Review Insights · App Store
DataMan - Data Usage Widget
Johnny Ixe · 683 ratings · ★ 4.5
4.5
★★★★★
683 ratings
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Top complaints - extracted from 26 negative reviews
Recurring phrases mined from 1-2★ reviews. The bigger the percentage, the more users have the same problem. Fix the top 2-3 in your version and you have product-market fit on day one.
1
"data"
13 negative reviews mention this · 50% of all complaints
★★★★★ "Bait-and-Switch - $0.99 Gets You Almost Nothing But Aggressive Upsell. UPDATE in response to developer: Thanks for the reply, but I have a screenshot of the pop-up triggered when I tapped “Font.” It promoted a Bonus Gift with Winter Wonderland and DONKEY Bounce - clear game content inside a paid app. Whether …" - Rischárd
2
"subscription"
10 negative reviews mention this · 38% of all complaints
★★★★★ "Greedy app. A subscription to change billing periods? What a joke." - Weltall-2
3
"usage"
9 negative reviews mention this · 35% of all complaints
★★★★★ "Bait-and-Switch - $0.99 Gets You Almost Nothing But Aggressive Upsell. UPDATE in response to developer: Thanks for the reply, but I have a screenshot of the pop-up triggered when I tapped “Font.” It promoted a Bonus Gift with Winter Wonderland and DONKEY Bounce - clear game content inside a paid app. Whether …" - Rischárd
4
"paid"
7 negative reviews mention this · 27% of all complaints
★★★★★ "Bait-and-Switch - $0.99 Gets You Almost Nothing But Aggressive Upsell. UPDATE in response to developer: Thanks for the reply, but I have a screenshot of the pop-up triggered when I tapped “Font.” It promoted a Bonus Gift with Winter Wonderland and DONKEY Bounce - clear game content inside a paid app. Whether …" - Rischárd
5
"other"
7 negative reviews mention this · 27% of all complaints
★★★★★ "Feels scammy. I paid $0.99 primarily for the widget advertised in the app, only to find out I have to buy a subscription to be able to use that. This information should have been clearly outlined. I feel deceived, buying this as I have no other use for i…" - Lara Shakida
6
"features"
6 negative reviews mention this · 23% of all complaints
★★★★★ "Moving features behind paywall. Data man used to be great. Now the developers are moving previously available features behind a subscription paywall. Considering I was an original purchaser of this app, I find this move sleazy. Stay away from this app until they remove th…" - PLR Pilot
7
"been"
6 negative reviews mention this · 23% of all complaints
★★★★★ "Feels scammy. I paid $0.99 primarily for the widget advertised in the app, only to find out I have to buy a subscription to be able to use that. This information should have been clearly outlined. I feel deceived, buying this as I have no other use for i…" - Lara Shakida
8
"developer"
5 negative reviews mention this · 19% of all complaints
★★★★★ "Bait-and-Switch - $0.99 Gets You Almost Nothing But Aggressive Upsell. UPDATE in response to developer: Thanks for the reply, but I have a screenshot of the pop-up triggered when I tapped “Font.” It promoted a Bonus Gift with Winter Wonderland and DONKEY Bounce - clear game content inside a paid app. Whether …" - Rischárd
9
"month"
5 negative reviews mention this · 19% of all complaints
★★★★★ "Bait-and-Switch - $0.99 Gets You Almost Nothing But Aggressive Upsell. UPDATE in response to developer: Thanks for the reply, but I have a screenshot of the pop-up triggered when I tapped “Font.” It promoted a Bonus Gift with Winter Wonderland and DONKEY Bounce - clear game content inside a paid app. Whether …" - Rischárd
10
"doesn"
5 negative reviews mention this · 19% of all complaints
★★★★★ "👎🏻. App doesn’t track data properly. Purchased this app at inception with themes, etc; now there’s a subscription cash grab 😡." - CarmelQT
11
"track"
5 negative reviews mention this · 19% of all complaints
★★★★★ "Bait-and-Switch - $0.99 Gets You Almost Nothing But Aggressive Upsell. UPDATE in response to developer: Thanks for the reply, but I have a screenshot of the pop-up triggered when I tapped “Font.” It promoted a Bonus Gift with Winter Wonderland and DONKEY Bounce - clear game content inside a paid app. Whether …" - Rischárd
12
"data usage"
5 negative reviews mention this · 19% of all complaints
★★★★★ "Unhappy previous of DataMan Pro. 3 years ago, I spent $5 purchasing the DataMan Pro app to track my data usage. The other day, I thought that it would nice to have a Home Screen widget so I could track my data usage at a glance. Turns out, the developer hasn’t updated the …" - ryanchris2009
📋 All 26 negative reviews
Every 1-2★ review we fetched. Use the copy button to grab them all for your own analysis (paste into ChatGPT/Claude with a prompt like "summarize core user problems, group by theme, ignore bugs, focus on missing features").
