Ask HN: Should customers get free upgrades of my software forever?

2 points by textman 3 years ago | 4 comments

I think my suppot and maintenance policy is fairly standard for commercial software but please advise if you think otherwise.

Solo developer here selling a Windows desktop program for many years for $100 USD which includes one year free support (email only) and maintenance( free bug fixes and new versions). New customers are given a URL for downloading the licensed version(trial executable does not convert to licensed). After first year, annual support and maintenance is $20. License is sold as perpertual meaning it never expires. A few customers that purchased two or more years ago and have never purchased support needed to move software to new machine, which they can do using their installer. But if they no longer have their installer, they contact me and complain when told they they have to buy a new license. Support policy on my website is real clear about this: must be under a current maintenance contract to be able to download software. I have been lenient if their contract expired very recently, especially if it was their first year.

Older versions expire upon release of a new version and I do not offer installer for older versions because as a solo operator it would be too much to handle support for long forgotten bugs or other issues.

injb 3 years ago |

Just my 2 cents, but I think you should host the legacy installers. You'll have to take some trouble to make it clear that they're unsupported, and made available only as a courtesy to legacy customers. But why not do it? People are bound to lose the one they downloaded and it seems harsh that they own a perpetual license to the software, and you have a copy of it somewhere, but they have no way to access it.

Otherwise, what's the value of having a perpetual license?

textman 3 years ago | |

Cannot disagree in concept, but the reality and logistics of doing that can get complicated. Going back a few versions, there were issues with the installation and also online license activation which I was always able to resolve without changing anything at my end, but it was considerable time on my part so really do not want to deal with that for free. Not to mention I would have to spend additional time reading the support logs to refresh my mind how I did it. Also, it is a .NET 2.0 program and I had to help a few customers that had not enabled .NET 2 when they installed Windows 10, so that could be yet another support issue to handle.

steffan 3 years ago |

This doesn't sound unreasonable to me, especially as a solo developer. I think it's important to make sure your customers understand that they may not be able to download their installer in the future.

Perhaps sending an email reminder _n_ days before expiration of their one year free maintenance and reminding them of that (and perhaps offering an upsell to renew for an additional year of maintenance)

textman 3 years ago | |

Good ideas. Easy to add something to the download page when they first purchase.