Comments on: Should I give free upgrades for life?

By: Steve Wortham

Steve Wortham — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 23:30:28 +0000

I’ve been giving this a lot of thought as well.

One of the nice things about offering free upgrades for life is that you never have to support old software. And of course, it’s a very nice thing for the customer.

But in the long-term what will happen? Will your sales dwindle? And will you be supporting your software forever on an ever decreasing revenue stream leading to the company’s eventual failure?

So I think what I’m going to do is a compromise. I’ll offer free major version upgrades for 5 years after a purchase. After those 5 years, they’ll have to pay if they want to upgrade to the next major version.

Doing it this way has many of the same advantages of offering free upgrades for life, without the risk of severely hurting your long-term success.

By: Andy Brice

Andy Brice — Mon, 08 Dec 2008 09:03:23 +0000

There is more to support than bug fixes. A customer might just want to know how to carry out a particular task.

By: David Michelin

David Michelin — Mon, 08 Dec 2008 05:40:40 +0000

“just because you offer free upgrades, doesn’t mean you can reasonably refuse to support versions other than the latest”

Sorry but I don’t follow you there at all. When upgrades are free, it doesn’t make sense to support older versions, fixing bugs requires getting the release with the bug fix. If the customer doesn’t want the free bug fix that is their own business, but I don’t see how providing that bug fix isn’t support.

By: Andy Brice

Andy Brice — Sun, 07 Dec 2008 20:15:38 +0000

Charging to upgrades doesn’t mean you have to support old versions indefinitely. Microsoft doesn’t. Neither do I.

Also, just because you offer free upgrades, doesn’t mean you can reasonably refuse to support versions other than the latest IMHO.

By: Peter

Peter — Sun, 07 Dec 2008 19:44:38 +0000

Charging for updates has a hidden cost: the need to provide tech support for old versions indefinitely. If someone asks for tech support on an old version, you can’t reasonably demand that they pay for an update before you’ll help them.

By: Corwin

Corwin — Thu, 25 Sep 2008 16:38:17 +0000

As a business and marketing strategist (not a software expert) I would just add another consideration.

I paid for software a year ago for use on my XP machine and when it died and I upgraded to Vista the software was no longer compatible and the company had no plan to upgrade my version–I would have to buy a new one. Which brings up a psychological point–many average users of software expect that the software will perform as purchased for some period of time (like buying a hard good) before needing replacing. We can speculate on how long that is, but without significant improvements in functionality I would speculate the time frame is likely around 2 years (just my guess).

Paying for upgrades seems reasonable-but not yearly.

Secondly, the more expensive the upgrade is the more likely people will consider sticking with their old versions (I’m talking about average users). For example I am using MS Office 2003 and can see no good reason to upgrade any time soon.

All this being said, I also have concerns with ‘free upgrades for life’ as I wonder about the viability of the company I’m dealing with or if they intend to make money from me in other ways???? (i.e. is this some sort of scam?)

By: My thoughts on paid upgrades at Felix Blog

My thoughts on paid upgrades at Felix Blog — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 09:52:17 +0000

[...] for software upgrades is a bit of a touchy subject. The Successful Software blog makes a case for when you should charge for upgrades from the software developer’s [...]

By: Andy Brice

Andy Brice — Mon, 15 Sep 2008 09:03:01 +0000

Yes, 50% was a made up figure (I said ‘contrived’). I think the figure will vary greatly depending on the type of application. 50% is probably rather optimistic for most applications.

By: Thomas

Thomas — Mon, 15 Sep 2008 08:29:04 +0000

> Interesting. Is that the difference in conversion rate before and
> after a change of policy? Is there enough data to be statistically
> valid?
Andy,

asking for statistics, how about the other way round? Not every customer is likely to pay for updates, many will rather stick with the old version, despite new features.

So, how many customers (I know, depends on the software) in general are likely to pay for updates? Is it worth the loss of a good sales argument?

(I take it, that the 50% in the post are just a guess and not statistical data, right? Sounds too nice to me ;-)

By: Scott Kane

Scott Kane — Wed, 10 Sep 2008 09:37:31 +0000

I completely agree that in many instances a life time free upgrade policy is counter productive to any hope of business development. I disagree with Jesse on it being confined to a mindset of people doing “30 Day” events. It’s more complex than that (and pervasive). I tend to suspect (through talking to developers over the years) that there is more connection with a fear of charging money period than purely a lack of forward planning.