WordPress, the multi-billion dollar software industry that has us begging for money

It seems a year can’t go by without the pesky lifetime WordPress license topic popping up to spice up the holiday conversation. A struggle dating back 7 years ago to the month when Jeff Chandler covered, now defunct, Sidekick.pro where then owner Ben Fox shared his pricing experiments. When Brad Touesnard purchased Advanced Custom Fields back in June, he was swiftly reminded how hard lifetime license pricing really is. I mean, he did his due diligence, he knew what he was getting into. But the lifetime license woes lingered well before the new owners arrived. Elliot Condon wrestled with it, “get it all for one price forever” that is, until he finally revised pricing for 2020 to build the business a better runway. Lifetime license holders will get **all** ACF Pro software updates forever. They won’t be required to pay for version 6.0 or any other major or minor releases in the future. They signed up for updates for life, so we’ll continue to deliver on that promise forever. 8/10— Brad Touesnard (@bradt) June 3, 2021 On Delicious Brains acquiring Advanced Custom Fields Amidst a fumbled start, Brad, did bless all lifetime license holders with access — forever. It’s on Twitter, so it’s permanent in my book. This isn’t the first pricing rodeo for Brad and company. When asked about lessons learned with pricing in a 2018 interview with Joe Howard on the WPMRR podcast, Brad had this to say: “I think the biggest thing that people don’t do is experiment with their pricing.When I launched Migrate DB Pro, I think the developer license was, $99 per year.In December of that year, I doubled the pricing. Which would have been totally uncontroversial, except that I changed all the prices for the existing customers as well. I didn’t grandfather it.And there was definitely quite a bit of blowback. I’d regret doing it because I feel like at that point, it wouldn’t have hurt us to like grandfather those people in but I don’t believe really in grandfathering people in forever.That’s the same aversion I have to like unlimited things and “lifetime this and that.”Brad Touesnard Pricing is challenging, no doubt, and lot has already been said about lifetime licenses. Should you offer them as a product owner? Clearly the data (and the community) is pointing to a firm “no” at this point. Should the customer expect that a lifetime license actually means a lifetime of free…everything? Read Chris Lema’s take, On Lifetime Licenses. WordPress, the only billion dollar software industry that has us begging for money