We do NOT sell lifetime licenses for the MetaSlider plugins. This decision is based on over 20 years of experience selling software online. This post gives 5 reasons why we came to this decision.
Reason #1. What does “lifetime” even mean?
That is a serious question. What does the word “lifetime” mean when talking about software? Are we talking about the lifetime of the product? The lifetime of the user? How about the lifetime of the developers or the business? And how do they handle support over all those years? We rarely hear a clear and up-front answer on this. Almost everyone selling “lifetime” access has small print that greatly limits what you actually get.
Reason #2. Lifetime licenses are a terrible business model
The “lifetime” business model is broken. If you buy a lifetime license, you immediately become a burden on the business that sells you the license. You are not a customer. You are only an expense. This business model only works if the majority of their customers quickly abandon their product. Many developers realize this only after they sell “lifetime” licenses and they end up abandoning their “lifetime” products. Developers who sell lifetime subscriptions just can not afford to produce high-quality, long-lasting software.
Reason #3. Lifetime licenses lead to abandoned plugins
WordPress plugin development is not a one-off task. It’s impossible to sell a plugin once and then keep up development forever. Plugins require continuous maintenance and development. Our team needs to upgrade the code for every new WordPress version, even the minor ones. We are also constantly updating them to work with other WordPress plugins, to fix bugs, and to meet the changing needs of third-party services.
Reason #4. Annual subscriptions help produce quality products
We want to make MetaSlider even more useful for you. We want to give you better features and answer all your support tickets within a couple of hours. But, to make that happen, MetaSlider needs more developers and a bigger support team. And to hire extra staff, MetaSlider’s business model needs to be predictable. And lifetime sales are not predictable. They can fluctuate wildly every month and year. How can you hire more developers if you can’t predict your revenue in 2 or 3 months time? Recurring subscriptions are the only way to accurately predict your revenue.
Reason #5. Annual subscriptions help us treat our developers well
Our team loves working on MetaSlider, but they have families to feed, kids to support, and mortgages to pay. Without a solid revenue base, our team would be smart to leave and go work for a company that can offer them a predictable income. This is not a hobby for us. We take MetaSlider seriously.