The client-side WASM approach is the part that stands out to me. "No upload" isn't just a privacy feature—it fundamentally changes the economics of the product. If compute scales with the user's device instead of your servers, offering a genuinely free tier becomes much more sustainable.
Exactly — that's the part that made me build it this way. The flip side is interesting too: since I'm not the one doing the compute, I can't monetize the usual converter way ("upload and we'll do the heavy lifting on our servers"). So the paid tier has to be about convenience and limits — bigger batches, larger files, dropping the 5-file cap — rather than "we own the infrastructure." Still honestly figuring out whether people will pay for convenience when the free tier already nails the core job.
The real constraint is the user's device: everything decodes in RAM, so a huge HEIC batch on a low-end phone can choke where a server tool wouldn't blink. Trade-offs everywhere.
Curious, since you clearly think about this: would you pay for a client-side tool, or does "free + private" set the expectation that it stays free forever?
That's exactly the implication I was thinking about.
I don't think the interesting decision is whether people will pay for convenience.
I think it's the business interpretation that question quietly commits you to, and I don't think I can do the reasoning behind it justice in a thread.
Happy to explain what I mean if it's useful. What's the best email to reach you on?
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I kept hitting "unsupported file type" moving iPhone HEIC photos to Windows — and every free converter wanted me to upload my private photos to their server first. That bugged me. So I built Pixore to convert everything
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The client-side WASM approach is the part that stands out to me. "No upload" isn't just a privacy feature—it fundamentally changes the economics of the product. If compute scales with the user's device instead of your servers, offering a genuinely free tier becomes much more sustainable.
Exactly — that's the part that made me build it this way. The flip side is interesting too: since I'm not the one doing the compute, I can't monetize the usual converter way ("upload and we'll do the heavy lifting on our servers"). So the paid tier has to be about convenience and limits — bigger batches, larger files, dropping the 5-file cap — rather than "we own the infrastructure." Still honestly figuring out whether people will pay for convenience when the free tier already nails the core job.
The real constraint is the user's device: everything decodes in RAM, so a huge HEIC batch on a low-end phone can choke where a server tool wouldn't blink. Trade-offs everywhere.
Curious, since you clearly think about this: would you pay for a client-side tool, or does "free + private" set the expectation that it stays free forever?
That's exactly the implication I was thinking about.
I don't think the interesting decision is whether people will pay for convenience.
I think it's the business interpretation that question quietly commits you to, and I don't think I can do the reasoning behind it justice in a thread.
Happy to explain what I mean if it's useful. What's the best email to reach you on?