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Why Poop Tales is free
144 one-star reviews, read one by one.
Before writing a line of code, I read the one-star reviews of the
bowel-tracking apps that already exist — 144 of them, every single one.
Not to copy features. To find out why people left.
Why people left
Adsbanners over the log button52
Bugs22 from one bad update36
Broken paywall promisespaid to remove ads, ads stayed35
Lost datagone after an update or a new phone13
Not enough analysis5
Poor reports4
Slow to log3
123 of the 144 left because of ads, bugs, or broken paywall
promises. 12 left over features. That ratio is the whole product decision.
So I didn’t build more features. I built the absence of the first three:
- No ads. Ever. There is no ad slot to remove, because
there are no ads. There is nothing being held back to sell you later,
either.
- No paywall. Logging, unlimited history, calendar,
search, stats, backup, restore, and CSV export — all of it is free.
There is no Pro tier.
- Your records are yours. They live in a database on
your phone. Backup is a plain file you can open and read; export is a
spreadsheet. Delete something by accident and it waits in a 30-day recycle
bin. The only thing that ever reaches my server is an anonymous count of
which buttons got used — event names only, never anything you typed.
What I did build
- One tap to log a movement — Bristol types 1–7, in plain words.
- A “nothing today” button, because a day with nothing is data too.
- One profile each for you, your baby, your cat, your dog — each with
their own history, stats, and export.
- Calendar and list history, with search. A 21-day sample to explore on
first launch, clearable in one tap.