When a lifetime deal makes sense for your product

How lifetime memberships work, what AppSumo takes, and the support costs that follow.

Impact
Medium
Effort
Low
Filed under
Revenue
Updated

A lifetime membership (also called a lifetime deal, or LTD) is a one-time payment for access to your product for as long as it exists. It brings in cash and early users fast, which is why founders use it at launch. It only makes sense when each extra customer costs you almost nothing to serve and rarely needs support, and it works best as a one-time event with a cap, not a permanent plan.

How to do it

  1. Work out what one lifetime customer costs you over five years. Count hosting, any usage-based vendor bills (AI credits, email sends, storage) and support time. If any cost grows with use, set a usage cap in the deal.
  2. Write down what "lifetime" means before you sell it. One founder quoted by Freemius suggests defining it as "access to the current major version plus security fixes," with major new modules treated as paid add-ons. Also write what happens to buyers if you shut down or sell the company, in a separate agreement, as the original Growth List card advised.
  3. Cap the number of sales and the usage per account. Freemius recommends capping "seats, projects, or usage at specific limits before launch," and one contributor says to keep lifetime buyers under 10% of your user base or revenue.
  4. Choose where to sell. Your own email list is the safest first test. AppSumo is the large marketplace for this kind of deal: you apply, and they review the product before listing it.
  5. Keep a paid path open. Offer lifetime buyers a clear upgrade for new modules or higher limits, so the deal does not become your whole revenue.
  6. If a true lifetime feels too risky, sell a fixed term instead, such as three years, and decide later whether to extend it.

What AppSumo expects

AppSumo's seller page says it lists only products that are "fully functional and ready for users," asks partners to plan for customer support, and says consumer-only products are not a fit because its audience "buys tools for work." There is no upfront fee, and rates are "negotiated based on your product category and expected performance."

Its partner payments page says you earn 95% of revenue from new buyers you bring, minus a 5% processing fee, and 70% from returning AppSumo customers. Its payment policy says the default refund window is 60 days, pay comes on a Net 60 end-of-month basis, and refunds can reduce current or future payments. Plan your cash around that delay.

Examples

Paperform on AppSumo. A write-up by Superframeworks says Paperform offered its Pro plan for a lifetime price of $39 and sold 2,740 deals, $106,860 in total sales and $32,058 in revenue, because "the platform took 70% of commission." It credits the deal with giving the company upfront capital and helping lead to a Product Hunt launch. That split is from the write-up, not today's published terms.

LearnDash. Justin Ferriman sold about 20 lifetime licenses at $999 in four days, then stopped the experiment. He wrote that anyone who might sell the business should avoid them, because buyers asked about the lost future revenue.

VPNSecure (a warning). PCWorld reported in May 2025 that VPNSecure's lifetime accounts were deactivated on April 28, 2025, after the new owners claimed they did not know the lifetime plans existed. Affected users were offered a discounted plan from $1.87 a month, and PCWorld found no sign of refunds. This is the risk the original card flagged: what happens when the company changes hands.

When it backfires

  • Support and server costs never stop. Freemius reports one vendor found lifetime users opened 30 to 40% more support tickets per account than subscribers, and another had tickets pass 100 a day within days of an uncapped campaign.
  • Refunds and slow payment. With a 60-day refund window and Net 60 payouts, the cash arrives late and some may be returned.
  • You cannot take it back. Freemius puts it as "Lifetime deals are a one-way door."
  • It can eat your subscription sales. One founder told Freemius the deal "did pull forward revenue from users who were already warm leads for subscriptions."
  • It complicates a sale of the business. See the LearnDash example.
  • Platform fit. AppSumo does not take consumer-only products.

Questions people ask

What is a lifetime deal? A single payment for ongoing access to a product, usually discounted heavily and often sold through a marketplace like AppSumo.

How do I promote a lifetime deal campaign? Tell your own list first. On AppSumo, the seller page says top performers get more marketing resources after launch.

Does Ahrefs offer a lifetime membership? Ahrefs' pricing page lists monthly plans from Starter at $29 to Enterprise at $1,499, with a discount for annual billing, and shows no lifetime option.

Sources

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