I agree. My boys have been enjoying this free app for years than you have the audacity to take it away from us. Why not make the new subscribers pay why are you taking away from the long time users. We have no working games now. I explained to my boys that we have to pay now but they don't quite understand that they also don't understand expensive. Please bring yours games back to our children. Thank you

I am sorry agnitus, but you shouldn't be punishing children for their parents being poor. My 2.5 year old loved this app as she is very smart and it challenged her mind, and she used to sit for hours playing these games, however we have accepted your offer of a free trial of your new version, which gave her 2 games and 2 books and quite frankly she got bored within 2 minutes and was so upset that she though your galaxy tab at the floor. I don't understand why every time my GIFTED child finds something that challenges her, selfish companies seem to think they have the right to discriminate against her either because she has the smarts to start school in September or because her parents are poor and can not afford to pay the stupid prices asked for her to continue and enjoy learning. your monthly subscription to access your games should be FREE!! If you want to charge for your reporting side then that's up to you, to be quite honest most parents can tell how their child is doing by watching they play. Yours sincerly, one very disappointed parent with one very upset little girl

The monthly subscription is a joke! One off payment is the way to go, you can always charge for upgrade every now and then.
You will lose most of your customer if you don't remove the high price tag.....

I understand the cost of developing the program, but it's ridiculous to go from having some free games to nothing at all. Monthly subscription, no thank you.

I do understand that developing the program cost money and expending it cost money also but you have to understand that you loosing a lot of people with this ridiculous amount you are charging.
If you would drop your price to a dollar a month or $20-30 one time fee you would still make tons of money as people would by in to it more and more.
Because of your greed you actually loosing money as people are leaving and spreading negative word around.
I was also surprised as once free option was totally gone. Not even the three curriculums the total basic ...
Shame on you really

I, too, wish there was an option for a one-time fee to purchase. I'm not interested in any of the parental reports or web access, my kids just want to play with Icky. The $0.99 monthly subscription only includes ONE game and ONE book, which is too few options, but even the $3.99 monthly subscription for all the games/books (minus reports) is difficult for our family. That's almost $50/year on a kid's learning app. I could buy them two leapsters instead, and have them forever.

I also am disappointed in the company's choice to delete negative reviews regarding the current update and move to a total subscription service from the App Store. The app is NOT free if you have to pay to be able to access ANYTHING. It is false advertising and an ethically questionable business decision.

Again, I would be willing to pay a one-time-fee, perhaps even up to $20 for the app, but am extremely disappointed in the move to a subscription model. My two-year-old was crying yesterday because he could no longer play with Icky.

Your new cost for this app is insulting. Children this young dont understand and many of us cant and wont pay $6.99 a month. Are you kidding with this price?? My son has enjoyed this app for years, but we are done now. You have some nerve charging this month. Your app is good, but not that good.

I think the subscription price is a bargain. It's a high quality experience and I certainly wouldn't expect you to work for nothing - or close to nothing.

I have been in IT for nearly 20 years and know just how much work would have been put in to this.

Don't sell yourself short - don't reduce the price - you're apps are worth every penny.

I understand and appreciate that adding new content requires a constant flow of income, But I too find $7/month ($85/yr) tough to swallow. I feel like we're being asked to pay for the cost of creating your whole content base without the benefit of using any of the content if we stop paying.

I also appreciate your statement:
"Our vision is to provide parents a single app experience where they know what their children are learning and they don’t need to worry about constantly searching or downloading new apps."
By that reasoning, it would make sense to match, or come close, to how much we might otherwise be spending on other apps monthly. Unfortunately (for Agnitus) there are many other free and super cheap options available. I usually spend $0-$2/month on apps.

I think you should offer a choice of a one time fee ($20-$30) or a nominal monthly subscription $1-$2/month.

If the price doesn't drop soon, I will need to cancel my membership even though this will make me (and my son) quite sad.

I agree with everyone on here about the price!!!! It crazy to charge that amount for this app. There are lots of apps that are just like this one that charge a one time fee for their apps. I think this is the path this app should take. 150.00 a year is just crazy!!! I will delete my app when the free subscription ends. It sad that this app did this.

You have done a great job of talking in circles without addressing the issue, that being the high price tag that's been placed on the subscription.

My Grandkids love this program unfortunately, I'm on a fixed income and coming up with an additional $150 a year doesn't fit in my budget nor can I justify paying that much for a program I've paid a small fortune for and will not have access to once the subscription is canceled.

What I don't understand is why you can't put a onetime purchase price on this program. It seems that almost every other company manages to sell their programs and continues to update, upgrade, repair and monitor them with a flat out affordable one time purchase price and to top it off, you don't loose access to it after paying for it.

It seems someone in your company really needs to rethink your monthly subscription cost and take into consideration there are a lot of people out there that can't afford what you're asking. Thereby making it available t the 90% of the population who's income is way below the six figure mark.

Was told about this app but lost the paper I wrote it on ... Found it today was referred by my teacher friend to find it's no longer free... I've been out of work of sometime and can't afford to pay an additional 85$ a year already paying monthly for my child to go to preschool. I will be deleting the app from my ipad and phone it's a shame everyone is out for money I understand making money but 85$ a year is robbery. Is there no way to get sponsors to help pay for this?

agnitus will never be one one of our tech gadgets again. with all the free oprions, and even cheaper one time fees this app is a bust. used to be all free and we loved it. you say you had to raise the price to keep it up and running, but you offer it to teachers for free. so once my child is in school I can tell their teacher? what only if our school district can afford ipads. nonsense our school districts cant even afford new books. this I feel hurts the kids ore then helps, its a business I get it but don't try to sell your brand as any thing but then.

