5 ms·

Show HN: Lifetime SaaS Deals (tired of paying monthly for biz tools?)

22 points by Bjarnee 7y ago

deanclatworthy 7y ago
This is a pretty useful list. In some cases I actively avoid businesses with this model as I do not believe the business model is sustainable. But it really depends. If i'm buying FTP software (e.g. transmit) then fine. But if i'm buying a VPN, no chance. I would suggest moving the source column on the table. At first I found it hard to read as the primary data I'm looking for is the service, not the source. Also, remove your obnoxious newsletter popup, especially with the "No thanks, i hate to save money" dismiss...
- SallySwanSmith 7y ago
  That "No Thanks, I hate to save money" is a classic dark pattern designed to manipulate people. There's tons of articles about how damaging they are to users perceptions of the interactions (Example https://www.nngroup.com/articles/shaming-users/ https://www.nngroup.com/articles/shaming-users/ ). I honestly closed the browser and didn't give the content any look due to it, as if you're going to try to shame me into giving you my email address, you're not going to play fair with anything else.
  - Bjarnee 7y ago
    Thank you for your opinion. I agree, and will rephrase it later today. I have tried to be very forthcoming about what the site is about, sticking my affiliate link disclaimer on top of every page, so I sincerely do not want to have a popup that makes people vomit!
- superasn 7y ago
  I used to believe the same, how can someone offer a VPN service with a lifetime deal? How can they predict my bandwidth usage? Maybe there will be a fine print wrt usage. Long story short I decided to buy a service called Windscribe 2 years ago anyway after reading some reddit replies (it's a lifetime deal) and so far my experience has been amazing. It's actually better than some monthly paid services I've used and the only service that allows me to watch Netflix US. So exceptions are there though it's only been 2 years using them.. so fingers crossed!
Bjarnee 7y ago
Thanks for the great suggestions, I will try to implement some improvements this week. If nobody cares about the first column, I can at least move it to the far right As for the business model, I have gotten some great tools from startups that are trying to get off the ground, but of course there are also some tools that never seem to get anywhere after initial rounds. It's a good idea to ask the founders for roadmaps, company details etc.
jedberg 7y ago
As someone who runs a SaaS business, lifetime subscriptions seem like the worst idea ever. I can't imagine it gets you that many more people who wouldn't buy otherwise, vs the incredible risk you take that you've correctly predicted the cost of providing your service forever. That being said, this is a super helpful list!
- Bjarnee 7y ago
  Yes, there surely are many pitfalls, both for customers and companies. I think it is important for the company not to overpromise in cases like this. But I guess one of the main reasons companies do lifetime deals, is to get initial traction, and fastet build a very dedicated group of beta users. If they handle that correctly, it can be a big asset, and cheaper than many other forms of startup marketing.
- bryanrasmussen 7y ago
  This is actually the reason why I do not buy any lifetime membership. Because of the risks involved it seems to me that buying lifetime memberships run the risk for the customer of overspending when the service closes shop. Or in some way getting screwed. An obviously bad monetization strategy is more of a warning sign than no monetization strategy at all.
- ujjain 7y ago
  There was a forever hosting provider for a one-time fee in Holland. They were very popular until they went out of business. They weren't cheap either! I think €99 or even €199, but don't remember well. It was around 8 years ago.
jv22222 7y ago
IMHO - On the signup popup form. If you want to close it without entering an email address you have to click a link that says - "No thanks, I hate saving money" - it seems to go against the friendliness of the rest of the branding.
- Bjarnee 7y ago
  I agree. I suck at marketing, so had someone come up with that, but I actually hate it myself, so will try to think of something else. I genuinely want to build something useful that will bring people to the site because it helps them rather that annoy them!
  - jv22222 7y ago
    How about "No thanks, maybe later" or something like that :) Even "No thanks" is fine!
    - ivanhoe 7y ago
      IMHO forcing visitors to be "polite" to a site is just as sneaky as using "I hate saving money". It's all meant to make a visitor feel guilty about clicking it. Just add a simple old close button and don't play marketing mind-games with your users, please.
      - Bjarnee 7y ago
        I agree, I will toss out the marketing book that recommended that, and try being human instead!
    - Bjarnee 7y ago
      Thanks, but I removed the popup instead :-)
  - cpcallen 7y ago
    How about not having a modal dialog that prevents me from seeing / using the site entirely? Are the signups you get really worth driving away most first-time visitors?
eps 7y ago
* “SUBSRIBE TO OUR JUNK MAIL” * Thanks, but I hate saving money Got this full-screen popup with no close button not 5 seconds in. This is not acceptable. It’s obnoxious and disrespectful. Flagged the whole thing.
- Bjarnee 7y ago
  Thank you for your opinion. I have removed the popup, as my intention is not to annoy people, belive it or not.
  - eps 7y ago
    Appreciate you listening. I rescinded the flag.
dylz 7y ago
This is an affiliate link farm with obnoxious shaming dark patterns...
- Bjarnee 7y ago
  Yes, I agree the popup was annoying. I used a template I found, and understand it was annoying, stupid, disrespectful etc. I have now removed it. It is clearly stated on top of every page that there are affiliate links on the site. I spend 20+ hours weekly finding deals and updating the deal list. If it turns out the world hates this, I can stop doing it, close the site down, and do something else with my time. It seemed however some people found it useful, so I thought why not see if people found it useful.
  - dylz 7y ago
    I'd also be interested in why some of your external scripts are (very badly and slowly) trying to fingerprint the browser and do persistent tracking. Your aiva thing is triggering "site is attempting to load adobe flash" notice bars. It also tries to spin up the GPU, ruining battery life. I am curious if you've actually tried all of these, or if you're just going with whatever offers affiliate money, because a decent number are either pretty much ad-packed open source projects being sold with a windows GUI/the type of stuff you see on clickbank with a landing page that looks like spam/actual garbage/run by criminals.
    - Bjarnee 7y ago
      I am not a programmer, so I tried to find a tool for email signups, and Aiva looked nice at the time. Guessing from your reply, it is bad in some way, so I have turned it off. I do not need it. As for the rest of your question, I have made it clearer in the text on the deal dashboard. I borrowed your text, hope you don't mind. My main idea is to find every single deal online that is labeled lifetime deal, and share it in a simple, searchable, sortable overview list. The list will contain my affiliate links, so I can hopefully some day earn more money from the site than I spend. If you have other suggestions to how to label things so people do not get fooled, let me know. If you think the best thing is to delete the site from existance, then I will actually think about doing so. I had a hope it was possible to show a list of links online, be they affiliate links, in some way so that it could still be useful. But maybe it is not.
jarym 7y ago
I remember when Quip were on Appsumo and I went for it but couldn’t understand why they were doing lifetime deals. Then several months later Salesforce came along with a $300m acquisition and it all made sense - user base. That said I will generally avoid ‘award winning’ software I’ve never heard of (after buying one Appsumo product I realised the software was a dud) and I also avoid any critical services (lifetime 10Tb cloud backup for $5... no way)

