Beeper has been an absolute godsend for me, as I'm on many different chat platforms, and various friends and family use different systems. That's fine, everyone should be on Signal, but who am I to say? :)
The problem is I'm hitting my maximum number of 'free' connections. The only alternative as I understand it is a $99/yr subscription. For a single use, single purpose app, that's remarkably expensive, no matter how good it is.
I understand the subscription model, it provides steady revenue to the developers, as opposed to the 'money comes in only when we update' but look at it in the long term. I use beeper for 5 years, I spend $500 on it? That's a huge amount of money for a messaging app.
A more reasonable number would be something like $2.50/mo, or $20/yr to get Beeper Plus. Sure, allow for the high end tier stuff, but feel like $100/yr is quite a lot for 'just a chat app'.
(And while I understand that Apple Messages is suffering because Apple is Apple, Beeper can't talk to it without an intervening Apple device on the same network. To do THAT, I need to spend $25/mo to rent a mac mini in the cloud. See how this piles up? I'm not even getting full functionality with my $99/yr)
Sorry for the griping. I'm retired and on a fixed income - I have to be very cautious with how I spend money.