If you’re looking for a rundown of the top lessons from 400+ subscription app founders, builders, and growth experts, then you’re in the right place.
App Growth Annual 2025 is our one-a-year gathering for people building and scaling subscription apps — a full day of live keynotes, hands-on workshops, and a little bit of chaos (the good kind). This year’s speakers spanned category leaders like Duolingo and Ladder, to fast-moving indies and growth consultants.
Here’s the 11 top takeaways on monetization, growth, and retention — plus every RevenueCat product announcement.
1. Duolingo: If users love your core product enough, keep it free and monetize around it
How do you build a product that millions use for free, but still choose to pay for? Natalia Castillejo, Director of Product at language-learning titan, Duolingo, shared valuable lessons on creating value with freemium products.
Free is core to our growth, not just our mission.
Natalia Castillejo, Director of Product — Duolingo
- Keep the core product free to power growth: Free is an engine. Brand love → word-of-mouth → massive top of funnel → more subscription opportunities. If you invest in your free experience, it compounds your paid experience — when people are passionate about the free version of your app, they want to pay for more.
- Gamify habit formation via loss aversion: Daily streaks on Duolingo create consistency and build habits with users. By monetizing ways to protect streaks (celebrations, Streak Freezes), they become product levers for premium.
- Outcome > features: Duolingo learned from unsuccessful features like Duo TV to prioritize user needs — “We started with a business need rather than a learning need.” Similarly, AI-themed messaging on new features flopped, while repositioning around a concrete job (e.g. “become confident speaking”) drastically improved sales.
- Micro-delight is more than cosmetic: Animations, character reactions, and minor customizations all cascade into growth. Duolingo’s A/B tests show higher engagement and active users when delight is sprinkled throughout the interface.
2. Ladder: To stand out in a crowded space, you need to be willing to reinvent
Ready for the growth playbook of a #1 App Store app? Greg Stewart, CEO of Ladder, delivered a masterclass on scaling subscription apps in a competitive market. From honing in on what users really care about, to constant iteration based on customer feedback, Ladder’s success has come from relentless focus on solving user problems.
We overhauled our entire monetization strategy. If we hadn’t… I don’t think we’d be here.
Greg Stewart, CEO — Ladder
- It’s better to rebuild than flop: Ladder’s early pricing was based on market comparison, and it worked for users attracted by a specific coach, but not the wider audience. When growth plateaued, they hit pause on all monetization efforts and went back to the drawing board. Don’t be afraid to overhaul your pricing structure if it’s not working — analyze users, re-segment, and rebuild.
- Build for a problem: Ladder didn’t want to be another “workout library” — finding workouts wasn’t the problem. Motivation was. Solving for this JTBD meant building what drove workout completions, not vanity metrics.
- Listen to users, ignore everything else: Ladder’s product roadmap is dictated by user feedback: “We don’t listen to our investors, we listen to our members.” Use review mining to define your next ship — e.g. what other apps do users supplement yours with? You’ve found your next feature.
- Brand is your differentiator: In crowded spaces, your personality is the only thing that can stand out. Ladder cultivated a distinct, confident brand led by expert fitness coaches and storytelling, then spoke directly to users via Tiktok as a primary channel.
3. Condé Nast: Brand is a blessing — and a trap
Traditional media may seem like the last place to look for app growth insights, but Michael Ribero, SVP of Global Consumer Revenue, has turned The Washington Post, Vogue, The New Yorker, and now Condé Nast into digital subscription powerhouses. Here’s how.
Someone’s exposure [to your brand] is not necessarily when they’re thinking about buying. It can be 10, 15, 20 years before that.
Michael Ribero, SVP of Global Consumer Revenue — Condé Nast
- Nurture affinity long before purchase: The biggest app players are household names, even to people who don’t use them. Seed positive brand associations early and often, across personas, so you’re at the forefront of people’s mind when and if they transition to becoming a buyer.
- Keep heritage, but avoid it becoming stale legacy: Brand is power, but it’s easy to become stagnant. You don’t want to become “your parents’ app”. Identify the heart of your brand and hold onto it; the rest should be malleable with time and experience.