22 points by Bjarnee 7y ago

This is a pretty useful list. In some cases I actively avoid businesses with this model as I do not believe the business model is sustainable. But it really depends. If i'm buying FTP software (e.g. transmit) then fine. But if i'm buying a VPN, no chance. I would suggest moving the source column on the table. At first I found it hard to read as the primary data I'm looking for is the service, not the source. Also, remove your obnoxious newsletter popup, especially with the "No thanks, i hate to save money" dismiss...

SallySwanSmith 7y ago
That "No Thanks, I hate to save money" is a classic dark pattern designed to manipulate people. There's tons of articles about how damaging they are to users perceptions of the interactions (Example https://www.nngroup.com/articles/shaming-users/ https://www.nngroup.com/articles/shaming-users/ ). I honestly closed the browser and didn't give the content any look due to it, as if you're going to try to shame me into giving you my email address, you're not going to play fair with anything else.
- Bjarnee 7y ago
  Thank you for your opinion. I agree, and will rephrase it later today. I have tried to be very forthcoming about what the site is about, sticking my affiliate link disclaimer on top of every page, so I sincerely do not want to have a popup that makes people vomit!
superasn 7y ago
I used to believe the same, how can someone offer a VPN service with a lifetime deal? How can they predict my bandwidth usage? Maybe there will be a fine print wrt usage. Long story short I decided to buy a service called Windscribe 2 years ago anyway after reading some reddit replies (it's a lifetime deal) and so far my experience has been amazing. It's actually better than some monthly paid services I've used and the only service that allows me to watch Netflix US. So exceptions are there though it's only been 2 years using them.. so fingers crossed!

Bjarnee 7y ago

Thanks for the great suggestions, I will try to implement some improvements this week. If nobody cares about the first column, I can at least move it to the far right As for the business model, I have gotten some great tools from startups that are trying to get off the ground, but of course there are also some tools that never seem to get anywhere after initial rounds. It's a good idea to ask the founders for roadmaps, company details etc.

jedberg 7y ago

As someone who runs a SaaS business, lifetime subscriptions seem like the worst idea ever. I can't imagine it gets you that many more people who wouldn't buy otherwise, vs the incredible risk you take that you've correctly predicted the cost of providing your service forever. That being said, this is a super helpful list!

