Later this month, for the first time ever, we will be offering a lifetime deal for our PMPro Plus level over at Paid Memberships Pro. Before this, our PMPro Plus and other premium plans have been annual subscriptions. The lifetime deal will be a one time payment, at a reasonable multiple of that annual price that gives you the same access for the lifetime of the product… basically as long as our company is running.
Initially, the lifetime plan will only be offered during a limited time sale. We don’t know if or when we will offer the lifetime deal again. We do know that the lifetime plan will never be available for a price lower than we will offer during this sale.
If you are interested in the lifetime sale and would like to be notified when it goes live, sign up for a free account at PMPro or join our mailing list.
The rest of this post will share some of our reasoning around lifetime deals and address some common concerns and questions that folks may have.
Why haven’t we done this before?
Throughout the 13+ years we’ve been selling plans for PMPro, we’ve had users ask for “lifetime deals”, and we’ve always said no. There were two main reasons we didn’t offer lifetime deals: (1) We wanted to keep our pricing simple, and (2) We wanted to make sure our business always had the cashflow required to support our customers.
Further, many of the typical reasons for offering a lifetime deal didn’t apply to us.
One reason companies offer lifetime deals is to raise money up front, but we never had to do that. Our business has always been profitable. We’ve always had a cushion of cash. We’ve been able to invest at the pace we’re comfortable with and never needed the injection of upfront revenue a lifetime deal would deliver.
Another reason lifetime deals are popular is to allow folks access to everything in one big dump. Unlike nearly all other premium WordPress plugins, we already make ALL of our code easily available for free on GitHub. Many potential lifetime deal purchasers just take advantage of our generous free offerings.
Lifetime deals are also popular as a way to get an influx of users and customers, but Paid Memberships Pro was around for years before we created our annual plans and already had tens of thousands of users. Paid Memberships Pro is one of the longest running membership plugins for WordPress. It’s one of the longest running premium plugins of any kind, predating even WooCommerce. Prerelease versions of PMPro were running on WordPress 2.6.
Why are we doing this now?
The main reason we are offering the lifetime deal now is because people are still asking for it. Many customers, for various reasons, prefer to pay once and not have recurring subscriptions to keep track of for themselves or on behalf of clients. We liked to have a fair plan for these kinds of customers looking for a one time payment option.
We are also inspired by folks like Jason Fried and Basecamp have started releasing projects through their banner ONCE. Here are the rules for the ONCE products:
- Pay one time, own forever.
- We write the code, you get to see it.
- We give you the software, you get to host it.
- Simple and straightforward, not enterprisey and bloated.
- For one fixed price. Once.
Our products don’t line up exactly with the Basecamp or ONCE products, but it’s a model we would like to play with more going forward.
Does PMPro need money or is it going out of business?
No and no. We already support many “VIP” users with pro bono memberships, as well as thousands of paying customers that are paying legacy prices much lower than our current prices, and we’ve been able to run a profitable business every year since inception. Not to get into the weeds too much about this, but we know how to run this business to keep our team and customers happy.
One of the reasons we held off on offering a lifetime deal before was around cashflow concerns due to having to deliver ongoing support to customers that paid up front, but we no longer have those concerns.
Yeah, but how will you afford this 3-5 years from now and later?
The lifetime deal is for our highest membership level, PMPro Plus, and priced at 5 times the annual price of that plan. In this way, we are getting the typical “lifetime value” of a good PMPro customer up front instead of over many years. By not squandering that up front payment, keeping the percentage of lifetime members relatively low compared to our recurring subscribers, and just managing our company well, we will be fine.
One of the reasons we are initially offering the lifetime deal through a limited time sale is so we can slowly bring these customers into our business and take our time figuring out the best way to price and promote the lifetime offer. We will make adjustments to the price and how we offer the lifetime deals. We will always give our lifetime PMPro Plus customers the same level of access and support recurring Plus subscribers have.
Aren’t you worried about how lifetime deals will affect the sale price of your company?
No because we aren’t selling.
One reason many companies don’t offer a lifetime deal is because acquiring companies don’t like having to deal with lifetime customers. The acquiring company won’t count the revenue from lifetime deals toward the multiple they are offering, and in some cases might even lower their offer price even further to account for having to support lifetime customers. Well, we have zero plans to sell the business, and so we won’t have to deal with that.
Never?
Never ever. There are so many more interesting things we could do with this company and team than hand it over to bigger company that won’t “get it” (or even a similar sized company that is more likely to “get it”).
I look forward to chatting with y’all about those interesting things and sharing more as we continue to help people “get paid” by making the best membership platform possible.