🎉🙏 A huge THANK YOU – pon turns 10 today, December 4, 2025! 🙏🎉

Ten years of pon. Ten years of development, feedback, stories and a whole lot of everyday life that we’ve made easier together.

Looking back, I’m amazed myself at what has grown in that time:

• Over 100,000 active users every month – many of them daily
• Almost 1 million people who have tried pon over the years
• Thousands of families, couples, flatshares & households for whom pon has long become a fixture of daily life
• 0 ads. 0 tracking. And still stable, reliable and alive for 10 years
• pon on iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch, Siri, Alexa & co.
• And countless small, quiet “thinking-along” features that make pon special to this day
• Overall winner “shopping list apps” – German App Award 2024 (ntv & DISQ) 🏆

Thank you to every single person who uses, shares, recommends or supports pon.

You turned a simple idea into a 10-year success story.

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How it all began

The idea came from a completely ordinary, honestly unspectacular situation. I came home, and Melanie asked me:

“Did you bring the milk? It was on the shopping list.”

Of course I hadn’t – even though I had driven right past the supermarket on my way home. And in exactly that moment I thought:

👉 Why doesn’t my phone simply remind me when I drive past the supermarket?

The list was digital, after all. The technology had long existed. It’s just that nobody had used it for this. That was the birth of pon. I wanted to build an app that doesn’t just display a list, but thinks along:

• one that recognises where I shop
• that reminds me at the right moment
• that understands my habits
• and that genuinely makes shopping easier for me

Over the years, more and more features have been added:

smart sorting along your walking route, automatic grouping, sync across all devices, barcode scanning, Apple Watch, widgets, Siri, Alexa and much more.

But the core was – and still is – very simple:

Making everyday life easier.

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The stories that move me most to this day

Over the last 10 years, many people have told me their personal everyday moments with pon – and it’s exactly these stories that mean more to me than any statistic.

I was especially touched by the feedback from several blind and visually impaired users who use pon with Apple VoiceOver. Their feedback helped me keep refining the app over the years – and hearing how well pon helps them organise their shopping independently is something that deeply moves me every single time.

One story has stayed with me to this day:

A blind user told me how his family adds their favourite ice-cream flavours to a shared pon list. He walks to the ice-cream parlour alone, has VoiceOver read the flavours to him, checks them off – and brings home the right ice cream for everyone.

These moments remind me that software isn’t just code – it’s everyday life, independence and real help.

And then there are the many creative uses I never originally planned: people using pon as a packing list for holidays, as a checklist for the camper van or for big family celebrations. Wonderful to see how versatile pon is in everyday life. These stories show me every day why I built pon. And I’m grateful for every single one of them.

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And so, once more: thank you

Thank you to everyone who has been using pon for years. Thank you for every piece of feedback, every idea, every loving critique and every story from your daily life. Thank you to everyone who supports voluntarily and thereby makes server costs & further development possible. Thank you that a little idea about “forgotten milk” is now a daily companion for so many people.

From the heart: thank you for your loyalty, your stories and your trust.

Here’s to the next 10 years of pon – and to you. 🧡