After a long time away, I fired up Duolingo for a look the other day and was rather dismayed to discover that its free version has become an absolutely ad-riddled nightmare — and its subscription fee to remove said ads (as well as the ridiculous "you can only make five mistakes before you have to wait several hours" system) is rather expensive.
This is disappointing, because I would previously have recommended Duolingo as a great way to get started in developing confidence with a language. The actual course content is still very good, and the way the app works is solid and slick — it's just the relentless bombardment of ads after literally every question is kind of offensive, particularly when they all autoplay with their sound turned on.
Duolingo's mission is a solid one and I want to recommend them, but at £12 a month it's much pricier than Memrise — who I haven't looked at recently, but who I previously actually liked slightly more than Duolingo — and it doesn't feel great to feel forced into paying that because of obnoxious advertising.
I get the need for subscription fees, but I despise the manipulative behaviour that typically surrounds them. Duolingo's "annoy people so much they'll pay up" approach is one that is seen quite often, but by far the most widespread one is the practice of a service offering a subscription for "[reasonable price] per month", only to reveal when you've gone through all the steps of signing up that it was not, in fact, a monthly fee and is, instead, a large annual subscription.
Memrise is doing this right now, as it happens. "50% off subscriptions!" they say. "Just £2.92 a month!" Right next to this is the actual monthly price, which is £8.99; the "£2.92 a month" figure comes from the annual subscription, which is £34.99 right now. (That's actually not a terrible price, as it happens… hmm. No! Don't fall for it.)
Anyway. I get the need for these services to make money — I'm a little surprised Duolingo held on as long as it did with its formerly generous free offering — but I just wish they wouldn't be such arses about asking for it!
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