- Utilize bundling and unbundling: “Giving people more for less money is an equation that’s always going to work,” says Michael. Maximize ARPU by positioning bundles at the moment of purchase, when buyers are “the most engaged they’ll ever be”. Create smaller unbundled offers or micro-subs to lower entry barriers for hesitant users.
- Treat partners and platforms as frenemies: Distribution partners can help and hurt. What’s in it for them? Go into partnerships with your eyes open — decide who controls billing and data, and identify their true priorities.
Watch the full recording on the Sub Club podcast
The Sub Club Podcast
Interviews and deep dives with the experts behind the biggest apps in the world.
4. Lose It!: Paywalling a previously-free feature is possible (even if it’s scary)
Next up, Danielle Goryl, VP of Growth Marketing, and Burton Hohman, Senior Product Manager, took to the stage to explain how paywalling Lose It!’s barcode scanner — a previously-free feature — paid off, even if it was a risky move.
Every decision lives in that balance: keep free strong, and make premium worth paying for.
Danielle Goryl, VP of Growth Marketing — Lose It!
- Freemium isn’t a loophole, it’s a tactic: It’s tempting to paywall your most-used features, but ensure you keep genuine value free to engage users. Premium should fund innovation, not block usership.
- Platform parity isn’t sacred: Pricing differently across platforms can lead to fragmentation or confusion — but that doesn’t mean it’s impossible. While iOS users tolerated Lose It!’s barcode scanner being paywalled, Android didn’t. Ultimately, they kept it free-with-ads on Android, and paid for iOS. It’s okay to break “sacred rules”, just lead with data, approach with caution, and be flexible.
- Coordinate deeply with support: Utilize common negative feedback to rework your paywall copy and pre-empt arguments. Pre-write scripts for expected complaints. Listen to your users and use what they give you to win them over.
- Target emotive moments for reviews: Prompt for review after positive in-app moments and key events, or during high-intent seasons, to maximize the chance of users actually leaving a review — and it being positive!
Emotion + review prompt = ❤️
Learn how to build a customer satisfaction engine that fuels positive reviews by prompting users after they have an in-app success moment.
5. CardPointers: Skip ads, embrace ‘advocates’
“Affiliate program”? Not anymore. Enter revenue-share partnerships: two-way agreements that incentivize creators to promote your app. Emmanuel Crouvisier, Founder of CardPointers, pitched the case for content creators as the new sales force for subscription apps, and shared how to get buy-in from influencers.
People like people. They don’t so much like companies.
Emmanuel Crouvisier, Founder — CardPointers
- Authenticity outperforms ads: Seeing #ad automatically turns people off. Rev-share partnerships feel collaborative, to creators and their audience. Partnering with creators to use your app means their endorsement is integrated organically within content. Because it feels authentic, you build trust with their followers, and often generate more revenue than paid ads.
- Enable partners to win: Creators need to know and love the product for their promo to feel genuine. Offer free premium app access, send media kits, and give demo calls so they understand the app and know how to show off its features.
- Incentivize and gamify success: Motivate creators by showing their impact and encouraging healthy competition, like an email every time they make a sale, or a leadership board showing most rev-share sales. Build relationships by ensuring you pay on time, and celebrating their personal wins e.g. follower milestones.
- Communities are self-sustaining growth loops: Infiltrate niche Facebook, Discord, or WhatsApp groups surrounding a topic or interest for access to high-intent audiences and public social proof.
6. App Masters: Know your enemy, but don’t copy-paste their hacks
Are you willing to break the rules if it means shooting to #1 on the App Store? The modern app store is a battlefield; high-stakes, high-enforcement. Steve P. Young, Founder of App Masters, exposed the hidden black-hat strategies apps use to climb the charts — and the growing surveillance app stores have to prevent them working.
If you ignore Apple or continue going after the slap on the wrist, that’s when you tend to really get in trouble.
Steve P. Young, Founder — App Masters
- Platforms are cracking down: Apple and Google now enforce review integrity and store compliance at scale. Repeated or blatant violations lead to removal, revenue suspension, or account ban. Shady hacks that worked last quarter could now trigger flags on your account. Treat compliance as part of your growth strategy.
- Understand the dark side: Awareness ≠ endorsement. Knowing black-hat ASO tactics helps you detect competitors gaming the system, and avoid falling into similar traps. Success belongs to those who know the rules deeply enough to play by them, and still win.
