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Campfango is the dream of Jason and Rachael Carpenter; we are a small business based in Saint Louis, Missouri started with the focus of building quality, privacy-focused applications for the camping industry. We launched Camper almost 1 year ago, after several years of work on the design and business plan for the application. We do all development, testing, website design and other business management tasks within the family.
We remain incredibly focused on privacy. We simply do not like the model of selling your data to make money and with a 20 year background in digital banking software development, we also know the responsibility associated with storing any of your data. To date, we have launched our free application and worked hard to keep your data right where it belongs: your devices and your iCloud account. This free version of the application is an investment by Campfango in getting the foundation put down to build the rest of the business.
Little did we know that 2020 would, on many fronts, rapidly change the RV travel world. RV ownership and rentals have expanded quickly, enabling a safe and comfortable way for families to travel together. All at the same time, jobs and the economy here in the US are on shaky ground. We adjusted our plans over Q2 and decided to re-focus on iteratively building the Campfango platform with a focus on enhancing safety and satisfaction for RV owners, campground owners and park operators. With this shift, we are introducing a subscription tier within our free app.
You will continue to enjoy the Campfango Camper app you have come to know for free. We will be introducing new features and capabilities within the Camper app which will only be available to users who have an active subscription.
We have not finalized on the subscription cost just yet, that will happen before the next released (planned in August). At this time, we expect that cost to be around $10/year.
While we cannot predict what may come in the future, we can share our guiding principles. We will aim to keep the free version of Camper as it is, continuing to offer improvements and bug fixes. Existing features will remain in place (likely seeing continued improvement over time) while subscribers will receive new and/or expanded features only available to them. We expect that there will always be a free version of Camper.
Creating the subscription tier helps fund our development. Campfango is still a moonlight venture, we still work our day jobs today and invest our own money into the effort. The subscription revenue will be used to pay the bills for operating Campfango, LLC and to help fund new feature development.
We have no plans for this. We will not trash up the app with advertisements or try and mine data to sell. We believe that users are willing to pay for software, knowing that it respects their privacy and supports creating US jobs.