What happens if a lifetime subscription product fails?
I’m wondering about an idea business model and I cannot answer this question: what happens exactly if you create a web product, offer a lifetime subscription and then decide for whatever reason to shut it down after while (e.g. not enough revenue, you get tired of it, etc)? Should you give the money back?
To me, the "lifetime" in "lifetime subscription" always means the lifetime of the product, not the user.
My grandfather-in-law is 96 years old. He was born five years before penicillin was discovered. The things that came and went in his lifetime are just astounding. Today, new things appear, exist and vanish much more quickly. And customers started to understand this a while ago.
Make sure that you make this explicit in the fineprint and, if you want to be particularly honest, in the actual copy of your product. People will understand. Communicate that you intend to stay around for a long time. But don't promise infinity.
A good alternative is to offer yearly subscriptions where you make sure that you will always keep running it for the remainder of the most recent yearly subscription, if that is economically feasible.
This is not a legal answer, but I think that as long as you’re acting in good faith (keeping people updated if things start going downhill), and as long as you don’t take their money one day and shut down the next, you don’t need to give anything back.
People understand that things shut down, and there’s probably a chance they’re not using it anymore if it’s shutting down.
Pricing is hard, and there are advantages to lifetime pricing, but it’s a big decision, so just think it through and make sure it works for you and the business financially!
it should be in the fine print of the deal. If it is a Saas product it would be very unwise to sell lifetime subscriptions as there is an asymmetry in the effort / reward. You typicaly see them with License type of products. But if you would do it and stop, there is not much an enduser can do. I see no reason to refund if the service stops being provided.
Hey @filvdg, thanks for your feedback! I've seen some sass like this https://fireship.io/pro/ selling lifetime subscription and I was considering pro and cons of it. Maybe as you say it's not the best approach for a sass, a discount on yearly subscription is maybe a better way to attract new customers.