Ask HN: Is offering a one-time payment stupid?

[bigscrankus]

A one-time payment for an offline version.

I operate a low-cost SaaS that does about $500,000 a year. Churn is quite low, and LTV is about $250 per user.

Would it be totally stupid to offer a one-time purchase equal to LTV for an offline-only version of our application?

I’ve actually built my application local-first; it works offline just fine. My business model is SaaS because it’s easy and we do have online-only features, but I wonder if a dual model would get more money on the table? Many users have emailed us asking for a one-time, offline option.

Does a dual model work? SaaS for app + online features, and a one-time payment option for offline usage and one year of updates?

Thoughts?

[PaulHoule]

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.

[bigscrankus]

This is a benefit of our current SaaS-only model I tout to my community.

But, most don’t care about such things. ;)

[tinthedev]

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.

[bigscrankus]

I’m certainly open to charging more, but I operate in a price sensitive hobby market. If we do go for it, I’ll definitely try a higher price first. No harm in trying.

[JohnFen]

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.

[bigscrankus]

Yes, you and many others remind me of this in my email inbox every day.

It doesn’t change the fact that software is expensive to maintain and even relatively simple apps can cost millions of dollars in human-hours to support. SaaS is the safest path to that, and if users don’t want to pay a premium (>$200ish, in my case) for offline, SaaS will stay that way.

[scarface_74]

And honestly you’re an outlier - Microsoft and Adobe make money hand over fist in subscriptions.

I gladly pay $129 a year for 5 users of MS office and each user can use the software on multiple platforms and have 1TB of storage

[n9com]

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.

[bigscrankus]

Yes, SaaS is nice and safe. I’ve run it as a SaaS for 4 years now. However, I wonder if I’m leaving money on the table by not offering other monetization options.

[speedylight]

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.

[MonkeyClub]

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-...

[bigscrankus]

I think SaaS definitely won, but I would love to hear this story updated for 2025. Desktop and web apps have a lot more in common than they did 16 years ago.

[csomar]

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.

[muzani]

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.

[HenryBemis]

Or.. to counter that. How many people are working there, and how many people own that company? What is your 5-10-50 year strategy? Get a $20k salary per month till the end of time and live a long happy life, or sell it to GigaCompany for $1bn and go buy an island and retire at the sweet age of <insert_your_age>? Do you plan to expand? Milking the customers for as much as you can is a great(?) idea, but risking your customer base "because I want to go from $100k salary per month to $101k salary per month" is reckless imho.

[duxup]

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

[bigscrankus]

No; just the application itself. I’m not interested in running an open source project or teaching people how to run our server-side data sync stack. At ~$250, even just a tiny bit of high-expertise tech support for those users would put me underwater.

[HenryBemis]

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).

[toomuchtodo]

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.

[bigscrankus]

This is one concern I have: SaaS is actually a really simple business model. “Pay this month, use this month”.

Introducing things like “pay one time for perpetual offline use and a year of upgrades from the date of purchase, OR pay this month use this month.” Doesn’t roll off the tongue quite as well. Maybe bad UX from a pricing perspective.

[paulcole]

> > LTV is about $250 per user.

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

[apothegm]

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

[bigscrankus]

That’s true; it could be the most valuable users that switch to the OTP if they aren’t getting value from the online features.

It’s been a while since I’ve surveyed, but the last time we asked, only 40% of our surveyed userbase thought the online features were valuable to them.

[FlopV]

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

[maynkal]

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.

[bruce511]

... whereas for one-time customers you hope they'll switch to a competitor.

I mean, you've been paid, what do you care if they stay or go? In fact "going" is cheaper for you.

The best meta argument for SaaS is that it keeps supplier and customer incentives aligned. I want you to hang around another month so I'm incentivised to keep standards high - to keep improving the offering and support.

By contrast a truly one-time offering means the customer has 0 value after the sale. That money is quickly spent. So there's less money for development or support. I am only interested in new sales so I optimize for that. My incentives are not aligned with existing customers.

Now, context matters. The model has to be correct for the product, the supplier, the consumer. I don't pay SaaS for my text editor, or my OS etc. I also don't need support from those providers. YMMV.