city mapper is overcast the paywall around its premium features and the introduction of a new subscription plan solely to remove ads.
The move comes less than two months after popular transit and travel planning app was picked up by mobility technology company Via.
London-based Citymapper, which provides city dwellers with real-time route and transport information in hundreds of cities in Europe, Asia, and the Americas, has dabbled in various forms of monetization over the years, including through a paid bus service, multi-transport transport subscriptionsand a business offer. Then, in September, the company thrown out a new subscription-based service that removed ads from the app and introduced a host of premium features, including lock screen navigation, bus-only routing, and turn-by-turn voice navigation.
Costing $2.99 a month or $19.99 a year, Citymapper Club, as the service is called, evidently wasn’t enough to save the business, as Via swooped in to buy the company six months later, in what it was widely regarded as a liquidation sale (though not an acquisition). the price was ever confirmed).
Going forward, all of the above premium features will be free for everyone, with a new half-price $1.49 monthly fee ($9.99 per year) for those who want to remove ads.
Citymapper: Premium features are now free image credits: TechCrunch / Screenshot
Acquiring the transit data of millions of urban commuters was clearly a big selling point for Via when it bought Citymapper, so it makes sense that it would look to encourage more usage by making all features free to use. And by maintaining an ad-free subscription, it allows the company to cover its costs and directly monetize a product that it now has to maintain alongside its existing properties.
The premium features are available to all users via the latest Citymapper app update which was quietly released last week on Android and iOS.
However, some features are limited to a specific platform for now, for example, lock screen browsing is only available on iOS, while a feature that shows you the best time to go out for your destination is limited to Android.
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