Hacker News Reader

Comment by anonzzzies | Hacker News Reader

Almost all ‘lifetime subs’ are scams; a company has to be massive to support it and if it doesn’t work out for smaller companies, the consequences don’t matter anyway.

View on HN

It doesn't actually have to be lifetime to be well worth it, though. For services with recurring fees there's obviously a break-even point that's simple to calculate. And often you can expect that recurring fee will increase at some point, so that break-even point will often come sooner than expected.

I bought an Emby Premier subscription 8 years ago for $120. You can also pay yearly at $55 dollars. So even if it's not _actually_ a "lifetime" it's been well worth it and pays for itself in a little over two years.

What seems to happen is the company will offer a "new" product that differs enough to justify demanding a whole new subscription

It is a lifetime sub! Lifetime of said company

Most companies don't have to go bust to get around lifetime subs, just release a new separate app version or service.

I took a lifetime VPN sub. It always puzzled me why they'd do that, what with the operational cost. It lasted a bit over 10y, which is still a good deal, but not lifetime.

Out of curiosity… does their ULA specify to whom/what “lifetime” refers?

I'm not sure, but they ended up closing shop.

The underlying answer is that the cost to provide service to an average VPN user is essentially zero

Anything I've paid lifetime subs for has later changed their terms and dropped out of the deal

Reply on news.ycombinator.com