Have you ever bought software that came with free upgrades for life?
In the Successful Software blog, Andy Brice asks if you should give customers free software upgrades for life. He created an income model in Excel 2007 that you can download, to test different scenarios.
I can't imagine why anyone would offer free software upgrades for life. Certainly, if there are minor upgrades or patches to the current version, or a major upgrade is released shortly after a purchase, then I would expect to get those at no charge. Otherwise, if I want to enjoy the new features that a developer has worked hard to create, I'd pay for the upgrade.
The article has an excellent list of things customers should expect in major upgrades, including two points that are key:
- Any major bugs in version n should be fixed before releasing version n+1.
- A major upgrade should have significant new features.
But don't worry, upgrades to this blog will continue to be free, as long as I can afford it!
Thanks for the link to Successful Software. It looks like it will be very useful.
My PUP add-in has free upgrades for life (with a $5 processing fee). I did that when it was first released in 1994 because I knew it had a lot of bugs and I didn't want people to have to pay for my mistakes.
It's actually worked out pretty well, I think. A pretty good percentage of users upgrade. And only one person has ever complained about the processing fee.
John, that's a nice deal for your customers, well except for the person who complained. And I hope the upgrade process isn't too time consuming, since you're only getting $5 for it.
There's more about the PUP upgrade deal in John's blog today