Report updated May 19, 2026
cleveland.com
For local residents of Northeast Ohio seeking timely news, sports coverage, and community-specific information.
cleveland.com is a struggling news app that is available. With a 4.4/5 rating from 12K reviews, it struggles with user retention. Users particularly appreciate local news coverage provides essential community information for residents and former locals, though frequent application crashes and freezing during article reading sessions disrupt the user experience remains a common concern.
What is cleveland.com?
cleveland.com is a local news app for Northeast Ohio residents, providing reporting and sports coverage via a subscription-gated mobile interface.
Users hire the app to maintain a connection to their local community through verified, professional journalism that national aggregators lack.
Current Momentum
v4.5 · 1w ago
Maintenance- Ships performance improvements in latest release.
- Added resizable text and dark mode.
Active Nemesis
NewsBreak: Local News & Alerts
By Particle Media
Other Rivals
7-Day Rank Pulse 🇺🇸
NewsNo ranking data
Rating Pulse 🇺🇸
Recent User Mood
What makes this app unique?
What Does It Look Like?
What Are The Key Features?
Unlimited access to premium content and local news coverage
User-defined notifications for specific news topics or events
Access to historical newspaper records via external archive integration
How much does it cost?
- Monthly Subscription at $9.99
- Annual Subscription at $99.99
Subscription model anchored at $9.99/month, utilizing a hard paywall for premium content to drive recurring revenue.
Who Built It?
cleveland.com
Delivering hyper-local journalism and dedicated sports coverage to Northeast Ohio residents and Ohio State University fans.
Portfolio
11
Apps
What other apps does cleveland.com make?
cleveland.com: Guardians News
cleveland.com Real Estate
Browns News
Buckeyes Football News
cleveland.com: Cavaliers News
Buckeyes Basketball News
Explore the full cleveland.com report
Portfolio breakdown, audience, momentum, and every app published by cleveland.com.
What do users think recently?
High confidence · Latest 61 of 101 total reviews analyzed · Based on 101 reviews. Signal may be noisy.
How did the latest release land?
What is the recent mood?
Recent user voice shows a upset sentiment. Users appreciate local news coverage provides essential community information for residents and former locals, but report frequent application crashes and freezing during article reading sessions disrupt the user experience and aggressive subscription paywalls and login requirements frustrate long-term paying subscribers.
What Users Love
What Frustrates Users
What Users Want
How have ratings & review volume moved?
Rating, review sentiment, and total reviews over time, with release markers showing the post-launch impact.
Vertical markers = app releases. Hover any release for the post-release impact delta.
View the full user-sentiment analysis
Mood gauge, ratings & review-volume history, every praise / complaint / request, and sentiment over time.
What is the competitive landscape for cleveland.com?
Where is it available?
Localized markets (1)
How's The News Market?
How does it evolve in the News market?
The app holds a #71 Grossing position in the US News category, but the 3-star rating on Android compared to 4.5 on iOS signals significant platform-specific technical friction.
Rank progression
3 active rankings tracked — 30-day window
Which niche is cleveland.com in?
to stay informed about local community events
Explore the full Local News Readers niche
Every app in this space — 187 tracked, the niche's live rankings, and Marlvel's editorial take on the job-to-be-done.
The rivals identified
Nemeses(1)
As a Gannett-backed property, SC Times competes directly for the local news reader's attention by offering a similar mix of digital journalism and traditional newspaper-style features.
Contenders(4)
A direct competitor in the regional news space, focusing on core local reporting and mobile accessibility.
This app competes by focusing on high-frequency engagement tools like live updates and interactive content.
This app challenges the target through a modern, feature-rich interface that emphasizes interactive engagement and accessibility.
This app competes for the same local news audience by bundling digital news access with a premium e-edition experience.
Same space(3)
This peer dominates the local news space through massive scale and a heavy focus on live, utility-driven content.
A peer in the local news market that leverages video-first reporting and interactive weather tools to retain users.
This peer competes for the same local audience by emphasizing broadcast-style multimedia and real-time weather alerts.
Compare cleveland.com against every rival
All rivals in one side-by-side table — identity, store metrics, ratings & sentiment, and strategic intel — plus a head-to-head page for each.
The outtake for cleveland.com
Strengths to defend, gaps to attack
Core Strengths
- Trusted local brand identity sustains organic install velocity
- Proprietary community-embedded reporting creates a verified content moat
- Subscription-based revenue model provides recurring capital
Critical Frictions
- Frequent application crashes during reading sessions
- Persistent login friction for paying subscribers
- Slow interface responsiveness compared to category peers
Growth Levers
- B2B archive partnerships to drive referral revenue
- Customizable news feed filtering to increase session duration
- Wearable integration for breaking local alerts
Market Threats
- NewsBreak's algorithmic scale draining local attention share
- Rising churn from technical instability on Android
- National news aggregators capturing breaking-event traffic
What are the next best moves?
Audit authentication logic because login loops are a top subscriber complaint → reduce churn
Subscribers report being repeatedly prompted to sign in despite active accounts.
Trade-off: Pause the archive-integration feature sprint — authentication stability has 3x the impact on annual revenue.
Rebuild crash-prone reading session module because instability is the #1 complaint → increase retention
Multiple reports of the app closing unexpectedly while reading news stories.
Trade-off: Deprioritize the custom news feed filter — stability is a prerequisite for feature adoption.
A counter-intuitive read
The app's #71 Grossing rank is a liability rather than a strength, as it signals a maintenance-mode state that leaves the local-news niche vulnerable to NewsBreak's algorithmic disruption.
Feature Gaps vs Competitors
- Live broadcast streaming (available in WFAA but absent here)
- Interactive weather radar (available in WFAA but absent here)
Key Takeaways
The app holds a loyal local audience through verified reporting, but technical instability and login friction threaten the subscription revenue, so the PM must prioritize stability over new features to prevent churn.
Where Is It Heading?
Declining
The local news market is consolidating around high-velocity, notification-first experiences that prioritize stability and speed. cleveland.com remains exposed to churn as long as technical debt prevents consistent access to its premium content, so the PM must pivot from feature expansion to platform hygiene to protect the subscriber base.
Frequent crashes during reading sessions erode the daily active habit, which compounds the rating drag already visible on Android.
Persistent login friction for paying subscribers accelerates churn pressure, directly threatening the $99.99 annual revenue stream into Q3.