Notability Reverses Course, Will Give Previous Users Lifetime Access to Purchased Feature and Content

In the original announcement earlier this week, the team behind the note-taking app announced it was moving from a paid app to a subscription model to unlock the majority of the features.

Anyone who had previously purchase the app and additional features would receive one year free of the new version. After that, they would need to subscribe to unlock those features that were previously purchased.

That led to a significant amount of criticism from previous purchasers. Many also pointed out that the change could go against a specific App Store guideline.

In a new blog post, the company announced its new changes:

Today, we are making some changes (coming soon in Notability version 11.0.2). Everyone who purchased Notability prior to our switch to subscription on November 1st, 2021 will have lifetime access to all existing features and any content previously purchased in the app.

This includes the core Notability experience that users know and love, including unlimited editing, iCloud sync, and any features or content that was previously purchased through the Notability Shop. Future features we develop may also be included, depending on their complexity and cost to maintain.

We are a small company, so we designed the original one-year access plan as a precautionary measure since we were not certain if we could support lifetime access. We sincerely apologize for putting our current users in this position.