Why Our Apps Have No Ads, and How We Make Money

We write "we" on this blog, but llcloud is one person. One developer designs, builds, tests and supports every app here, from AuraDisplay to Repel, Broomie and Tessera. People often ask how that works without ads, so here is the honest version.

How does llcloud make money?

Through Pro upgrades that people choose to buy, and nothing else. There are no ads in any app, no ad SDKs, and no selling of data. None of the apps asks you to create an account.

Every app has a free version that does its main job. Pro adds the extras: more styles and per-contact colors in AuraDisplay, smarter firewall rules and family mode in Repel, Power mode and scheduled cleaning in Broomie, HD masters and color grades in Tessera. If Pro is worth it to you, you buy it. If it is not, the free version keeps working.

Can you pay once instead of subscribing?

Yes, on every app. Most of our apps sell Pro only as a one-time purchase: AuraDisplay, Repel, Tessera and AppVolume. A few, Broomie, Velum and Lithie, also offer Pro by month or year with a 7-day free trial, because some people would rather pay a little at a time. Those apps always keep a one-time option next to the subscription, so nobody is pushed into one.

We like the pay-once model for a simple reason. It lines our interest up with yours. A one-time purchase only sells if the app is good enough that someone wants to keep it, and the only way to keep selling it is to keep the app working through Android updates.

Why no ads?

Ads would have paid sooner. We chose not to use them, for reasons that are partly about principle and partly about the apps themselves.

Ads change what an app is for. An app paid by ads earns more the longer you stare at it and the more data it can collect about you. Our apps are mostly meant to be glanced at or set and forgotten. A notification light should light up and stay out of the way. A firewall should sit quietly in the background. Those are bad shapes for an ad business and good shapes for a tool.

Some of our apps would contradict themselves. Repel blocks tracker and malware domains. An ad SDK inside it would be one more tracker on your phone. Broomie is a cleaner, a category known for scary warnings and pop-ups pushed by ad money. The point of Broomie was to be the one that explains every item and makes no promises it cannot keep, which we explain in how Broomie decides what is safe to clean.

Permissions should match the job. Each app asks only for what its work needs. Adding ads would mean adding code and permissions that have nothing to do with the job, and explaining them in a privacy policy we would rather keep short.

What do the apps send, then?

The apps do their work on your phone. Some send anonymous usage counts and crash reports so problems get found and fixed, and every app has a privacy policy that lists exactly what it sends. That data tells us things like whether a fix worked, never what your notifications say or which sites you visit.

What does it mean that one person answers support?

When you email support@llcloud.app, the person who wrote the code reads it. That has real downsides. Replies are not instant, and there is no team on call at night. It also has upsides you will not get from a large company. Nobody reads from a script, and a good bug report can turn into a fix in the next release.

Most apps have a built-in help option that attaches a diagnostic log with no personal content. In AuraDisplay, for example, the report holds device and setting details, never the content of your notifications. Those reports have found the cause of most of the hard bugs we have fixed, including much of what we learned about phones that switch apps off in the background, which we explain in what a force-stop does to your notification light.

Why keep the apps small?

Being one person is also why each app does one job. A small, focused app is something one developer can keep working well across many phone makers and Android versions. A sprawling one would get worse with every update. We would rather have a handful of apps that each do their thing properly than dozens that half work.

That is also how we decide what to build. Each app starts from a small, daily annoyance that Android leaves unsolved: the missing notification LED, one media volume for every app, a cleaner nobody can trust, a photo vault that only hides what it should lock. AppVolume came from the second one, and how per-app volume works on Android explains what it does about it. Velum came from the last, and how Velum encrypts a photo walks through what happens to a picture you put in it.

The deal, in short

You get a free version that is useful on its own, with no ads and no account. If you want more, you can pay once and keep it. And if something breaks, you can write to the person who can fix it. That is the whole business model, and we intend to keep it that way.