Ember FastingEmber does not have a refund policy. Not because we are unusually confident, and not because we are unusually generous. Because we did not build a transaction that needs one.
This post is about a design decision, and about why the fasting app category ended up somewhere strange.
The shape of the problem
A lot of apps in this category are priced somewhere near $70 to $80 a year, charged up front, often after a short free trial. That is a business model, and it is a legitimate one. But it creates a specific pressure: at that price, with a product most people use for a few seconds a day, keeping customers becomes hard.
There are two ways to respond to that pressure.
The first is to make the product worth renewing.
The second is to make leaving inconvenient. Not impossible. Just effortful enough that most people do not bother, and effortful in ways that are easy to defend individually and hard to defend together.
The second approach works, in the sense that revenue arrives. It is also why people arrive at a fasting app already suspicious.
What a guarantee actually signals
When a product offers a money back guarantee, it is worth asking what problem the guarantee is solving.
Sometimes the answer is genuinely good: the product is unusual, the customer cannot evaluate it in advance, and the seller is absorbing the risk of that uncertainty. That is what a guarantee is for.
But a guarantee attached to a subscription that already has a free trial, a monthly cancel button, and a platform level refund process, is solving a different problem. It is reassuring you about a transaction you have already, correctly, become wary of.
A guarantee is what you offer when the underlying transaction has a trust problem.
We would rather not have the trust problem.
What we did instead
Ember charges $14.99 a year, or $29.99 once and forever.
There is no trial that quietly converts. There is no introductory rate that triples on renewal. Cancellation is one tap in your Apple ID settings, and it does not route through us, ask you why you are leaving, or offer you a discount to stay.
Refunds, if you want one, go through Apple's standard process. It does not require our permission, and we could not make it difficult even if we wanted to, which is rather the point.
That is the whole policy. There is nothing else to read.
The lifetime option, and why it exists
$29.99 once is not a promotional trick. It is a statement about what kind of business this is.
A subscription creates a permanent, quiet incentive to keep you subscribed, and that incentive shapes a product in ways users can feel. Streaks that punish you for leaving. Notifications engineered around re engagement rather than around fasting. Features gated not because gating them makes sense, but because a paywall needs something behind it.
A one time purchase removes that incentive completely. If you buy Ember once, we make no more money from you, ever. The only thing left for us to do is build something you would recommend.
That is a worse business on a spreadsheet and a better one to run.
What this costs us
Some conversion rate, honestly. A free tier with no time limit converts more slowly than a paywall. A lifetime tier caps what any single customer is worth.
We think the trade is right, because the version of growth that depends on your irritation is not growth. It is a countdown.
What you should ask of any app in this category
Not just ours. Before you subscribe to anything you will use for thirty seconds a day:
- Can I cancel in one tap, from my phone's settings, without talking to anyone?
- Does the price on renewal match the price I am paying today?
- If the trial ends while I am not paying attention, what happens?
- Is the core function of the app, the thing I downloaded it for, available without paying?
If the answers are good, the guarantee does not matter. If the answers are bad, the guarantee will not save you.
Ember is $14.99 a year, or $29.99 once and forever. The full timer, all five protocols and all six zones are free, permanently, with no trial. Cancellation is one tap in your Apple ID. You will not need it.