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Aleks Bochkov

🤔 What do you think about SaaS Lifetime Deals?

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🤔 What do you think about SaaS Lifetime Deals? (Is it a viable model to get customers and give a boost your product?) We also have our Lifetime deal running for LabiDesk help desk software - https://labidesk.com/life-time-deal. So wondering how other startups doing it 🙂

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Gerard Compte
I have done a few Appsumo´s. If you know how to do it is a great Marketing Strategy. Lemlist , Salesflare, even Intercome and they had amazing experience.
Aleks Bochkov
@gerard_compte1 I agree. But isn't LTD space is too crowded these days? Do you think it is still possible to get the same results there as Lemlist or Saleslfare got from it?
Fabian Maume
It depends: what are your recurrent costs? Lifetime deals (LTD) are good for saas with low marginal cost to serve a client. If your SaaS is resource-intensive (AI tools for example), LTD are too risky. LTD will also be financially interesting if you can monetised the LTD users: do you have some feature in backlog, that you could sell to LTD users later on? LTD can be good to get early adopters, but often people buying LTD are deal hunters. They might not be your target customer, a, and might not give you valuable feedback. LTD is more an alternative to fundraising than a way to get early adopters. This article about the subject is quite interesting: https://www.lunadio.com/blog/the...
Aleks Bochkov
@fabian_maume Thank you for your feedback and sharing the article! Regarding features in the backlog - there are always plenty of features. The question is how the early adopters will react when you are going to sell them something when they already purchased the lifetime deal and expect everything to be included in the deal :)
Fabian Maume
@bochkovaleks You need to announce it in your LTD. Have some public road map and explain which future features will be included in the LTD, and which feature won't included.
Aleks Bochkov
@fabian_maume Yeah that could help, but then again make your offer less interesting for the early adopters. But I got your point. Thank you for sharing.
Tim Schröder
@bochkovaleks @fabian_maume Agree that a public roadmap is important, as it will provide assurance to users you're really in for long-term engagement.
If you do not have funding and do not have your own traffic, then yes, use this marketing strategy, but only for a certain period, otherwise your startup will not survive
Aleks Bochkov
@ruslan77 Thanks for your insight! Do you have personal experience with Lifetime Deals? Have you launched your products that way?
@bochkovaleks Yes, I used to launch in App Sumo, JVZoo and Kickstarter. Our goal was to get feedback, brand awareness and of course sales.
Karen Vardanyan
We just started our Lifetime deal, and I think that startups that don't have an investment, it's a good way to earn cash. You will not get only cash, but only loyal customers, feedback to improve the tool, and more.
Aleks Bochkov
@karen_vartanian Agree! How about turning lifetime deal customers into MRR, have you experimented with that already?
Hamed Baatour
I've just added a lifetime deal to intab.io before launching on product hunt and It's working great so far. fun fact: I noticed that adding a LTD increased also subscriptions conversion rate for some reason 🤔 but in short, here is my take on adding a LTD pricing option: It heavily depends on the type of your product. If your SaaS is highly resource-intensive you better be super careful (upfront revenue is great but long-term losses are a disaster) it's a double edge sword for most SaaS products and should be greatly managed to avoid potentially killing the startup altogether ☠ one great tip is to think upfront for a natural upgrade path to LTD users without being too salesy or pushy
Aleks Bochkov
@hamedbaatour Thanks for the insights! But if you are offering both LTD and Subscriptions, whats the incentive for customers to go for Subscription instead of the Lifetime deals?
Hamed Baatour
@bochkovaleks some prefer a lower commitment upfront. I think having both covers a different array of clients preferences which results in a higher conversion rate overall.
Aleks Bochkov
@hamedbaatour Interesting approach! Thanks for sharing!
Alexey Shashkov
Hey Alex! I think SaaS Lifetime Deals is a good way to get traction in the early stage and to test demand.
Aleks Bochkov
@shashcoffe I agree. Are you planning on launching your product via Lifetime Deal too?
Arpan Deb
It is a good approach to grow your user base and get your name out there. But you have to stop it once you have reached your critical mass.
Aleks Bochkov
@phoenixworkspace Yes, stopping at the right time is a good point. Thanks for the feedback!
Evgeny Medvednikov
For the brand new product ad if you are in the limited marketing budget, that really makes sense. In all other cases no. We are running an LTD deal right now on Saas Mantra for https://weje.io and enjoying hundreds of new users and customers. AppSumo with 70-80% is overpriced now, in my understanding. But yes, it's the biggest one.
