What we decided not to lock behind Pro

Summit has a subscription. Pro is $4.99 a month or $39.99 a year, and it unlocks photos on climbs, the premium globe styles, state-level detail, home screen widgets, and custom goals.

The tempting move, and a very common one, is to cap the thing the app is for. Ten climbs free, unlimited with Pro. It converts well because the user hits the wall exactly when they are most invested.

The core is not capped

There is no limit on climbs in Summit. Not ten, not fifty. The entire peak database is searchable for free, the full challenge stats are free, the climbing log is free, and the goal presets are free.

The reason is that a climbing log is only worth keeping if it is complete. An app that stops accepting your climbs at some arbitrary number is not a log, it is a demo, and a half-finished log is worth roughly nothing to the person keeping it. Capping the core would make the free tier useless and the paid tier a hostage negotiation.

Two smaller decisions in the same spirit

• Adding photos to a climb is a Pro feature, but deleting them never is. Your data does not become read-only because a subscription lapsed.
• Custom goals are a Pro feature, but a custom goal you already made stays editable if you stop subscribing. You do not get locked out of something you already built.

The bet is that Summit is more useful to me as an app people actually keep their climbing history in than as one that extracts a subscription from people who feel trapped. If the free tier is genuinely good and you still want the globe styles and the widget, that is a much better trade for both of us.