Lifetime Subscriptions to TaxoPress

We do NOT sell lifetime licenses for the Pro versions of TaxoPress plugins. This post explains why made that decision.


Reason #1. Lifetime licenses almost always fail

The “lifetime” model is broken. Developers who sell lifetime subscriptions can not afford to produce high-quality, long-lasting software. Many developers realize this and end up abandoning their “lifetime” products. 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. Their business model only works if the majority of their customers quickly abandon their product.


Reason #2. Lifetime licenses lead to abandoned development

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 #3. Subscriptions help produce quality products

We want to make TaxoPress 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, TaxoPress needs more developers and a bigger support team. And to hire extra staff, TaxoPress’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 #4. Subscriptions help us treat our developers well

Our team loves working on TaxoPress, 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 TaxoPress seriously.


Reason #5. What does “lifetime” even mean?

Even the word “lifetime” is a nonsense in this context. Are we talking about the lifetime of the product? The user? The developers? The business? We’ve never heard a clear answer on this. Why would you sell or buy a product where the key details are so unclear?