Photon+ : New business model for new features!

Cclleemm · January 28, 2026, 11:34am

Hey everyone,

We wanted to share something important with you. After years of building Photon, we’ll introduce a new way to support the app’s development: Photon+ and we need your feedback.

Why Photon+?

You know how it is, every year Apple releases a new iOS, new devices, and we have to adapt. Bug fixes, new features you’ve been requesting, support… it takes time. A lot of time. I also notice the large todo list to add features you’re asked for. We focus on Photon For Business last year and we will focus on Photon 2 this year.

We’re an indie team. To keep improving Photon and build the features you’ve asked for, we need a sustainable way to fund development. That’s Photon+.

What’s in Photon+?

It will include all Pro features (of course) and the first feature is Multi-Dashboard Support. You’ve been asking for this! Create multiple dashboards for different venues or setups, and swipe between them. It works great.

What’s next? We’ll prioritize based on your feedback here on the forum. As always.

Your Purchases Are Safe

I want to be very clear about this:If you purchased Pro or Starter, nothing changes. All your features stay with you. Forever. We will never take away what you paid for.

I understand subscription fatigue. Everyone wants a subscription these days. If you don’t want one, that’s fine → keep using Photon with your current features. No problem.

For new users who prefer one-time purchase: Starter Pack stays available. It doesn’t have everything, but it’s still there.

Founder Pricing for Pro Users

To those who purchased Pro thank you. You believed in us early, and we want to give back.

As a Pro user, you get Founder pricing:

	New Users	Pro Users (Founders)
First Year	$39/year	$19.99/year
After	$59/year	$29.99/year

That’s 66% off the first year, then 50%.

Available until June 2026. for “first year” discounts, After that, this offer is gone.

We Need Your Help

I’ll be honest with you. Photon’s future depends on this community.

With Photon+ subscriptions, we can:

Build features faster
Get help when needed
Keep Photon independent : no ads, no data selling, ever
Continue to improve the app you love

We can’t do it alone. Every subscription helps us keep going.

What Do You Think?

I really want to hear from you, because it is not done yet, we have to adjust the model together:

What do you think about this?
What features would you like to see in Photon+?
Any concerns?

Let me know in the comments. I read everything.

Thank you for being here. Whatever you decide, I’m grateful for this community.

Clément

andyb · January 28, 2026, 9:17pm

More than happy to pay an ongoing fee.

But, I need to be convinced that user feedback and bugs are ironed out quickly. The experience with stability when using midi has been pretty poor. And, it hasn’t been addressed making the year unstable for live use. I’m lost my confidence in it.

It’s a great product, with an intuitive design, and great to see it operating in background mode. But it has to be stable.

Cclleemm · January 29, 2026, 6:32am

Thank you for your feedback,
We’ll have to work together in the future to find why it crashes in MIDI because not all users are affected by this.

It’s also the chicken-and-egg problem: limited funding means limited dev time, which slows bug fixing, which then makes it harder to fund the work. Photon+ is meant to break that cycle so we can maintain the app more actively than last year and react faster.

Good news the next version already includes a lot of performance/stability work (we needed it to ship multi-dashboard properly), plus the usual iPadOS/device updates.

If you want to share more feedback on the pricing / what you expect in Photon+ is very welcome.

Thank you again !

andyb · January 29, 2026, 7:14am

Thanks for the response. I fully support the need for a regular income stream to fund support and development. Like some others, I’ve just lost a bit of patience. I’ve probable put 100 hours into programming patch changes to trigger the midi functionality if Photon.

It crashes a few times per show in background mode, or even on a standalone iPad.

For my needs, the gaps have been -

Stability
More pages / scrolling on the live dashboard
Ability to simply setup basic patterns for moving lights - figure 8, circles.

thanks, Andrew

Cclleemm · January 29, 2026, 12:24pm

We’ll ship the upcoming version with the performance/stability work already done (v2.6.0). Please run it in real shows and tell us if it improves.
If it still crashes, we’ll need to capture this properly. We’ll ask you for an export of detailed logs (crash + transaction/MIDI activity around the time of the crash) so we can pinpoint what’s happening on your setup.

More pages / scrolling on the live dashboard: noted, and it aligns with where we’re going to implement with multi dashboard.
Basic moving-light patterns: makes sense, but it’s a bigger change because it requires adding new fixture configuration parameters. This need is often asked by users.

