relevant to daily practice, we need to be able to keep the lights on.
Keep reading if you want to know more about our decision making process and how the in-app purchase system works.
RadsBest has always been a passion project. It was a simple problem in need of a solution. The very first version of RadsBest was developed for the web. Hiring web developers was relatively cheap in 2012, with native iOS developers charging 3-4 times what web developers were charging. When we worked out the backend kinks on the more forgiving html environment, we decided to jump into the frigid waters of mobile development. We partnered with an entirely new development team and created Version 1.0 of RadsBest. Remarkably, we were able to do this at a fraction of the cost of many similarly scaled apps. Despite our luck in this regard, it was very clear that we were spending real money. It was also very clear that we would never be able to create many of the cool features that we always envisioned for RadsBest unless we could somehow make the app more sustainable and prove that the market existed for tools such as this (i.e. tools with a low barrier to entry that help self-motivated docs do their jobs “better” and “faster”).
The new version of RadsBest incorporates in-app purchases. This allows the user to purchase any number of Credits within the app using real money. The Credits can be redeemed for new tools within the app itself. The beauty of the Credit system is that it gives us, as developers, a ton of freedom with pricing. We don’t have to sell everything in 99 cent increments. We can charge 1 cent to $100 for an individual tool. It also allows us to provide some positive feedback to our users. For example, all users who participated in the Beta Testing when RadsBest was first being developed will get more free credits than they will ever be able to use within the app (we keep our promises). This will allow them to download any tool that we develop without paying a penny in real money. We are also pretty generous when it comes to good user feedback (i.e. bugs within the app or thoughtful suggestions for new tools).
In the end, the ability to purchase tools within the app will help development of RadsBest and allow us to reach more Radiologists with increasingly useful and functional tools.
Roy Kwak, M.D., Founder, Medocratic LLC