The 2025 Shippies: Your winners

Every year at App Growth Annual, we take a moment to celebrate the best subscription apps have to offer. The Shippies honor creativity and effective onboarding, monetization, and retention.

This year’s winners took home the Golden Chocolate Shippy, eternal glory, and their very own billboard on Times Square (because what says “you nailed onboarding” better than a giant panda, bean, or fitness coach lighting up Manhattan?).

Anchor’s Away: Focus Friend by Hank Green

The Anchor’s Away category celebrates new apps that launch with polish, purpose, and promise.

Focus Friend by Hank Green (yes, that Hank Green) nailed it. The app turns focus sessions into a cozy, low-stakes ritual with a smiling bean who cheers you on. It’s the antidote to ‘I should really be working’ guilt: A little emotional design magic, paired with brilliant simplicity.

Why it won:

• Emotional design — the bean gives a gentle nudge instead of a guilt trip
• Low friction, with no complex setup, you just tap focus
• An aesthetic polish that is delightfully simple and calm
• Early traction: 500k+ Play Store downloads and a 4.2★ rating within weeks

Focus Friend unseated ChatGPT from the App Store charts for a bit, proving once again that cute beans beat AI (at least sometimes).

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Lone Skipper: ReSubs

The Lone Skipper award is for the indie devs out there. The ones steering the ship solo; building, shipping, and maintaining apps with exceptional craft.

ReSubs helps users track all their subscriptions (and maybe finally cancel that one free trial from 2021). It’s a masterclass in clean design, regular updates, and cohesive UX all built and maintained by one person: Chris Krueger.

Why it won:

• Cohesive and elegant design
• Constant flow of thoughtful updates
• Built and maintained by a solo developer

It’s proof that with focus, craftsmanship, and coffee, one person can absolutely run a subscription empire.

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Smooth Sailor: ReciMe

The Smooth Sailor award goes to the app with the best onboarding: where users go from download to aha! moment in seconds.

ReciMe is the world’s most popular recipe organizer, and it shows. From the moment you open the app, it understands what you’re trying to do — save a recipe, not learn another new tool. After a few qualifying questions, you’re prompted to search for and import a recipe, right there during onboarding. It’s a gutsy way to prove your product does exactly what it claims to do, within the first 60 seconds of downloading.

Why it won:

• Lightning-fast path to value — the USP is obvious from minute one
• Smart onboarding that adapts to the user
• Proven impact as the go-to recipe app for millions

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Port of Entry: Wink

Monetization isn’t just about what you charge, it’s about when and how you charge. The Port of Entry award celebrates apps with standout paywalls, pricing, and checkout strategies.

Wink made bold moves in experimentation this year, testing everything from pricing bundles to animated paywalls. Their weekend promos alone boosted revenue by over 20%, while churn-triggered offers and seamless web checkout flows gave users multiple smooth entry points to upgrade.

Why it won:

• Strategic experimentation across pricing and design
• Smart promotions that actually moved the needle
• Lifecycle monetization and web + in-app synergy

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Life Preserver: WeWard

Retention is hard. Keeping users motivated even harder. The Life Preserver award honors the app that mastered both.

WeWard kept users coming back (and walking more) through habit loops, social motivation, and emotional reinforcement. Weekly leaderboards and celebratory streaks didn’t just keep users active, they dropped churn by 22% over nine months.

Why it won:

• Habit-forming design that drives daily engagement
• Social motivation through community rankings
• 22% reduction in churn thanks to reinforcement and sharing

This is what sustainable engagement looks like: fun, rewarding, and some healthy competition.

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Treasure Chest: Ladder

The Treasure Chest award celebrates apps that know how to turn user intent into business impact, monetizing not just subscriptions, but brand affinity.

Ladder does this brilliantly. Their Pro plan provides full access to everything the app has to offer, including a range of social features like direct messaging. As you’re onboarding, you receive one of those direct messages from a coach whose workout program you follow. Want to respond and have 1:1 interactions with your coach? Upgrade to Elite. Combine that with a merch shop that’s being fed by referral-driven loyalty, and Ladder’s monetization strategy is as smart as it is seamless.

Why it won:

• Monetizing high-intent users who spend up to 4x more
• Upsells that feel human and contextual
• Extra revenue through merch for superfans

It’s a perfect example of aligning monetization with motivation, and making it look good doing it

The Golden Shippy moment

Each winner walked away with the iconic Chocolate Shippy trophy (and will have the proper, metal statue sent to their homes to save on luggage fees!) and has seen their apps and logos lighting up Times Square. A surreal reward for a year of bold ideas and hard work.

Until next year…

The 2025 Shippies reminded us that great apps are more than clever code and catchy onboarding flows. They’re built by people who care about design, delight, and making something that genuinely helps their users.

So to every app out there that shipped this year: keep going. Keep experimenting. Keep polishing.

We’ll see you at App Growth Annual 2026 — and maybe next time, it’ll be your app up on that billboard!