MacPaw Setapp review: excellent, well-curated, alternative to the App Store

At a glance

Expert’s Rating

Pros

• Alternative to Apple’s App Store with a nice curation of selected apps and developers
• Good price
• Excellent how-to guides and walkthroughs

Cons

• Setapp applications reside in Setapp folder as opposed to Applications folder
• Family plan price, terms and supported devices is confusing

Our Verdict

MacPaw has created a viable contender to Apple’s App Store with Setapp. The apps themselves are nifty and worth playing with, the subscription terms are good, and there’s something excellent, well-curated, and viable here that’s worth looking into, even if only for the seven-day trial period.

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Best Prices Today: MacPaw Setapp

Over the years, almost invariably, whenever a tech giant announced they were launching an app store, this would trigger several competitors or individual developers to launch an app store of their own and try to make a go of it. Some were better than others, others operated in gray or entirely illegal terrain as to their policies and what apps they offered. Still, some would get it entirely right, and in the case of MacPaw’s Setapp, which functions as the company’s curated app store. There’s something to be had here, the Ukrainian software company known for the CleanMyMac utility having assembled more than 250 applications for Apple’s macOS and iOS operating systems, which are available at a reasonable subscription price.

Read our round up of the Best Mac Cleaners that includes CleanMyMac.

Setapp, requires macOS 11 (Big Sur) or later to install and run, retails for $9.99/month for one Mac for the Mac package, $12.99/month for the Mac + iOS package for one Mac and four iOS devices, and $14.99/month for the Power User package for four Macs and four iOS devices. The company also offers a Family plan, which offers support for you and three other users for $19.99/month with no specific mention of how many devices are supported.

The software is easily downloaded and installed, and it’s simple to set up either a 7-day free trial account after sending your payment information to MacPaw or create a paid subscription, which can be billed monthly or annually.

From there, Setapp offers something akin to the old shareware collections that used to arrive on magazine CD-ROMs, wherein an ample catalog is presented to you, your subscription offering unfettered access to the applications, which carry no ads, constraints, or limitations given the developers’ contract with MacPaw (albeit except some AI apps, which can have a slightly higher subscription price to cover the overhead that heavy AI and processing use sometimes creates).

The applications are there, they’re presented in a logical organizational order, with categories such as Optimize, Work, Create, Develop, and Solve with AI+. Simply find the app you’re looking for and you’re off to the races, MacPaw sharing revenue with the developers in a Netflix-esque manner wherein the more time a user has the developer’s app open and running, the higher their revenue will be.

What’s present with Setapp’s curated applications is worth the subscription price, and there are some terrific applications to be had here.

iStat Menus offers an amazing array of information about your Mac, including battery health, network infrastructure, CPU and GPU activity, internal component temperatures, and other system information. Other examples include Ulysses, which offers an excellent writing interface along with Markdown and formatting tools, Chronicle, which functions as a handy financial organizer, and Paste, which offers copying and pasting multiple layers of data, and not just the most recent version of copied data, as the macOS limits users to. This is the tip of the iceberg as to the available applications offered through Setapp, and with a little time, the service stands to make fans out of users who give it a shot.

One of the most frequent complaints about new applications is the learning curve, and MacPaw seems to have done a good job thinking this through. Open the Setapp application, and there’s ready access to help guides and tutorials as needed. This is appreciated and helps the user understand what they’re getting into, especially given the vast palette of applications that’s being offered for consideration.

If there’s a gaffe worthy of fixing in Setapp, it’s the fact that the application places the Setapp apps in the Setapp folder in your Applications folder, which initially threw me for a bit of a curveball. This makes logical sense, but still feels a bit odd on its own and comes across as a little unexpected.

Further clarification as to the Family tier subscription pricing and how many devices are supported via the license would also be appreciated, but this also might come down to specific user needs and adapted as necessary.

Setapp caught me off guard, but in the best way possible. While I knew it was a subscription service and offered complimentary access to the CleanMyMac utility suite (which I’ve had both praise and criticism of over the years in that it works well, but seems to overextend the number of functions it wants to handle at times), the number and quality of the applications being offered as well as the organization impressed me. Communication with MacPaw proved speedy and responsive, and users have stated that the company offers about a week’s grace period if there are issues with billing before access to your Setapp apps is cut off.

Should you get SetApp?

MacPaw has created a viable contender to Apple’s App Store with Setapp. The apps themselves are nifty and worth playing with, the subscription terms are good, and moving beyond the historical gray market that some pop-up app stores have been over the years, there’s something excellent, well-curated, and viable here that’s worth looking into, even if only for the seven-day trial period.