It's a $20 one time fee to remove ads, and I appreciate that there's a lifetime option and I don't think $20 is price gouging for an app that will receive updates far into the future.

I looked at the subscription features and most of them are features that requires hosted resources. The additional non standard user features require hosting so it stays with you even if you reinstall the app, plus it has other features that require external paid apis like translation and ocr, so I think it's reasonable to charge for that when it costs money to provide those features.

Either way, the good thing is that there will be lots of options, both free and paid. Free ones will impose a baseline level of quality paid apps need to excel beyond and competing paid apps with keep the price competitive and reasonable. What's important is choice, and because lemmy is an open standard platform, that choice can never be taken from us.