Greedy app
A subscription to change billing periods? What a joke.
Bait-and-Switch - $0.99 Gets You Almost Nothing But Aggressive Upsell
UPDATE in response to developer:
Thanks for the reply, but I have a screenshot of the pop-up triggered when I tapped “Font.” It promoted a Bonus Gift with Winter Wonderland and DONKEY Bounce - clear game content inside a paid app. Whether technically an ad or cross-promo, it’s irrelevant - it didn’t belong there and disrupted use of a utility I paid for.
Also, your claim that the subscription model is clearly stated on the product page is weak, to put it generously. At no point was it made obvious that $0.99 only unlocked a crippled version, with nearly everything useful locked behind a second payment.
That’s the problem - not privacy, not ads per se, but a misleading upsell loop in a paid download.
Please just own the issue. It’s not about technicalities - it’s about trust.
-----
I paid $0.99 thinking I was unlocking a full-featured data tracker. Instead, I got a barebones version with basic visuals and no real utility. To access what most people would reasonably expect from a paid app - like usage history, push alerts, multiple plans, or billing period customization - you have to subscribe again for $0.99/month or $9.99/year.
Even worse, I got hit with a pop-up ad promoting unrelated games. In a paid app. That’s unacceptable.
There was no clear indication upfront that the $0.99 purchase was just a teaser. It feels deceptive - a bait-and-subscribe model pretending to be a one-time paid app.
Requesting a refund. If you’re looking for a trustworthy data tracker, look elsewhere unless you’re prepared to pay twice for basic functionality and still get ads.
Thanks for the reply, but I have a screenshot of the pop-up triggered when I tapped “Font.” It promoted a Bonus Gift with Winter Wonderland and DONKEY Bounce - clear game content inside a paid app. Whether technically an ad or cross-promo, it’s irrelevant - it didn’t belong there and disrupted use of a utility I paid for.
Also, your claim that the subscription model is clearly stated on the product page is weak, to put it generously. At no point was it made obvious that $0.99 only unlocked a crippled version, with nearly everything useful locked behind a second payment.
That’s the problem - not privacy, not ads per se, but a misleading upsell loop in a paid download.
Please just own the issue. It’s not about technicalities - it’s about trust.
-----
I paid $0.99 thinking I was unlocking a full-featured data tracker. Instead, I got a barebones version with basic visuals and no real utility. To access what most people would reasonably expect from a paid app - like usage history, push alerts, multiple plans, or billing period customization - you have to subscribe again for $0.99/month or $9.99/year.
Even worse, I got hit with a pop-up ad promoting unrelated games. In a paid app. That’s unacceptable.
There was no clear indication upfront that the $0.99 purchase was just a teaser. It feels deceptive - a bait-and-subscribe model pretending to be a one-time paid app.
Requesting a refund. If you’re looking for a trustworthy data tracker, look elsewhere unless you’re prepared to pay twice for basic functionality and still get ads.
Moving features behind paywall
Data man used to be great. Now the developers are moving previously available features behind a subscription paywall. Considering I was an original purchaser of this app, I find this move sleazy. Stay away from this app until they remove this. I don’t mind subscription services when they add capabilities, but you don’t remove them to add value to your subscription. You’ve lost me as a customer.
👎🏻
App doesn’t track data properly. Purchased this app at inception with themes, etc; now there’s a subscription cash grab 😡.
Worthless
I installed DataMan to help guard against overage charges. It consistently shows I’ve used much less data than my carrier says. As of right now, my carrier indicates I’ve used 75% of my monthly limit. DataMan says 46%
Feels scammy
I paid $0.99 primarily for the widget advertised in the app, only to find out I have to buy a subscription to be able to use that. This information should have been clearly outlined. I feel deceived, buying this as I have no other use for it.
It just sits on zero
What’s wrong? It hasn’t moved off zero in two weeks, and there’s really nothing but one basic screen to the app, nowhere to look for answers. No options anywhere I can see, and I paid for this. Not good.
Unhappy previous of DataMan Pro
3 years ago, I spent $5 purchasing the DataMan Pro app to track my data usage. The other day, I thought that it would nice to have a Home Screen widget so I could track my data usage at a glance. Turns out, the developer hasn’t updated the app I’ve been using in 2 years, released this app, and now wants to charge a recurring $1 per month for pro features. No way. I’m not buying some subscription on top of paying for the app. Biggest ripoff. I’m definitely moving to a different data tracker.
Bait
Doesn’t do much beyond insisting you upgrade to the pro edition. I deleted this begware.
Data use gone?
Widget is now a stopwatch? What happened to MTD usage percent widget?? Useless
Believe it or not at one point this app was good
This application has never evolved rather they charged original owners a fee to use. Then they charge a monthly fee for features that used to be part of the application we already paid for. I can understand charging a subscription for some automation with backups or server usage but to change colors come on.
