warrimoo
Install the average app and before you’ve done anything useful you’ve handed over an email address, a password, and permission to be “kept in the loop”.
Install TreatMyPet2 and you’re looking at the Today screen. That’s it. That’s the onboarding.
People assume the no-account thing is a privacy stance, and it is, but it started as something simpler: I couldn’t come up with a single thing your email address would do for the app. The meds live on your phone. The reminders fire on your phone. The reports generate on your phone. An account would exist so that I could have a list of users, which is a me-problem, not a you-feature.
Once you skip the account, good things fall out of it for free. There’s no password to forget for an app you open at 7am half asleep. There’s no database of pet owners for anyone to breach, subpoena or buy, because it doesn’t exist. There’s no marketing list, because I never learned who you are. The only time I find out a user exists is when they email support, and that inbox is read by me, usually with a dog supervising.
The same rule holds for analytics. There’s no tracker phoning home about which buttons you press. The honest cost of that choice: I can’t A/B test my way to decisions, so the app improves the old way, by people telling me what’s annoying. Slower, but the feedback comes in whole sentences instead of funnels, and the sentences are better.
None of this makes us saints. It makes the product smaller, which for medication software is the correct size. The one exception coming down the line is the optional sharing feature, where a sign-in genuinely does something for you (it lets your household see the same doses). It’ll be opt-in, clearly explained, and everything stays exactly this private until the moment you choose otherwise.
Your dog doesn’t have an email address. His medication app doesn’t need yours.