No subscription: why HOROTAG only charges you once

You see more and more motorcycle apps on subscription: €5/month to track your maintenance, €50/year for "premium" features. We went the other way: €129 once, and that is that.

01Our model

• €129 = a physical device delivered (components, 5-year battery, IP69K sealing, made in France, shipping, margin).
• A free iOS / Android app for life, with no feature held back.
• Servers in France, paid for out of the margin on the device.
• No ads. No paid tier. No selling your data.

02Why no subscription?

Three reasons.

1. You are paying for the device, not a variable service

An hour-meter device that measures vibration and sends the numbers over Bluetooth is a finished product. Once it is designed and built, the marginal cost of one more user is negligible. Charging you €5/month for that would be daylight robbery.

2. You keep your history, even if we disappear

With a subscription, the day the publisher shuts down or raises its prices, you lose everything. With us:

• The app keeps working even if our servers stop (direct Bluetooth, local storage).
• You can export your whole history as a ZIP at any time.
• If we closed tomorrow, we commit to open-sourcing the device-to-app protocol so someone else can pick it up.

3. Trust you can actually build

A subscription service always has an incentive to bolt on "paid features" to justify the price. You can see where that leads: cluttered interfaces, pointless options, aggressive monetisation.

We have exactly one incentive: selling a device that works. Sell it badly or let it break and you tear us apart on the forums and nobody buys another one. Our commercial interest is lined up with your interest as a user.

03How it pays for itself, with no subscription

The honest sums:

• Device sold: €129 incl. VAT.
• BOM plus assembly in France: about €45.
• VAT: about €22.
• Shipping / warranty provision: about €10.
• Gross margin: about €50 per unit.

Over 5,000 devices a year, that is roughly €250k of gross margin. Enough to cover two salaries, Scaleway servers (about €100/month), support answered by a human, and continued development of the app without charging the user.

It is less hyper-explosive growth, but it is a healthy, stable business we can keep running for 15 years.

04And when does the app stop?

Our commitment, in writing:

• The app stays free and maintained for at least 5 years after the last device of a given model is sold.
• Security updates and iOS / Android compatibility for as long as we are trading.
• If we ever wound the business up: the protocol and firmware get open-sourced so you can keep using your device without us.

It is in our terms and conditions. It is contractual.

05Why we are talking about it

Because we have had enough of the "€30 device plus €5/month" model. Over 5 years the user pays €330 instead of €129. For a product that cost €5 to make in China.

If you are after a simple, reliable motocross hour meter with no permanent dependency on a publisher, you know what to do.