Why does a plant app cost $7 a month?

Fair question. Here's what that actually pays for, why it's a subscription instead of a one-time fee, and where part of it goes.

What's actually running

Your collection lives on a real database, not a file on your phone.

Every plant, photo, and care log you add is stored on a live server, synced across every device you use, and backed up automatically. That's what makes it possible to add a plant on your phone in the greenhouse and see it on your laptop five minutes later. None of that is free to run, and none of it gets cheaper as your collection grows — it gets more expensive.

Hosting & database

Every plant record, care schedule, and propagation log is stored on a live database that has to stay online, fast, and backed up, every hour of every day — not just when you happen to open the app.

Photo storage

Photos are the single biggest cost, and the one that grows fastest. A collection with a hundred plants and a few photos each adds up to real, ongoing storage — and that storage is billed by the month, forever, for as long as you keep the photo.

Email delivery

Account confirmations, access notifications, and anything else the app needs to send you goes through a paid delivery service, billed per email sent.

Payment processing

Every subscription payment has a real processing fee taken off the top before a cent reaches Morphora — that's true of any app that takes a card, not something specific to a small one.

Domain & security

The address you type to reach the app, and the certificate that keeps your data encrypted in transit, are both ongoing, renewing costs.

Actually building it

The honest biggest cost is time: fixing what breaks, building what's asked for, and answering when something goes wrong. A subscription is what makes it sustainable to keep doing that rather than shipping it once and walking away.

Why not just pay once?

A one-time fee only covers the day you pay it.

A one-time purchase makes sense for an app that runs entirely on your phone and never talks to a server again. Morphora isn't that — it keeps your collection live, synced, and backed up indefinitely, which means the cost of running it doesn't stop the day after you pay. It continues for as long as your account exists.

If it were one-time

Hosting and storage costs keep growing as your collection does, with no more money coming in to cover it
The only ways to stay afloat are ads, selling data, or shutting down
No real incentive to keep improving it once you've already paid

As a subscription

What you pay covers what you're actually using, for as long as you use it
No ads, and your data is never sold — that's already in the privacy policy, not just a promise on this page
Continued development is funded by people who are actually using it, not by a single early payment

Giving back

Part of every subscription goes to the people who actually grow these plants.

Most houseplants sold in the US — nearly 70% of them — are grown in Florida nurseries, often by workers facing real labor and human rights issues. Planting Justice, a campaign by the workers' rights organization WeCount!, is pushing the houseplant industry toward fair pay, safe conditions, and basic dignity for the people behind the plants we collect.

5% of subscription revenue, donated to Planting Justice