We’ve had a lot of reports from users getting their internet completely disconnected, filtering not working across apps or being slow and impacting battery life amongst other issues.
While I understand the frustration when the UI looks and feels almost the same, you should know we completely changed how it works under the hood to remedy the above mentioned issues. Blokada v6 moves the processing from your phone to the cloud, thus it requires us to maintain and pay for this service to be highly available 24/7 or your internet stops working.
This is why we now require a subscription, not because “we just want money”.
Blokada Cloud will also allow us to implement new features in the future that wouldn’t be possible otherwise.
Blokada Cloud is a new subscription that costs roughly $1.7/mo with a one week free trial depending on where you live in the world.
Blokada Plus that you refer to is the optional premium subscription that includes the VPN as well as all features of Blokada Cloud.
Hi balboah and the rest of the Blokada team. One question for you after all this messy update release, how much more was it going to cost to have v6 released as a new app on the App Store while keeping v5 as the old app?
It would have been nice to have at least discussed these things beforehand in the community before it dropped. I’m sure we would have come up with a more amicable release solution.
We are a tiny team already maintaining and developing 4 apps (2 on Android, 1 on iOS, and 1 web). It takes a lot of effort to maintain an app. That’s why we couldn’t keep the old app alongside.
Apple is the villain here by breaking the possibility to block the ads with a free solution. Servers are not free. Please complain to Apple that they’re trying to force ads upon you despite claims to be pro privacy.
It’s not wanting money. It’s operation costs. I dislike subscription services as much as anyone but understand why they’re necessary in some situations because there are ongoing and scalable expenses that are incurred just to break even. This isn’t a for profit operation exactly. Most people here are strictly volunteer. I don’t think Blokada is spewing money from its pockets or that was ever the intention.
I understand that Karol but that’s not quite what I asked. I would not expect the older version to be maintained, as it is depreciated and not completely functional for those on iOS 14.5+ but for some it still worked. I’m not asking for exact costs just a feel of what it might be to have 2 app versions in the store.
Obviously releasing as just an update no doubt spead up the review process and cut the time to fix the reported problems people were having, but that was not communicated as a reason.
I’m not really sure what the best route to go to restore some of the damage to people’s trust in the project.
Thanks for developing a solution that works despite iOS’s changes. I’m sure it’s frustrating to deal with this sort of limitation and you guys have been getting a lot of negativity about it.
I’d like to propose that you open source the server side code for running Blokada Cloud in a way that lets users self host the backend, and add a configurable option inside the app to let it work with self hosted VPN servers. This would be a best of both worlds approach. Users who aren’t technically minded or don’t feel like going to the effort of setting anything up can still continue to use the paid option and have everything taken care of for them, funding development. Users who are technically minded can opt to self host, and can also contribute to development if they wish.
I have had Blokada Plus for a while that I use on my iPhone 12. I would like to go back to using the regular libre version but I can’t seem to figure out how to do that. I canceled my subscription, deleted the app entirely off of my phone and even deleted my original account that I used to read the forums. After I removed the app I downloaded it again and somehow it takes me right back to my plus account. How do I switch back to the original version, libre? I originally downloaded blokada for one particular game and it worked great until the makers of the app did something on their end that interfered with blokada completely blocking the ads. I basically only had to sit through half of the ad. I mainly use my iPhone to play this game but I also play it on an android Samsung tablet. Recently when I play on my iPhone something is happening with my blokada account that messes up my game when it comes time to watch an ad. I end up having to completely shut down the app and start over. It’s also affecting my safari browser. This is only happening on my iPhone with the blokada plus account. My android has the regular libre and it’s not giving me any issues. So I would like to try to go back to using it on my iPhone to see if that resolves my issues.
Lets say first Thank you to all volunteers for your work in the past. To offer a free app which prevents me and my family from ad and trackers is great!
But the way you communicate to stop the free model of the app … there are better ways to do that. Maybe you should try to get some marketing expert into your team (this is not my topic, sorry). Maybe it would be a good solution to explain the reason for this change inside the app. Then each user will know WHY this step is done and don’t start frustrated search in the web.
I think its not a big deal to pay a small yearly amount for Blokada and will do this. Can you tell me if the IAP for Blokada Cloud is shareable with the family? Does you allow this?
Not really importeant, but: For what is the income used the project now gets?
for blokada cloud, you can share as many as you want, as long you have an active subscription, and you can set up on any device as long they support DoH.
starting from android 9 android supports DoH by default.
for another device that is running Windows, you can use either yogadns if you want only use blokada cloud, or use blokada VPN that can be shared up to 5 devices.
and for how to do that, just setup at app.blokada.org
Thanks for this explanation. Im using iOS, but the things are clear now, except:
I want to buy a subscription for Blokada Cloud: This is only possible on iOS as IAP, its not possible to buy this on the website, correct?
How to login with a given account on a iOS-device (with the account im using on the website)? There is no Logout-Button. I can just show the Account-ID (which is different on each device in my family).
As asked before and not really important: For what is the income used the project now gets? If a free service is converted to a paid service it would be a good idea too have a clear communication how the earnings are used.
you can make a payment on the website as well, and use that account id on any device by restoring it on the device settings.
go to app.blokada.org and click on upgrade to blokada plus the yellow button.
and to log in to blokada account on website you can check your account id on your device settings, and there is the logout button as well.
and the paid income from users will be used for blokada team to maintain the cloud server as its need money for it.
The Blokada Cloud specific subscription is not purchasable on app.blokada.org at this time. The website will be updated in the future to enable that for everyone. So far you can only get the cloud specific subscription only on iOS devices the license will work across all devices.
Our infrastructure costs money. That’s where your subscription comes into play.
I’ll add to that just one thing: you can “move around” your account between the iOS / Android / Web. Just make a note of your account ID - the random letters you’ll find in any of our apps (in “My Account” section). Then to use this account elsewhere, use option “Restore Account”.
you guys fcked up making ios paid…i can’t view a single site via ipad without millions of porno ads and pop ups in my face before actually clicking on anything. How long is it until Android doesn’t become free anymore and i suffer the same fate there
