The power of lifetime deals

I just signed up for the Youform lifetime plan for $300 🤯

That's pretty solid revenue for the team. Especially as the product is still getting built.

So why did I do it?
And what can you learn from this as as builder?

I've used a lot of form products over the years. I used to be a Typeform user. But that cost me ~$500 per year. Expensive.
My agency was doing $1m+ in projects per year, so I could afford it. But as I focused less on the agency, it didn't make sense for me to keep paying that bill.
Today the agency uses an Airtable form instead. I don't love the design of their forms, but it doesn't cost me anything at least.

For another business I use Tally. I love their clean design. That's costing $14.50 per month for the first year. That will go up to $29 per month afterwards. Or $300 per year. An annoying expense to have to keep paying.

Formbricks is another one I've played with. But similar to Tally that costs $29 per month.
It's open source. So I could self-host. But that has a cost too. Maintaining the server, and paying the server costs. And hoping my data doesn't get lost.
My time is worth more than the effort to set it up and maintain it. So I look at it in a similar way to Tally at a cost of $29 per month.

So I decided to buy Youform, which has a pro plan of $29 per month, but a LTD of $299. One-time payment and that's it. I never have to worry about paying a monthly fee again.

FYI, Tally and Youform have free plans, but then you have to include their branding. That was the main motivation for me to sign up for pro. I don't want branded forms. It looks cheap.

Now is Youform better than Tally and the other alternatives I mentioned?
No, it isn't. It's just getting built. It's got a long way to go to be as clean as Tally or Typeform. I bought in the hope that they one day get there.

Lifetime deals are an investment. I'm hoping that Davis and his team will continue to build. And if they do the $299 I spent will end up being great value for money.

Why do I think they will continue to build?
I see Davis on Twitter and he seems to be a competent founder and Youform is generating revenue (from people like me) so that means they have runway to keep building and improving the product.

There are some SaaS founders that don't believe in lifetime deals. Anything that isn't recurring revenue isn't worthwhile. Because it doesn't "scale".
There is some truth to that belief. Recurring revenue is the 8th wonder of the world.

But as you can see in the case of Youform, lifetime deals can work well.
What ultimately matters is LTV. And if a user buys a product for 3 months and pays you've earned only $100. A $300 one-time payment is better.

Now there are SaaS products I've paid $30 per month for, for 5 years, and I haven't churned yet.
So that team has earned $1500+ from me. Significantly more than the $300 Youforms earned. But these are different products and Youform wasn't going to get $1500 from me.

This can be hard for VC backed founders to appreciate. But there's no one-size fits all business model.

Now to plug my own LTD 😂:
Inbox Zero has a lifetime deal for $249 right now. You can get the deal at: https://getinboxzero.com.
This deal won't exist forever. Long term Inbox Zero will be a SaaS-only product, but the lifetime deal is a great boost in early revenue.

PS - I don't know the Youform team, and I don't earn anything for sharing this, but I think it's instructive into understanding buyer psychology, and hopefully helps you generate revenue too.

PPS - 300 buyers of a $300 plan makes you $100k. 3000 buyers makes you $1m. Not impossible targets.