The story and the team behind Wokabulary

The story of how we started Wokabulary

The team behind Wokabulary

We, Anna, Gabriel, and Julius, are the 3 founders of the software development studio Coding Friends. The three of us do the programming, design, marketing, and everything else concerning Wokabulary :) We all met at college while studying computer science and soon started making software together.

"There is no good app to learn and memorize words" 🧐

Our first apps were small tools for Mac and simple games for iOS. We started the development of Wokabulary in 2010, when Gabriel wanted to learn Korean and simply couldn’t find a good app that would help him to collect, practice, and memorize his words.

From side to main project

For all those years, Wokabulary has been a side project to our main jobs. After graduation, Julius started working as a developer in the Music and Automotive sector, Anna became a researcher focusing on Digital Humanities, and Gabriel continued iOS and Mac development in various startups. So, we would answer support mails in the mornings and evenings, fix bugs on the weekends and add new features now and then. Over all this time, many of you became loyal Wokabulary users, and we received a lot of positive feedback, which was and is a great source of motivation for us.

In 2021, we decided to quit our day-jobs and to fully concentrate on self-employment. We started taking on project work as a software studio and also concentrated much more on our own products. Especially, Wokabulary should get the love it deserves. We decided to completely rebuild it and add quite a few new features.

Steady pricing model for steady development

After two years, we have now finally released the all-new Wokabulary 6 with a new design and plenty of new features. With this release, we also switched our pricing to a subscription model. We want to keep maintaining and improving Wokabulary for many years to come. With a subscription-based model providing a more steady revenue stream, we can scale back on client work and invest more of our time into Wokabulary.

A good app needs constant care. Bugs need to be fixed, user feedback needs to be integrated, and as the Apple platforms evolve, new hardware and system features want to be supported. But we have many more new features in the pipeline – feel free to add your wishes on our Roadmap Page. With the new technical foundation of Wokabulary 6 and a more steady income stream from subscriptions, we can now deliver updates and new features much more frequently.

Being part of the Wokabulary Community

We have been maintaining and improving Wokabulary for over ten years now. What really kept us going and made us stay motivated for all this time are you, our users.

Quite a few of you have been using Wokabulary for several years, entrusting it with all your words and learning progress, which we really appreciate. With many of you we have exchanged emails, about bugs that nag you, features you would like to see, and about how you are learning foreign languages with Wokabulary. In fact, quite regularly we get emails from users who just want to tell us how much they like Wokabulary! This is just amazing and invaluable. 💜

Wokabulary does not collect any of your data nor do we have any user tracking in the app. We know, how our users use Wokabulary simply because we talk to them.
So, if you have any issues, questions, or just want to say hello, you are welcome to send us an email. Also have a look at our roadmap were we collect and discuss ideas for new Wokabulary features.