- Short-term hacks spike installs — and scrutiny: Tactics like lifetime free offers, incentivized ratings, or aggressive paywalls can and do work. But they also draw attention. Sustainable growth comes from optimizing legitimate signals: product-market fit, genuine ASO, strong LTV, and user trust.
- Fake reviews are worse than no reviews: Your reputation is more than brand, it’s a safety system. Fake or manipulated reviews don’t just hurt users, they have long-term impact on your reputation and ring alarm bells to app stores. Protecting your review integrity is just as important as optimizing your app page.
7. Flighty: A good feature is its own marketing engine
Ryan Jones, Founder & CEO of Flighty, laid out Flighty’s unique growth trajectory, demonstrating that the most sustainable growth doesn’t come from budget, but from building app experiences so useful that user delight fuels organic growth loops.
How often do people open the App Store to look for new apps? It doesn’t happen anymore. They go there to solve a problem.
Ryan Jones, Founder & CEO — Flighty
- Define your emotional job-to-be-done: Flighty’s value isn’t flight tracking, it’s confidence while flying. The app solves uncertainty, not logistics, selling calm and control in a chaotic travel experience. Focus on emotional resonance over utility.
- Make sharing useful, not promotional: Your biggest promotion comes from moments users want to share. A shareable flight diary that offers authentic delight. Live flight-share links with zero friction and no sign-in needed: “The third time someone sends that link, their partner just downloads the app.” Every feature is a loop: deliver value, earn trust, invite new users in. Delight and utility goes further than engineered promotion.
- Always ship on day one: Being first to support new Apple features like Live Activities and Dynamic Island unlocked public visibility, brand leadership, and positive user experiences for Flighty. Don’t wait to see what competitors do; act quickly to open silent acquisition channels.
- Your PMF may be unexpected: Rather than ‘live flight tracking’, Flighty’s product-market fit came from its data precision. In flight tracking, there’s no forgiveness for errors: “You don’t get second chances, if you tell someone the wrong delay time, they’re gone.” Identify the make-or-break for your users, then build the product around it.
Catch the full recording on the Launched podcast — episode coming soon.
8. Shotsy: Indie is a philosophy, not a team size
From scrappy indie years to raising $2 million in venture funding, Aja Beckett, Founder of Shotsy, has many lessons to share from her indie journey. Above all: build from personal pain, grow through community, and raise capital that protects your craft.
It was really important to me to work with VCs who shared the same focus on delighting users as I did.
Aja Beckett, Founder — Shotsy
- Monetize meaningfully: Users don’t mind paying for features they believe in, for a product they trust whose mission they align with: “People weren’t just paying for features, they were paying to support something made for them.”
- Authenticity can scale: It’s possible to raise capital without losing your indie culture. For Shotsy, funding was about fueling the craft, supporting user benefits, and protecting the product’s future for users. It gave acceleration without dilution of values.
- Indie is a mindset: Regardless of team size or funding structure, you can stay true to indie roots and build a venture-backed product — if you have a defined mindset and user obsession at the core of the growth.
- Build it and they will come: When you solve a problem you live with, and fuel the product with that emotional truth, you attract a community: “Reddit was the heartbeat of our launch.” Early believers shaped the product, promoted it organically, and emotional alignment replaced ad spend.
H2: 9. RevenueCat’s paywall builder is fast enough for e-sports
Forget App Store rankings — the World Paywall Speedbuilding Championships is the only leaderboard that matters now.
Back in June 2025, we challenged the app community to see how quickly and accurately they could rebuild real-world paywalls in RevenueCat’s paywall builder.
From 668 applicants in the qualifier round, to top 25, then five semi-finalists who joined App Growth Annual live in New York for the final round, we put RevenueCat Paywalls to the test to discover:
- Who is the fastest paywall builder in the world?
- Is RevenueCat Paywalls robust enough to handle being an e-sport?
With a lightning-fast final build time of 3:16, software engineer Joshua De Guzman rebuilt Lose It!’s paywall and was named the World Paywall Speedbuilding Champion, taking home $5k and, of course, a custom gold-plated champion’s belt.
Equal parts hackathon, e-sports, and WWE spectacle, we’d say the WPSC is definitely our new favorite sport.