Failure!
Where has the data stopwatch widget gone?? I used this app for that feature. Now it’s gone after the update! Failure!
No! Don’t waste any money for this app
I installed this app to monitor data usage of different apps on my cellphone, because a blog suggested this app as one of the good ones for this purpose.
Pure B.S. It doesn’t track data usage of individual apps! The interface has a horrible design, not user friendly at all. There are other free apps who do 500% percent better than this fraud! Try My Data Manager for example! This was the worst $1 that I spend on App Store 😖
Pure B.S. It doesn’t track data usage of individual apps! The interface has a horrible design, not user friendly at all. There are other free apps who do 500% percent better than this fraud! Try My Data Manager for example! This was the worst $1 that I spend on App Store 😖
Consolidating apps not cost-friendly for users
There used to be an app that was able to track my usage on two different cellular plans but these have been removed to move to a subscription model which will end up costing more in the long run.
Don’t buy. Switch to something else.
Don’t buy. Switch to something else.
Used To Be Good
I’ve been using this app for a while and I liked it, but now you cannot put in your data usage timeframe so it has become useless. Now you have to pay .99 per month to sync with your data calendar! I’m not paying $12 per year to track data with other options out there. I’ll be deleting and looking for more sane options. Very disappointed.
Great app, questionable IAP/pricing model
[Updated August 26th, 2019]
Well, the developer finally removed all of the redundant in-app purchases - but now the only purchasing option is a .99¢ a month subscription.
“But you get to keep the old features you paid for” doesn’t mean anything when you up your prices. They bundled all their features into a new IAP, meaning if you already paid for most of the features then you’re being charged for them again. In this case, I already have access to 90% of the features - meaning I can pay a monthly subscription to gain access to features I already paid for? However the dev tries to spin it, it’s simple: your pricing isn’t considerate of previously paying users.
This dev is absurd. After insisting there was nothing they could do for users who paid for the same features more once, they’re trying to do the exact the same thing once more. It goes to show you they only care about monetization and couldn’t care less about their users. By the way, the original price of this app with all features was $2.99 - what an absolute rip-off.
[Edit July 17th, 2019]
Developer asked me to reach out to them in the reply below, as you can see. I actually had already contacted them before writing this review to see if I was missing any features or content in regards to what the IAP contained.
During my first support contact, they confirmed I did not and offered no solution or alternative, saying it was better for new customers - which is obviously true. I asked them why they didn’t consider implementing an upgrade option for previously paying customers, like COUNTLESS other apps have, and they said they’d take my feedback. I asked once more if there was anything they could do for me, and they said verbatim: “You may contact App Store for any refunds.” showing they really care about their customers ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I messaged them again as they asked here, and after chatting they realized I was the same person and said the exact same thing: they bundled them all together, request a refund.
The app is great, but I’ll never purchase from this developer again and will seek other data management apps.
[Original Review]
Buyer beware: if you’ve paid for any of the previous in app purchases to unlock more features, they’ve all been bundled into one larger IAP now, meaning you’ll end up paying twice if you want them all.
Prior to this change you could pick and choose which features you wanted to pay for. There was only one feature I was missing, and I naively believed that the new, larger IAP would include multiple features I didn’t have access to - why else was the app showing me only this one available purchase?
It turns out there aren’t any “newer” features, and they’ve all just been rolled up into one IAP. This means I bought two IAPs before the change, and then had to pay the full bundled price just to get one feature I didn’t have - paying again for features I already paid for before the change.
None of the verbiage in the app is forthcoming with this information, and there’s no option to upgrade for a lower price and fair price (as I’ve seen in plenty of other apps). Definitely a dishonest business practice, and I will personally be avoiding this developer.
Well, the developer finally removed all of the redundant in-app purchases - but now the only purchasing option is a .99¢ a month subscription.
“But you get to keep the old features you paid for” doesn’t mean anything when you up your prices. They bundled all their features into a new IAP, meaning if you already paid for most of the features then you’re being charged for them again. In this case, I already have access to 90% of the features - meaning I can pay a monthly subscription to gain access to features I already paid for? However the dev tries to spin it, it’s simple: your pricing isn’t considerate of previously paying users.
This dev is absurd. After insisting there was nothing they could do for users who paid for the same features more once, they’re trying to do the exact the same thing once more. It goes to show you they only care about monetization and couldn’t care less about their users. By the way, the original price of this app with all features was $2.99 - what an absolute rip-off.
[Edit July 17th, 2019]
Developer asked me to reach out to them in the reply below, as you can see. I actually had already contacted them before writing this review to see if I was missing any features or content in regards to what the IAP contained.