Aleks Bochkov
@medik Thanks for sharing!
Devanand Premkumar
@medik Would be good to hear your approach on how you selected SaaS Mantra as more and more LTD sites are growing in size and popularity.
Evgeny Medvednikov
@devaonbreaches In reality it makes sense to choose from AppSumo and SaasMantra only. All others are small sites and do not bring any significant traffic. AppSumo is number 1, but costs too high as for me and long lines for product submission. Saas Matra is much faster and have reasonable commission.
Anil Matcha
We had the biggest Lifetime Deal launch of all time with 1300+ reviews and have created a community of 3000+ members in a short span. It worked great for us
Aleks Bochkov
@matcha_anil Wow! Congrats! Would love to get your advise on a few things :) Let's connect!
Anil Matcha
@bochkovaleks Happy to get connected and discuss here
Devanand Premkumar
@matcha_anil Wonder which site did you launch your Lifetime Deal?
Aleks Bochkov
We also have our Lifetime deal running for LabiDesk help desk software - https://labidesk.com/life-time-deal. So wondering how other startups doing it 🙂
Stefan Smiljkovic
I voted No, but it really depends. For example, in my case for https://automatio.co, the AppSumo was not good to offer. Even they reached me and were ready to go, but after realizing their terms it didn't work for me. The cut is big, and you need to offer really discounted price for those people. It didn't work for Automatio, because it requires heavy servers to run, so it's not for example blog app where you can have thousands of users for a $50/month server.
Aleks Bochkov
@stefan_smiljkovic Good points! Thanks for sharing!
Steve Procter
a few people below said to do LTD's for a short period and stop. one said "...often people buying LTD are deal hunters. They might not be your target customer". Sorry, but anybody who gives me cash for my product is a perfect customer. I do caveat this with, your Saas product needing to have low ongoing overheads and high margin. But otherwise, I am not sure what people's specific reasons are for not doing LTD's longer term...?
Steve Procter
Do people have names of other LTD and launch platforms so we can build a list of them? So far I have these below. Some of these perhaps aren't necessarily for offering LTD's (like Producthunt?), but my opinion is a launch on them tied with an LTD offer is a good idea - I welcome opinions on this... https://appsumo.com/ https://www.kickstarter.com/ https://betalist.com/ https://saasmantra.com/ https://pitchground.com https://www.jvzoo.com/ https://www.producthunt.com/
Aleks Bochkov
@steveprocter Yes, sure. Good idea. Ping me, I would be happy to share!
Steve Procter
@bochkovaleks let's share any others in public so we can all benefit ;-)
Kit Fach
Like a lot of people have said I think it depends where you're at as a company, I think they are a great approach provided: 1. You need the cash and have a good marketing plan to implement once you get it. Including your tracking pixels set up so you can do remarketing. 2. You use one of the big ones. I know AppSumo takes a huge cut (around 70%) and their process is long to get approved BUT, I think the big advantage of somewhere like AppSumo is it gives your product exposure to a large audience, which along with their vetting process can give you valuable feedback, and either reaffirm your product or let you know you have made a big miscalculation with your potential customers. 3. You only run it for a limited time, I think after a certain time period you stop having new people stumble across your product and become a new customer, and instead have people come across your product elsewhere and then do a google search for a lifetime deal. 4. You have a plan to try and get those people onto a subscription plan down the road. I think the right way to do this is to beevery clear with the features included in the LTD and offer steep discounts to upgrade when you roll out major features. That way they still feel their getting value. 5. You have a good customer support system in place to quickly respond to issues. Getting Crisp was one of the best decisions my start-up made to be able to live chat with customers easily. I tend to think that most people on LTD sites are less likely to pay full price for anything so I'm less worried about losing a potential full-price sale to someone who finds me on a marketplace. I figure they probably wouldn't have been a customer if they hadn't found an LTD
Lifetime deal don't exist. They always end up disapering.
Jaskiran Kaur
Saas Lifetime Deals are great. Saas helps in managing the work much more efficiently and with less effort, having technical support right away without any stress new updations, etc My company develops Saas and our clients have liked them as we develop customizable Saas according to the business needs and if needed it right away we do make Readymade Software as well.