Thank you again your your insights

Vedeja · January 29, 2026, 3:49pm

I’d be willing to try for a year. But my expectations on frequent updates would really go up. Small fixes often - often like at least monthly.

The forum will require a better suggest/vote flow to accommodate features requests and their priorities.

Cclleemm · January 29, 2026, 7:58pm

We won’t ship feature every month, but Photon+ should let us handle reported bugs and iOS changes faster, and still deliver a few meaningful features during the year.
We did hesitate with a “pay per feature” model (like in video games), which can feel fair, but it made pricing and the offering harder to understand.
We chose a subscription instead, and we kept the price low compared to the market.

Also agreed on the forum to collect requests and make priorities clearer. Let’s give us tool suggestion for « Feature Crowding » ?

Mully · January 30, 2026, 1:43am

I am a fan of your product and am more than willing to pay the annual fee. However, the support and updates since I bought the full version have been pretty much nonexistent. The challenge becomes continuing to build value and retain the subscribers. Frequent updates will be a way to make customers feel like they are still being supported. I pay a subscription for BandHelper and the updates are almost monthly. Not always big changes or feature updates. But bugs fixed or under the hood improvements make a difference. Currently, the program works for my needs. I am very concerned about it working moving forward though.

Mully · January 30, 2026, 6:19pm

Another idea to think on is, marketing. How can you attract more users? What type of users are you trying to attract/retain? There are a TON of bands out there that could benefit from this type of program, with a simple subscription plan, YouTube training videos on use and implementation. That all takes some time and money.

mchamberlain · January 30, 2026, 10:43pm

Very happy to pay and support considering the app is great and I use it daily. As other have stated, stability and “more frequent” updates would be key. But, yeah, sing me up!

Jory · January 31, 2026, 10:08pm

We use photon 2 now since a couple of months. Within 2 weeks there will be the first gig with it. We’ll be happy to be part of a paid subscription if this means that there will be regular updates and a quick respond to bugs.

zionplayer · February 1, 2026, 8:39pm

I also don’t mind the annual cost and supporting you guys as long as it stays reasonable. I chose Photon because Luminaire is very expensive yearly, but it is a top tier program, with 30,000 fixtures, effects generators, etc.

Photon does what I need, really don’t even need the multi-dashboard… but I do need the stability. We have been working on this “Crashing in Background Mode” since Sep 2022 and it’s not corrected yet, in production or beta release.

I will support for a year when that becomes available, but will be forced to move on if stability is not addressed.

Cclleemm · February 2, 2026, 6:28am

The whole Photon team, we’re genuinely grateful for the support and for people being willing to subscribe as long as it stays reasonable. We understand that the key is update frequency, and we’re going to prioritize bug fixes and stability over big “heavy” features, especially for live/production use.

On the iOS 26 side: we’ll be adapting progressively. Those changes won’t land all at once, because they require fairly significant design updates, but it’s on our roadmap and will roll out in steps.

@mully Great marketing suggestions. We’ve invested a lot into development and server infrastructure, and honestly much less into marketing so far, we’re not very well supported on that front yet. Our core target is mobile lighting use cases (bands, DJ/events, outdoor film shoots, etc.), and partnering with passionate YouTubers/creators could be a great way to deliver effective tutorials and onboarding !

Vedeja · February 2, 2026, 7:36am

Yes, that’s the best way forward at this point.

Vedeja · February 2, 2026, 7:37am

What is missing? I mean, I run Photon on iOS 26 now.

Cclleemm · February 2, 2026, 12:52pm

Photon works fine on iOS 26 right now because it hasn’t been recompiled or updated since the iOS 16 days. Apps built with older toolkits keep their old behavior even on newer iOS versions.

As soon as we release a new update and recompile it, Apple forces us to use the new iOS 26 APIs and rules. That means lots of code changes on our end, testing for bugs creeping back in, and delays. A ton of our v2.6.0 work is actually fixing these iOS 26 quirks.

Remi · February 3, 2026, 10:15am

As others have mentioned, I will be happy to pay for a subscription as long as it results in more frequent updates. The app has almost all the features I need but it needs to be more stable. I haven`t experienced many crashes, but have had a few. When you are a musician it is important that the setup is rock solid.