During my first support contact, they confirmed I did not and offered no solution or alternative, saying it was better for new customers - which is obviously true. I asked them why they didn’t consider implementing an upgrade option for previously paying customers, like COUNTLESS other apps have, and they said they’d take my feedback. I asked once more if there was anything they could do for me, and they said verbatim: “You may contact App Store for any refunds.” showing they really care about their customers ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I messaged them again as they asked here, and after chatting they realized I was the same person and said the exact same thing: they bundled them all together, request a refund.
The app is great, but I’ll never purchase from this developer again and will seek other data management apps.
[Original Review]
Buyer beware: if you’ve paid for any of the previous in app purchases to unlock more features, they’ve all been bundled into one larger IAP now, meaning you’ll end up paying twice if you want them all.
Prior to this change you could pick and choose which features you wanted to pay for. There was only one feature I was missing, and I naively believed that the new, larger IAP would include multiple features I didn’t have access to - why else was the app showing me only this one available purchase?
It turns out there aren’t any “newer” features, and they’ve all just been rolled up into one IAP. This means I bought two IAPs before the change, and then had to pay the full bundled price just to get one feature I didn’t have - paying again for features I already paid for before the change.
None of the verbiage in the app is forthcoming with this information, and there’s no option to upgrade for a lower price and fair price (as I’ve seen in plenty of other apps). Definitely a dishonest business practice, and I will personally be avoiding this developer.
Don’t waste your money
Once you download it then to get all of the features it promotes you also have to buy. When there are other apps that do this same thing for free.
Don’t waste your cash
Super bland app, paid $1 for it and expected more. Found a better app on the store that’s free
The app doesn’t do anything
You pay to buy an app that doesn’t appear to do much of anything more than you can view in settings - and need to buy an add-on for $3 to make it do ‘something’. Given I paid a dollar for nothing, I’m not optimistic that an additional $3 will really add that much functionality. It might be a great $4 app - I’ll never know because it’s sold in a way that makes me feel ripped off.
Does not differentiate btwn cell phone data vs Hotspot
Shows they charge .99 but they charge 1.99 after you load it
Don’t show difference between cell phone data use and hotspot data use they’re not the same
Hotspot data is expensive and different from your regular cell phone (Safari) data usage
This app does not show the difference hard to know how much real-time hotspot data is used
Don’t show difference between cell phone data use and hotspot data use they’re not the same
Hotspot data is expensive and different from your regular cell phone (Safari) data usage
This app does not show the difference hard to know how much real-time hotspot data is used
很一般，就是一个流量统计功能，还想多次收费
安装收了0.99，然后如果想分卡管理，又需要订阅……
Bait and switch, most features blocked behind subscription
2 stars because I like the clean look of the app but feels like they’re operating under bad faith by charging $1 for the app and then keeping most features behind a subscription paywall.
🤔
Not that accurate...always off by 30MBs
I deleted it.
A bit of baiting going on here. Please people, show some integrity. The pictures display some of the pro-only options, which will cost you a buck-a-month. I was looking for a daily history. But all you get in the 99 cent version is a monthly total.
Inaccurate after 2 days.
Apparently measures based on one device while most of us have multiple devices on our data plan. After two days it’s off from ATT by 2 gigs. Not useful at all if this is how it works. Developer did not address this question when I asked. The system software under Cellular is more useful.
Ok but not accurate
I have been using this app for sometime now but it has never been accurate, so I don’t pay much attentions to it, just that it is on my phone and runs in background.
Apple on the other hand actually has inbuilt data usage tracker which is very accurate and closely matches with what my service provider shows on my bill. I am not sure if people are aware of this. I just set a reminder to reset the inbuilt usage monitor the day my billing cycle starts/ends to always know the correct usage during the billing cycle.
You can compare the usage provided by this app versus from Apple and you’ll see what I am talking about. Just remember to reset your usage counter the day your billing cycle ends and take a note of what it says. This is done in Settings->Cellular (under Cellular Data, look for current period). Try this for couple of months and you’ll see the difference.
To the developer: please take this as constructive criticism and improve your app so it gives a correct picture of data usage. Thanks!
Apple on the other hand actually has inbuilt data usage tracker which is very accurate and closely matches with what my service provider shows on my bill. I am not sure if people are aware of this. I just set a reminder to reset the inbuilt usage monitor the day my billing cycle starts/ends to always know the correct usage during the billing cycle.
You can compare the usage provided by this app versus from Apple and you’ll see what I am talking about. Just remember to reset your usage counter the day your billing cycle ends and take a note of what it says. This is done in Settings->Cellular (under Cellular Data, look for current period). Try this for couple of months and you’ll see the difference.
To the developer: please take this as constructive criticism and improve your app so it gives a correct picture of data usage. Thanks!
Sentiment summary
88%
Positive (4-5★)
3%
Neutral (3★)
9%
Negative (1-2★)