This has been and still is a fantastic app which is head and shoulders above the rest of its competition. The monthly cost, however, is far too expensive. I understand the company needs to make money, and it's obvious a great deal of quality effort has gone into it. Nonetheless, we're not going to be spending this much money for it. I could probably be talked into spending $10 for the entire thing. As a comparison, the Sesame Street Elmo alphabet app is full of great content (though it could be more responsive) and it's $5.

It sucks you find a game that your child loves and is learning at the same time. Then the company starts charging for the game you once were able to use for free. Now the only way to use the game is with a subscription that is unaffordable for most people.

I'm extremely frustrated with this app. Tho I love it because my daughter had been playing it and loving going on 3yrs if I'm not mistaken. I finally decided to pay for a subscription today, I had a few questions before my purchase, I sent them 3emails and have yet to been able to get on contact with them. After giving up on waiting for them to contact me I purchased 3months.. I am now wondering am I paying 22 dollars or 44 because my son made a account to show my daughter how to play the math games. Am I getting charged 2 subscriptions?? Or just the one. U guys should have a umber we can call. If I'm going to be paying now, I want to be able to express my concerns to a person, not an email I have to wait 48hrs or more for.

I think it should be one time fee otherwise it won't work for you.
sooner or later someone will come with better app. I can buy leapfrog tablet instead.

don't be greedy and make other better apps and earn money.

I would pay at most $20 as a one time fee, my daughter has been playing this for a long time, since way before the upgrade and she's brushed Ickys teeth for that amount of time, but now Ickys teeth and others are locked, she enjoys this app and so do my other 3 children, & I am a busy person and as a mother of 4 that makes minimum wage in NJ, it is way out of the question to be able to afford this app he way you have it priced. An acceptable monthly price is less than $10.

@Tom

Thank you for taking time to post such a detailed response. We really appreciate your feedback. If you have faced any issues with your account please contact us right away. Below are our responses to some of your queries.

- Agnitus was launched in March of 2012 with just 3 academic skills. Today we offer over 46+ academic skills. Our each individual skill is far more complicated than most of the individual apps you will find at the App store. Our current phonics and math curriculum starts at the preschool level and goes all the way to first grade level. This alone is 3 years worth of learning. We are working hard to get 2nd and 3rd grade curriculum ready in next 6 months to a year.

- All monthly tuition packages of Agnitus purchased from the Apple App Store (via In-App purchase) are governed by policies & terms as defined by Apple. This includes cancellation policies and refunds. Agnitus has NO say in how it's done or implemented. Here is the link to the full terms:

http://www.apple.com/legal/internet-services/itunes/appstore/jm/terms.html

- If you cancel your subscription, you lose access to the app at the "END" of the subscription period as defined in Apple's terms. We never close your account before that. When the subscription expires, only then you lose access to the paid content. If you choose to "DELETE" the account (not just the app), then all the data and the account info are removed immediately, even though your subscription has not expired. You can still download and create a new account and use it for the time left on the subscription but the old data will not be recoverable, since the account was deleted.

- Current curriculum starts at the preschool level and goes all the way to first grade level. Progression within the curriculum is built on an adaptive learning engine. Hence, depending upon age, existing knowledge, time the child spends within the program, their learning speed, they can potentially cover the content from a few days to months or years.

-There are thousands of apps on the App Store that will give you what you are asking. Many of them are free. We spent over 18 months building out the solution that leverages data and analytics to automatically move the child through the curriculum based on their learning, irrespective of their age. If a 3-year old is operating at 5 years old level, the app moves them to that level. The App figures out based on data where to move the child next without requiring any parental intervention.

- All monthly tuition packages available via the In-App purchase are of a fixed length of time. They do NOT auto-renew. Apple does NOT allow auto-renew for Apps.

- You are correct that the cancellation policy on our website is poorly written. We will update it and make it clear. This cancellation policy applies to any enrollments that were done via Agnitus website.

- We do provide free 7-day trial, which unlocks all skills so you can try without any fear of any hidden charges. We DO NOT auto charge at the end of this trial period.

Our vision is to provide parents a single app experience where they know what their children are learning and they don’t need to worry about constantly searching or downloading new apps. We have a dedicated team that includes curriculum/education team, game play designers, data analysts and many more to make sure we produce high quality educational product for your children.

This is a bogus business model, and I'll tell you exactly why - because there's absolutely no contract from you (Agnitus) regarding how many releases / updates / new content we can expect.

When you enter into a Subscription model, there needs to be a Service Level Agreement. I see absolutely no such commitment on your part anywhere and I have scoured your website and iTunes store app listing. So how can I commit to you? I can see you've got a great platform, but how many months am I expected to invest before I can get a sense of the true value of that investment.

Individual in-app purchases are not ideal for your product either, because the point is to allow the mini games to unlock as the student's skill level progresses, without having to have parental intervention to authorize an IAP. Totally get it.

So why not offer "packs" - grouped around age level and curriculum topics. My kid won't be needing the 6-year old reading skills right now (assuming you have that), but I might want to splurge and get 4 different packs in the 3-4 year age group. At the end of the day, who knows, depending on your pricing I might even have paid more. But the point is this: I knew exactly what I was getting when I got it, and I own it forever.

Reading the fine print I find another bogus clause in your model: I pay for a month's subscription, but if I cancel, I lose it all right then and there, not at the end of the month. This is either greed or programming laziness. If it's greed, shame on you. I would love to pick up a 1 month subscription to see how it goes, but cancel it right away so I don't accidentally forget and get billed another month. But that's not an option is it?

Anyway, seems like there are a number of users that share similar concerns. Obviously you're going to do what you're going to do, but for me at least, I'm going to keep looking