H2: 10. Shippies x Shipaton awards: Chocolate is better than trophies
Each year, we celebrate the best subscription apps have to offer — from the winners of our global hackathon, Shipaton, to recipients of the coveted Shippies awards.
The second year of Shipaton was phenomenal, with over 55k participants and 800+ apps submitted. After eight weeks of grinding and #BuildinginPublic, it’s amazing to consider the influx of new apps landing on people’s homescreens.
The Shippies are RevenueCat’s annual app awards, honoring the year’s most innovative, user-friendly, and creative new subscription apps. With categories across onboarding, monetization, and retention, it’s a moment to recognize truly outstanding launches in the industry.
Alongside Shipaton’s winning apps receiving $350k+ in cash prizes, winners of Shipaton and The Shippies received a unique Golden Shippy, and their very own spotlight billboard in Times Square.
Naturally, we didn’t want to exceed the winners’ luggage weight limit on their flight home*, so winners on the day got to enjoy their Golden Shippy in delicious, gold-lustre-covered chocolate form.
*The awards didn’t arrive in time
Read the list of winning Shipaton apps here
Explore the Shipaton 2025 app showcase here
Read the full rundown on The Shippies 2025 winners
11. If you care enough, you really can get the Pokémon theme song singer to make a song about RevenueCat
We wrapped up the day the only way that made sense… with a live performance from Jason Paige, the voice behind Pokémon’s theme — who also wrote the RevenueCat theme song. Oh, you didn’t know we had a theme song? Of course we do.
Did he sing the Pokémon theme? Obviously. Was the main event really about showcasing the official RevenueCat theme song? Also yes. Did people get up and join in? Turns out, app devs love a sing-along.
Enough reading — go give it a listen 🎧
Listen to the RevenueCat theme song
Every product announcement at App Growth Annual 2025
From AI-powered and video Paywalls to real-time Charts, in-app currency, and daily payouts, here’s everything we’re building now and shipping soon.
- Video and AI-generated paywalls: Paywalls V2 is expanding — add video components for richer storytelling, use AI to generate paywalls in an instant, and watch every paywall built for mobile automatically work on the web, too. Video and mobile/web compatibility out now, AI-builder coming soon.
- Real-time Charts: Purchases and events now appear instantly in real-time across your Charts dashboard. Attribution, integrations and unified metrics mean what you see is always accurate and consistent. Currently in beta, full rollout by end of year.
- Virtual currency: New virtual currency framework lets you add coins, credits, or tokens directly into your app. Create, track, and refund with built-in server-side APIs. Manage balances, redemptions, and offers securely via RevenueCat. Currently in beta, rolling out by end of year.
- RC Capital — daily payouts: Don’t let cash flow slow your growth. RC Capital will offer next-day payouts for 80% of daily app store revenue so you can reinvest quicker. With a transparent 2.5% fee, remaining funds will arrive as usual from Apple/Google. Launching late 2025 for US, full rollout to follow.
- RevenueCat Funnels: Design fully-hosted web-to-app onboarding flows, powered by our Paywalls engine. Remote-configurable, cross-platform, and no-code. Integrates seamlessly with Paywalls V2 and Web Billing. Early access opening late 2025, full rollout coming 2026.
- Customer Center: Add a plug-and-play in-app subscription page for users to manage their plans, cancel, or redeem retention offers. Include Zendesk and Intercom integrations, and churn prevention hooks and feedback prompts. Available now!
Watch the full product keynote here
Introducing Subscriber Milestones
If you’ve ever admired YouTube’s Play Buttons, now’s your time. We’re celebrating your wins with Subscriber Milestones, a new initiative to mark app growth. You’ll hear from us as you hit Silver (50k), Gold (250k), and Diamond (1m) subscribers — and receive a shiny plaque, shipped straight to you!
We’ll see you next year
And that’s your whirlwind tour of App Growth Annual 2025! There were way more than just 11 lessons to learn from the full day — we didn’t even mention the 28 exclusive hands-on workshops from app industry experts, or the after-party complete with DJ Jazzy Jeff, airbrush tattoos, and custom caricatures… but you can only fit so much into a blog post.
Feel like you missed out? Join us at App Growth Annual 2026 😉
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