A month ago, I released ConfigMesh, a native macOS app that syncs your dotfiles and app settings across machines with end-to-end encryption. I spent months building what I thought was a solid product: zero-knowledge architecture, smart diffing, version history, granular control over what gets synced.
Then I launched. I ran a DevHunt launch, Reddit sponsored posts, Twitter boosts. Traffic came. Downloads didn’t. People were landing on the site, reading the feature list, and bouncing. Not because they didn’t understand what ConfigMesh does, but because the offer itself wasn’t landing.
After a month of feedback, conversations, and some honest self-reflection, I shipped ConfigMesh 1.1. This post is about the two assumptions I got wrong and what I changed.
Nobody wants to pay $5/month for text files
I launched ConfigMesh at $5/month (or $50/year). From my side of the screen, that felt reasonable. I’d built encryption infrastructure, a sync server, a native macOS app, months of development. Five bucks a month for all of that? Seemed fair.
From the user’s side of the screen, the math looked very different. Dotfiles are tiny. We’re talking kilobytes. A typical user’s entire config collection is smaller than a single iPhone photo. Paying $5/month to sync that felt disproportionate, regardless of the engineering underneath.
This is the indie dev pricing trap: you price based on what it cost you to build, not on what people are willing to pay. The perceived value of syncing text files has a hard ceiling, and $5/month was above it. It didn’t matter that the encryption was best-in-class or that the sync engine was smart. The sticker price created friction before anyone got to experience any of that.
The clearest signal came from Reddit. I posted ConfigMesh on the Mac apps subreddit and the feedback split into two camps. Some people said the price was just too high for what it does. Others went further: they didn’t want another subscription at all, regardless of price. That second group was the more interesting signal. It’s not about the dollar amount, it’s about the model.
ConfigMesh 1.1 drops the price to $1.99/month or $19.99/year. That’s a significant cut, but it better matches where users anchor the value of this kind of tool. More importantly, it’s no longer the only option (more on that below).
Trust isn’t a technical problem
This was the more interesting lesson.
ConfigMesh uses end-to-end encryption with a key that only you hold. The server literally cannot read your data. From a cryptographic standpoint, it doesn’t matter where the data is stored because it’s indistinguishable from random noise without your key.
I assumed that would be enough. It wasn’t.
The same Reddit thread made this clear. People weren’t just pushing back on the price, they were pushing back on the storage model. When I mentioned I was working on a Dropbox backend, the interest shifted noticeably. That was the option people actually wanted. Not cheaper cloud storage, but their own storage.
This isn’t irrational. It’s how people think about sensitive data. Ownership and control are emotional, not just technical. “Your data is encrypted on our servers” will always feel different from “your data is on your Dropbox,” even when the former is arguably more secure. You can’t engineer your way past that.
The deeper realization was that some users don’t need managed cloud storage at all. They already have storage (Dropbox, iCloud, NAS). They don’t want another cloud backend. They just want the sync engine.
Enter BYOS (Bring Your Own Storage)
ConfigMesh 1.1 adds a one-time purchase option with no included cloud storage. Instead, you sync against your own Dropbox.
The tradeoffs are real: Dropbox is slower than the managed backend and more error-prone. Sync conflicts are harder to resolve gracefully when you don’t control the storage layer. It’s a compromise, but it’s the compromise users actually asked for.
And yes, your data on Dropbox is still fully encrypted. Here’s what it actually looks like on disk: just encrypted blobs, completely unreadable without your key.
Here’s how the tiers work now:
- Subscription ($1.99/month or $19.99/year): Fully managed, encrypted cloud storage. Fastest sync, most reliable. Same as before, just cheaper.
- One-time purchase: No cloud storage included. Sync against your own Dropbox. Slower, but you own everything.
If you’re on the one-time purchase tier and try to use the managed ConfigMesh backend, you’ll see a clear upgrade prompt instead of a confusing error.
Dropbox is the first supported provider. More are coming.
What I’d tell myself at launch
Ship your pricing assumptions as cheaply as possible. I could have launched with a lower price and a free trial and validated willingness-to-pay before building conviction around $5/month.
And when users tell you they don’t trust something, don’t argue with their reasoning. Just give them an alternative they’re comfortable with. The best feature you can build is sometimes just getting out of the way.
ConfigMesh 1.1 is available now at configmesh.app. If you tried it before and bounced on the price or the storage model, give it another look.