Hey iCircuit Team,
I was actually planning on buying the app a couple of days ago, but I ended up holding off because I noticed a few red flags that really made me hesitate. As a potential user, I wanted to share this feedback with you because the app looks solid from the outside, but the online presence and current ecosystem are holding it back.
Here are the main issues I ran into:
Abandoned Feedback Forum: When I checked your website, I noticed a ton of user suggestions sitting as "pending" since 2014 and 2015. This is honestly a terrible look. It gives the impression that the app is completely abandoned, even though I saw you rolled out an update just three months ago. You guys really need to clean this up. If a suggestion was already implemented or resolved, close it out and mark it as "completed."
Duplicate Requests: There are a lot of duplicate threads on the forum. You should add a feature that allows users to flag duplicate requests or merge complaints instead of just letting them sit in the pending queue indefinitely.
Outdated Homepage Video: The demo video on your homepage looks incredibly old—I’m pretty sure that’s an iPhone 3G or 4. It’s way overdue for an update to match modern UI and devices.
Lack of Video Content/Tutorials: The last official tutorial video on YouTube was posted 5 years ago, and it doesn't even look like you have a dedicated official channel for regular updates. You need to spin up a proper channel ASAP to showcase new updates and tutorials.
No Free Trial or Promo Strategy: Forcing users to pay upfront without a test drive isn't a great strategy nowadays. You should offer a freemium model with limited capabilities so people can try it before they buy. On top of that, you're missing out on marketing opportunities like holiday discount codes or educational partnerships. Imagine a tech institute with 30 lab computers—you could offer them a 30% bulk discount code. The students learn on your app in class, and then they'll almost certainly buy it at full price (or with a small discount) for their personal devices to use at home.
Component Customization (The Library Problem): Instead of making the dev team shoulder the burden of adding every single specific electronic component under the sun, just provide the basics. For example, give us one generic N-Channel MOSFET and let the user look up a datasheet to input the specs themselves. Let them name it, save it to their library, and share that component file with friends or upload it publicly to your site. I actually saw this exact suggestion on your forum, but surprise—it’s still marked as pending. If this is already a feature, please update the forum status.
Custom IC Design: It would be a game-changer if we could design a custom IC from scratch. Imagine being able to build a circuit internally, package it into a single IC chip, and then manually clean up and arrange the input/output pins if the auto-generation messes them up. Users should be able to peer inside the IC either in a separate tab or directly within the active simulation, save it, and share the file with the community.
I have a few more suggestions, but I don't want to dump everything on you at once.
Ultimately, iCircuit seems like a great tool, but it lacks exposure, and the ancient forum threads scare away potential buyers. I really hope that when I finally decide to pull the trigger and buy the app, I won't find more reasons to complain and can just leave a glowing review instead.
Best regards