Bjarnee 7y ago
Yes, there surely are many pitfalls, both for customers and companies. I think it is important for the company not to overpromise in cases like this. But I guess one of the main reasons companies do lifetime deals, is to get initial traction, and fastet build a very dedicated group of beta users. If they handle that correctly, it can be a big asset, and cheaper than many other forms of startup marketing.
bryanrasmussen 7y ago
This is actually the reason why I do not buy any lifetime membership. Because of the risks involved it seems to me that buying lifetime memberships run the risk for the customer of overspending when the service closes shop. Or in some way getting screwed. An obviously bad monetization strategy is more of a warning sign than no monetization strategy at all.
ujjain 7y ago
There was a forever hosting provider for a one-time fee in Holland. They were very popular until they went out of business. They weren't cheap either! I think €99 or even €199, but don't remember well. It was around 8 years ago.

jv22222 7y ago

IMHO - On the signup popup form. If you want to close it without entering an email address you have to click a link that says - "No thanks, I hate saving money" - it seems to go against the friendliness of the rest of the branding.

Bjarnee 7y ago
I agree. I suck at marketing, so had someone come up with that, but I actually hate it myself, so will try to think of something else. I genuinely want to build something useful that will bring people to the site because it helps them rather that annoy them!
- jv22222 7y ago
  How about "No thanks, maybe later" or something like that :) Even "No thanks" is fine!
  - ivanhoe 7y ago
    IMHO forcing visitors to be "polite" to a site is just as sneaky as using "I hate saving money". It's all meant to make a visitor feel guilty about clicking it. Just add a simple old close button and don't play marketing mind-games with your users, please.
    - Bjarnee 7y ago
      I agree, I will toss out the marketing book that recommended that, and try being human instead!
  - Bjarnee 7y ago
    Thanks, but I removed the popup instead :-)
- cpcallen 7y ago
  How about not having a modal dialog that prevents me from seeing / using the site entirely? Are the signups you get really worth driving away most first-time visitors?

eps 7y ago

* “SUBSRIBE TO OUR JUNK MAIL” * Thanks, but I hate saving money Got this full-screen popup with no close button not 5 seconds in. This is not acceptable. It’s obnoxious and disrespectful. Flagged the whole thing.

Bjarnee 7y ago
Thank you for your opinion. I have removed the popup, as my intention is not to annoy people, belive it or not.
- eps 7y ago
  Appreciate you listening. I rescinded the flag.

dylz 7y ago

This is an affiliate link farm with obnoxious shaming dark patterns...

Bjarnee 7y ago
Yes, I agree the popup was annoying. I used a template I found, and understand it was annoying, stupid, disrespectful etc. I have now removed it. It is clearly stated on top of every page that there are affiliate links on the site. I spend 20+ hours weekly finding deals and updating the deal list. If it turns out the world hates this, I can stop doing it, close the site down, and do something else with my time. It seemed however some people found it useful, so I thought why not see if people found it useful.
- dylz 7y ago
  I'd also be interested in why some of your external scripts are (very badly and slowly) trying to fingerprint the browser and do persistent tracking. Your aiva thing is triggering "site is attempting to load adobe flash" notice bars. It also tries to spin up the GPU, ruining battery life. I am curious if you've actually tried all of these, or if you're just going with whatever offers affiliate money, because a decent number are either pretty much ad-packed open source projects being sold with a windows GUI/the type of stuff you see on clickbank with a landing page that looks like spam/actual garbage/run by criminals.
  - Bjarnee 7y ago
    I am not a programmer, so I tried to find a tool for email signups, and Aiva looked nice at the time. Guessing from your reply, it is bad in some way, so I have turned it off. I do not need it. As for the rest of your question, I have made it clearer in the text on the deal dashboard. I borrowed your text, hope you don't mind. My main idea is to find every single deal online that is labeled lifetime deal, and share it in a simple, searchable, sortable overview list. The list will contain my affiliate links, so I can hopefully some day earn more money from the site than I spend. If you have other suggestions to how to label things so people do not get fooled, let me know. If you think the best thing is to delete the site from existance, then I will actually think about doing so. I had a hope it was possible to show a list of links online, be they affiliate links, in some way so that it could still be useful. But maybe it is not.

jarym 7y ago

I remember when Quip were on Appsumo and I went for it but couldn’t understand why they were doing lifetime deals. Then several months later Salesforce came along with a $300m acquisition and it all made sense - user base. That said I will generally avoid ‘award winning’ software I’ve never heard of (after buying one Appsumo product I realised the software was a dud) and I also avoid any critical services (lifetime 10Tb cloud backup for $5... no way)