X-Tiles goes to LTD..

Posted by satis
Mar 20, 2023 at 03:40 AM

Geoffrey Miller wrote:
>Ah, the “Lifetime Deal” - on the rare occasions I’ve been tempted either
>the Company folds soon after or development stops (IdeaMason,
>CintaNotes, etc)

Not necessarily. I’ve purchased a number of LTD services (CloudApp, Droplr, AdGuard) and Mac Utilities (Alfred, BetterTouchTool, iPhone Recovery) which offered the choice between yearly subscription or one-time purchase.

Users are so used to paying next to nothing for software, so it’s a choice between affordability versus long-term savings, so some devs offer both. And using a service like StackSocial to offer it on a limited basis brings in cash flow without tanking the regular pricing structure.

Moo.do had a LTD offer on StackSocial in 2017 and I believe it rolled over when the product was revamped and renamed as LegendApp. Recently Agenda added a LTD option for the price of three years’ subscription. IA Writer offers the Android version as either a monthly or yearly sub, or a LTD purchase.

Some purchase pricing seems odd to me, however. UpNote for example has a one-time unlock with no limit to note storage capacity, which is increasingly economically untanable for a business as long as the product increases in users (and use of the product).

One caveat to these LTD deals: you may end up with full access only to the version of the app when purchased. This is what happened with WriteMapper 3, which surprised a lot of users who’d purchased lifetime licenses of v.1 and v.2 only to learn that it only meant you are allowed to keep your current version in perpetuity.