New to WIP?
We're a group of makers shipping together. We help each other stay accountable and reach our goals.
Apply for access
Topics
Back
Post
Support for Life Time Deals
How do you do support for lifetime deals?
I initially launched my LTD with a 1year support, but I'm now learning that LTD customers expect support for life time?
How does it work? Has anyone done this before?
I'm hesitant on lifetime support, because it feels limiting to my freedom to experiment with future updates that may not fit into the current LTD set of features.
I initially launched my LTD with a 1year support, but I'm now learning that LTD customers expect support for life time?
How does it work? Has anyone done this before?
I'm hesitant on lifetime support, because it feels limiting to my freedom to experiment with future updates that may not fit into the current LTD set of features.
👋 Join WIP to participate
I’m probably leaving a lot of money on the table by not offering LTDs, but I think they’re inherently dishonest and annoying marketing trickery.
Are you really going to support customers for their entire lifetime including when you’re on your deathbed? Because as you’ve found out, when you use the word “lifetime” there are some expectations there
Instead, I only sell products that are sellable as subscriptions I.e. recurring value, or the very least “pay once to get <some service> exactly one time” - but I do prefer the recurring model. Mentally rough to have to start from zero every month.
Usually speaking, lifetime deals are not the lifetime of the founder, but lifetime of the company/product.
That said, I've used LTDs with 1year support as a way to validate the interest in the idea.
Lifetime implies permanent access in some way or another. The way you interpreted it is one way of thinking about it, but there are other ways as well.
There have been several court cases where founders were not clear on the definition of "lifetime" (it can mean: the lifetime of the customer, the business, or in other cases the product/service itself) and got in serious legal trouble.
Are you going to get in legal trouble from day 0? Probably not, but I still think you should be very careful when offering these things.
Legal trouble for $89 seems like a stretch. But yeah, making it abundantly clear and avoiding the word lifetime deal would be safer. thanks for your pov!
This is one of the reasons I don't offer life-time deals.
When you offer life-time access, I think it's a fair assumption customers also receive life-time support. Unless of course, you make it abundantly clear that this is not the case. Although I'm not sure calling it a life-time deal is accurate then.
What type of support do your customers require? Are there ways to automate it?
There isn't a lot of support needed, since the app runs locally and is entirely on their end to talk to AI models with their own API keys.
But I'm expecting that keeping the system updated to work with changing underlying AI model APIs is going to be challenging in lifetime access.
I interpreted that they get access to updates, and bug fixes as long as the product exists. But hypothetically, if I choose to not work on the same project, I don't want to be locked-in legally
I would price it as “$89 which includes 1 year of updates” similar to www.sketch.com/pricing/
For your current customers you can clarify this with the offer to email you to discuss any questions around it.
I think most will be fine with it and the few people that do reach out you could offer a refund, extended support, etc
Of course Sketch continues working even if you don’t update for years.
In your cases there’s a dependency on third party APIs. Which is why it’s not a good candidate for this type of model I think.
So maybe it should be a bit more than year. Or maybe it’s at least 3 years of free security/compatibility updates but not new features.
I would also develop it in such a way that it’s future proof. For example for AI stuff you might want to develop against openrouter.ai/
Right! OpenRouter is one of the providers they can add, and the whole thing is built with sdk.vercel.ai.
But you know, typescript modules keep requiring updates.
I have this proposal from an LTD community (kenmoo), where he thinks that the product can do 1000s of sales if it's branded as LTD with lifetime support for everything.
But I just don't want to be legally locked in forever. He specifically wants it to be an LTD
If you call it a lifetime deal, customers are naturally/reasonably going to expect it to last while the product is alive. So this doesn't make sense:
If it's a 1 year subscription or support, call it so, not a lifetime deal.
ed: It's common to price at lifetime deal internally as based on 1 or 2 years LTV, but it's still a lifetime deal.
The idea is that they'll be able to get updates, and use it as long as I work on it, but I don't want to be legally obligated to do it forever
As a consumer, I assume "lifetime" means the life of the product, not YOUR lifetime.
It's a risk on both the consumer and creator side, especially for a new company.
Ex: I bought a $70 LTD for a product called BlitzIt instead of doing the $5/month subscription. It could go under or disappear next month, and I'd be shit out of luck. Conversely, the company can last decades, and they'll provide updates and whatever support required for early adopters like myself.
I'm someone who tends to scream about products I like to everyone, so I've already gotten them over 20 new customers, so it balances out with me. But it's still a risk for them to sell LTDs -- whether they succeed with this product (and need to support someone who isn't continuously paying) or they go under (and lose all trust with current customers and need to tap into a new market they haven't burned).
It's your decision based on what's important to you, your goals, and your audience.
I like rewarding people who jump in early because they can become my brand advocates and help me create a better product through feedback and testing, but I make a LIMITED lifetime deal so if they miss the window, they'll have to pay either monthly, quarterly, or annually.
Thanks for chiming in, Cat! I'm perfectly fine with it being lifetime of the product, not my life time haha
The people who think it's the creator's lifetime are delusional 😂 I don't think I know anyone who's that obtuse to think that.
haha you'd be surprised
Thank you all for chiming in! Conclusive thoughts for anyone who's interested.
Life-time deals are for the lifetime of the product/company; Not for the maker's lifetime.
If you can run a limited number of lifetime deals it's good for getting some initial validation and a chunk of cash.
It's better if your product doesn't have any recurring costs. For ex: Downloadable apps that run locally. But if it's a web app, you can do an LTD with some usage limits