Is offering a one-time payment stupid?

As a customer I wonder about it. For a service like Plex Pass buying a perpetual subscription seems reasonable and affordable but if I am paying $X a month I can "exit" and the vendor might care

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exit,_Voice,_and_Loyalty

but if I've bought a perpetual subscription they've got no reason to listen to me anymore.

I think you're thinking of it a bit backwards.

Why limit your price to LTV for the offline-only version? Think of it as a full blooded product, instead of trying to squeeze it into the SaaS thinking model you've got already.

Plenty of enterprise (and such) clients wouldn't balk at all at a $500 fee. Brainstorm your target market and price accordingly. In other comments, you're mentioning the support burden - I don't think you should sell the offline version if you're not ready to lift that burden, and thus should price it in a way where this is attractive to you.

Offline versions are usually used by more demanding customers in the current day and age - the web is where you go for the user-friendly version.

In terms of the larger market, I have no idea. However, I avoid SaaS things, and I won't go for software "subscriptions", so unless your product offers the ability to pay a single fee and run it on my own machines, I wouldn't be your customer.

Yes, it can work. You should test it out. However from experience, getting customers on a subscription is normally better, especially if you're looking for an exit in the future.

I think you could get away with offering a one time payment if you restrict the time you’d supporting your software with updates.

So for example you have X Program that has a one time license which costs $100, you promise to keep updating X Program for let’s say 3 years… after that time passes, those people could keep using your program but they wouldn’t receive any updates without paying some sort of upgrade fee or you could choose not offer one at all if you’re looking for a clean exit.

Patio11 has an interesting piece on why desktop / offline versions aren't viable any longer:

https://www.kalzumeus.com/2009/09/05/desktop-aps-versus-web-...

Unless your users (and potential real users) want it in significant numbers, there is no way to do it that way. You already have low churn. The reason you might want to do it if your churn was high and you want to guarantee that income. That is not your case here.

Don't eat unicorn food if you're not a unicorn. Here's a litmus test - do you think $5 million is a lot of money?

If yes, then do it. Whatever gets you to $5 mil the fastest.

If no, then don't do it. You'll run out of customers to milk and not be sustainable.

Are they going to host / manage the application / whole stack?

If I may suggest Steve Gibson's method, Spinrite. One-time purchase. I bought it once. It 'lives' on a usb-stick, offline.

If I lose it I can download it again.

I bought it at v4.x or v5.x (I don't remember, it's been years).

I've paid for the upgrade to 6.0. The upgrade from 6.0 to 6.1 was free (and very significant).

When he moves it to v7, I will happily pay for that upgrade as well.

I don't know if I am a cheap bastard (perhaps I am) but I prefer to pay-it forward. I buy a 'lifetime' subscription for the things I want _a lot_ and/or need. I remember a decade ago I paid $200 for a SaaS when the monthly rate was $20. I use it a few times per year (so let's say it would cost me $40 to reactive-use-deactivate). I got the lifetime at 10x, I broken even after 4-5 years. I paid the folks 10x when they needed the funding (and offered the 'lifetime'), and they 'thank' me by having me on 'for free'.

That said, I did take the risk, because if that SaaS was dishonest or simply they would have gone bust, I'd lose the 90% of that payment, but the amount was small ($200 for a lifetime service is a small amount for an EU costs/standard of living).

I think it’s reasonable as long as your customers know upfront that support is time bound (X years) and major releases might incur additional future cost.

> > LTV is about $250 per user.

How stable is this number? If it's still trending up, I wouldn't make any drastic changes.

One potential risk is that only the users who are above average in LTV might choose that option.

Maybe it would be a good offering when a user is going to churn ?

Personally, if you are developing a micro-niche SaaS that doesn't have any entry barrier, then you must go with a one-time payment. Because you don't have any competitive advantage, any competitor can come build a similar app and attract your customer, so the customer who is paying monthly to you will switch to your competitor. I hope you understand my point.