SaaS lifetime pricing

More riffing on SaaS (software as a service) products after yesterday’s mini-rant.

Until a few weeks ago, I’d been using an email SaaS called Superhuman that cost around $40/month ($29USD). It was one of those items that popped onto my radar anytime I reviewed expenses, and I often considered just cancelling it, but it offered so many great features that I just didn’t like the idea of not having it, and going back to Gmail.

When I came across it in 2018, it was unique. Smart keyboard shortcuts that made dozens of functions super fast; A super clean and decluttered interface; Just a handful of very useful integrations. It was a ground-up rethink of how email software should work, so it seemed unlikely that an alternative would exist… but I hadn’t really searched.

When I realised I’d been a customer for over 5 years, I emailed the to ask if they planned to offer any annual or even lifetime subscriptions, just to make the price a little more palatable.

Their response:

Yes! A lifetime subscription costs $3000. We also have an annual plan! That’s $300/year and includes two months free.

I can’t tell you if that’s reasonable – I simply don’t know. Personally, I couldn’t make a case for a lifetime plan, which just seemed like paying for 10 years in advance… I’ve never done that with anything.

Perhaps I’ve been damaged by seeing lifetime plans that were marginally more than the other two options (eg: Monthly $20; Annual $200; Lifetime $300).

Of course all businesses need to make money, but I couldn’t help thinking that perhaps not every piece of software needs to offer a lifetime option. It could be that they offered one because I asked, but maybe it doesn’t really make sense for them specifically.

My thoughts: If a lifetime option is offered it should be very compelling, otherwise just don’t offer it.

ps: I did find an alternative called Spark Mail which has free, as well as paid tiers starting at USD$5/month. Ukrainian born and very customisable to the point where I was able to replicate the keyboard shortcuts I’d become so accustomed to in Superhuman, that it’s functionally now an almost exact replica of Superhuman… with some better features.