I’ve been using Arc for a while and check it from time to time. It was always free to use for a short time each week/month. Now there’s a persistent subscription notification on my new phone and I’ve restored from a backup. Am I locked out of my information on the new phone until I start paying for a subscription?
Hi @Joshhawaii!
Arc App’s free tier unfortunately wasn’t sustainable anymore, due to some quite large new monthly expenses, so all use of the app now requires a subscription. Although you can get in for free with a 30 day trial.
I’m curious though how you got to that Settings tab without having a subscription or trial. Which version of Arc do you have installed?
I had been using it for more than a month, and so I believe I had the same experience as @Joshhawaii when I downloaded the latest version. I could not access beyond the initial page demanding a subscription with the only options being to pay money. It did not appear possible to be a free user from the past and to use it one last time to extract the data without paying at least the 1-month fee.
@moo, yeah, that’s what I’d expect. But not to see the “Become a backer” header on the Settings tab. Only people without a subscription or trial should see that header, so it should be impossible to see it anymore 
The two subscription options include a 30 day free trial. So no money is paid until the 30 days is up. That’s there to allow new users to give it a proper try before deciding, but also for existing users who don’t want to pay but do want to get in and export their data before leaving.
Thanks @matt - it was not clear from my user experience that no money would be paid.
Whichever option I chose simply took me to the payment approval interface, which I interpreted as immediate deduction of funds from my account.
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I was able to catch it before the payment portal pop up once, but it took a few tries (you can see that it was slightly blurred). I had to keep my finger on the screen and couldn’t interact. I’m not sure what versions I had (it seems like both were the current version) but the older ř phone never informed me that a subscription was necessary. I believe if I hadn’t upgraded my phone I would still be using Arc for a while without a subscription on the current app version.
It’s a bummer to hear that costs increased so much. I would love a version that just recorded GPS points on a map without labeling. It would also be nice to be able to access the last year’s worth of previously recorded data in the app without new recording for free or a very small one-time fee (worst case scenario) as being able to export a list of data points I have no idea what to do with is not super helpful. It sucks that this information can be accessed for 30 days only.
Arc presents information that is interesting to see and is super well done, but not necessary in my life unfortunately.
What you’re looking for there is Arc Mini.
Arc Mini has all the core recording and timeline functionality of Arc App, without the extras on top. It also shares the Arc App database, so can view all data recorded in Arc App, and they each save new data into the same database.
Does Arc work in the background even without the sub?
Just to have the double app protection from terminations & have the data actually accessible in the exports.
I hope you are right in making this move, your price tiers are almost what Disney+ asks for and to be honest arc has been on the lower end of the usability scale for the features you’re asking to paid for, and I think you know what I mean. It’s a good app, but after many years it’s still way behind what you probably also would like it to be.
I think a lot of people will just move to arc mini, which I love and am thankful for. You might get a lot of new subs in the next few months but after that there’s a high chance you’re going to reset to a lower baseline than you had before.
I hope you’re making the right call here Matt, you’ve been struggling for so long with this project I really wish you all the best.
Thanks for sharing Arc Mini! It seems to fulfill what I need, and I can see the value that Arc (main) brings beyond it. It was cool to see in a month how many km I’ve driven or run, etc. and if I ever subscribe all the data is being captured.
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No it doesn’t. Arc Mini will continue to record regardless, but Arc App requires a subscription.
No I don’t know what you mean. To my knowledge, Arc App is the only app on iPhone offering this level of functionality, and is still the most accurate and detailed in recorded data by far. Unless there’s a competitor out there I’m not aware of, Arc App is unequalled.
I always want it to do more and be more. But we’re not comparing to dreams here, we’re comparing to the competition, and Arc App is best in class.
Thanks! It’s going far better than I ever dreamed of. It’s definitely been a successful change.
Good that it’s working out for now, I really hope those trial subs will translate to permanent subs and that adding such an aggressive paywall won’t plummet sales from now on. I really hope it’s good in the long run, that’s what I mean.
I know we don’t see things eye to eye, but I’ll try to explain myself on the functionality part I said.
Arc mini shares the same “most accurate and detailed in recorded data by far” functionality, so that’s not what the sub is for. Am I missing something here?
The features you are putting under sub are (correct me if I’m wrong):
- Calendar view
- Activity view
- Auto export
- Photos in timeline
Calendar view is extremely buggy, it’s one of the reasons I would pay for Arc but it’s so slow and full of weird behaviors (what is the grey circle around the dates for?) that every time I have to use it I groan.
Activity view is also extremely slow and, if one doesn’t spend a lot of time confirming items, it’s mostly useless as its totals won’t match up with reality
Auto export and photos are the best ones, but photos in timeline is also offered by another app that is free (SilentLog).
Long time users also know that any quality issue is probably here to stay for a long time, as you have your own way to do stuff and since you believe in yourself so much, there is little hope for things to change.
I hope you are evaluating the value of the quality of the features correctly, man. I really do hope you get out of the rut. I’m sort of in the same situation with my own company right now so I totally understand you.
- Workout imports
- Health app integration (Arc Mini doesn’t load calories, heart rate, sleep, etc)
- Heart rate graphs
- Visit details compared to Place averages
- Place statistics
- Common visit times graph
- Common durations, durations histogram view, visit lists per duration
- Common arrival/leaving, histogram view, visits list per time
- Average calories/heart rate/steps, max heart rate
- Foursquare checkin integration
- Custom Mapbox map styles support
- Last.fm integration
- Manual file importer, for importing hand edited / script edited JSON data
- Timeline search
There’s more, but that’s enough for now.
It indicates that there are unconfirmed items on that day.
Bullshit. I literally work full time on fixing and improving Arc. The current release of Arc is the most stable, reliable, and fast release in years, and continues to be unequalled by competitors. If there is a bug you want fixed, post a thread about it and I’ll address it. But sweeping statements like this are insulting and wrong.
I’m going to close this thread now. The original question has been answered, If you want to debate whether the app is worth paying for, you can do that somewhere else. This forum is for app support and feature discussion, not for this.