What happens if I wanna shut it down? Is there some minimum number of years the app needs to stay up to support users who bought the lifetime option?
no - it’s supposed to be the lifetime of the app or business, not the user. at least that’s how you should have it written out in your terms.
It depends on how you end your relationship to your commitment to your user-base. We saw this happen with Apollo and their plans. If the App Store will honor a refund, then it will be their right as a user to make sure they get their money back. But that only applies to people who bought the plan within X time-frame.
“Lifetime” in this case really just applies to the lifetime of the business/app and you will really only see problems if you are shutting down the service abruptly and users have some type of livelihood tied to the service and feel they want to chase some type of lawsuit. Otherwise - you don’t really have an obligation to keep support for any amount of time.
If you want a bit more freedom, then maybe adjust the wording to a one time purchase and the burden falls off you a bit more. Some indiehacker thoughts to chew on: https://www.indiehackers.com/post/if-you-have-lifetime-deals-ltd-but-the-saas-shuts-down-where-does-that-leave-you-1e7bf5ef82
This is why companies ask for age when creating an account. They use the age to calculate expected server shutdown dates. (joking)
You can do whatever you want and that’s the thing consumers don’t think about. I take “lifetime purchases” with a huge grain of salt considering how volatile the software space is. Companies go out of business all the time. They can also just stop support for an app (which might prevent you from using it anymore if you update past a supported version). Another thing companies do all the time is offer lifetime support and then they stop support and release a Version 2. Of course if you are a well-known/large brand there is more pressure on you to not do these things since your brand will take a hit.
Add a section to your terms of service that helps the user know 1) the app can be discontinued at any time at your discretion, 2) their subscriptions are subject to the app’s longevity and may be terminated by the user or yourself at anytime.
No, most won’t read this. But this is meant to protect you (though I’m not a lawyer and this isn’t legal advice).
Maybe also add a section that details how you plan to inform users of the app being shut down. This is a courtesy to them for investing in your app.
You’re free to shut it down based on economic factors. You may be legally required to make it easy for users to export or delete their data.
- They have lifetime access to the app even if you remove it from sale.
- If you provide some kind of service the app requires in order to be functional (such that access to the app is insufficient to continue), you should include a statement somewhere (on the buy button would be best) that purchase of this item provides a minimum of 3 years updates and service – or something to that effect with whatever effective time period is appropriate for you.
In essence, everything is a subscription. Everything has a lifecycle. People foolishly convince themselves lifetime purchases actually last forever, but in basically all cases they do not for the general reason you imply – times change. You just need to specify what that period is up front so that everyone is on the same page.
We carefully avoid the word Lifetime. We call it an one-off purchase with no time limit. As in, it’s not annual or whatever. The last thing we need is arguments about how long a lifetime is.
Ultimately, if this is a worry, you should obtain legal counsel and probably create a business entity specifically for this app. Pay yourself out of the profits of the app or with a W2 (outside of this conversation’s scope.) Minimize the scope of this entity to the minimum amount of assets to work on the app itself, pay those bills, etc.
If you ever need to shutter the app if it’s unprofitable, you essentially want to shutter the entire entity. If customers sue because of ‘lifetime’ guarantee or whatever, you want the corporation to take the fall and essentially you’ll lose everything in that entity but it basically is just dead at that point anyway.
What you DON’T want, is to launch the app yourself and be personally exposed to lawsuits, or to have the legal entity maybe running 3-4 apps where you only shutter that one app but have 2-3 others profitable, because a legal judgement could target the profits of the other apps. You also need to do this properly so there isn’t a case for ‘piercing the [corporate] veil’ and coming after you because you didn’t properly run your corp.
^This is very US-centric and also not legal advice. Talk to a lawyer.
Nothing happens.
Maybe offer open source the server code?
It’s a good question, but I believe that if there is some large project that takes off so much that you are too lazy to support it, someone will buy it out.
At least I have encountered such situations much more often than what you described.
I may be wrong, of course, this is just life experience.
Lifetime means lifetime of the app not the user.
sound familiar, do you mean macos on old mac ?
Yeah this is what one of mine did. They said “we didn’t mean your lifetime, we meant some other person. And he’s dead now so your lifetime subscription has ended.
Think it was some vpn.
Thanks, for whatever reason it never occurred to me that it was the lifetime of the app but that makes sense!
Ah good point, I’ve seen this with companies releasing a new version while the previous inevitably stop working when enough OS versions have passed. And they sell life time access for the current major version. But advertise it in such a way that you’d think it’s forever…
There’s been a few IAMA’s about lifetime stuff. “Those who won a life time supply of something” and practically every comment was: “Yeah, for the first few years it really was unlimited… but then it got less and less and eventually just stopped but I didn’t really push” kind of remarks.
Good call, if I end up offering a lifetime plan will be sure to add clauses in the TOS.
Then you could just press the up arrow.