← All postsBlog

How to structure a lifetime deal without breaking your business

· Avery NXR

Most lifetime deals fail because founders underprice the future.

They discount the tool, ignore the ongoing cost, and end up delivering forever-support to customers who paid once.

Here's how we structured our AppSumo LTD to avoid this trap.

The failure pattern

The default founder mistake with LTDs:

  1. Discount current pricing steeply (70-90% off)
  2. Give lifetime access to current product
  3. Promise all future feature updates
  4. Provide standard support forever
  5. Underestimate ongoing cost per customer

Do this and you're building a portfolio of forever-negative-margin customers. The more successful the LTD launch, the worse the future looks.

We're not doing this.

What ongoing cost actually looks like

Every customer, even at "free," costs you something. For a typical SaaS tool:

Per customer per year:

  • Software distribution + updates: ~$5-10
  • License validation infrastructure: ~$2-5
  • Support tickets (2-4 per year avg): ~$40-80
  • Documentation maintenance: ~$5-10
  • Data storage (if any): ~$5-30
  • Payment processing (for subscription renewals): $0 for LTD
  • Marketing/community: ~$5-15
  • Total ongoing: ~$62-150 per customer per year

For a lifetime customer over 10 years: $620-$1,500 total cost.

If your LTD nets you $50 after AppSumo's 30%, you're 10-30x underwater.

How Avery's architecture helps

Our situation is unusual because of local-first architecture:

  • No compute cost per user. Inference runs on their laptop. Our compute bill doesn't scale with their usage.
  • No storage cost per user. Their agents + data live on their machine.
  • No API pass-through cost. Consult Mode uses THEIR key, not ours.
  • Standard support costs remain. Still real, but manageable.

Our ongoing cost per customer per year is closer to $15-30, not $60-150.

Over 10 years: $150-$300 lifetime cost per customer.

At $59 LTD → $41 to us after AppSumo cut → we're still slightly underwater on the cheapest tier.

The higher tiers ($149, $299, $599) are meaningfully profitable at 10-year LTV.

The metering decision

Even with low ongoing cost, some usage patterns can turn a customer negative.

Example: a heavy Consult Mode user (BYOK, so they pay OpenAI directly) might generate:

  • 20 support tickets in Year 1 (they're pushing edge cases)
  • 5+ feature requests
  • Frequent forum activity

We can't stop them from doing this. But we can bound expectations at time of sale.

Our Avery Creator LTD tiers are metered:

Tier 1 ($59):

  • 1 user
  • 50 AI runs/day (local)
  • 5 agents active
  • 5GB storage
  • Community support

Tier 2 ($149):

  • 5 users
  • 200 AI runs/day
  • Unlimited workflows
  • MCP + Consult Mode
  • Email support (48-hr SLA)

Tier 3 ($299):

  • 15 users
  • Unlimited agents
  • API access
  • Automation triggers
  • Priority support (24-hr SLA)

Metering keeps power users from becoming a support burden. If they need more, they upgrade to Pro subscription.

The "future updates" clause

Most LTDs promise "lifetime access to all future features."

That's a trap. If we build enterprise-only features later (SSO, on-prem, advanced compliance), we don't want to give them free to LTD buyers.

Our LTD terms:

  • Lifetime access to Avery Creator tier (specific SKU)
  • All Creator-tier updates included
  • Pro / Enterprise features NOT included (available for upgrade)

Buyer knows what they're getting. We know what we're committing to.

Clear separation of SKUs = clear separation of commitments.

The support commitment

We're offering:

  • 48-hour email support SLA (Tier 1)
  • 24-hour SLA (Tier 3)
  • Community-driven help via Discord (all tiers)
  • Documentation + tutorials
  • Monthly office hours

We're NOT offering:

  • 24/7 chat support
  • Phone support
  • Custom onboarding
  • Named account manager

These stay Pro/Enterprise-only. Communicated clearly at time of sale.

The refund policy

AppSumo's standard 60-day money-back guarantee. We honor it fully.

Beyond 60 days, all sales final. Reason: after 60 days, buyer has had meaningful time to use the product. Refunds after that would create adverse selection (buyers who realize they don't use it but want refund on lifetime access).

Our published refund policy is one page long. Written in plain language. No fine print.

The upgrade path

Every LTD tier has clear upgrade paths:

  • Tier 1 → Tier 2: Pay difference ($90) once. Instant upgrade.
  • Tier 2 → Tier 3: Pay difference ($150) once. Instant upgrade.
  • Any tier → Avery Pro subscription: Monthly subscription. Retain LTD as legacy feature.
  • Avery Pro → Enterprise: Standard enterprise contract.

The upgrade path is where LTD revenue turns into growth. Users who love the tool naturally scale up. We priced for this.

What we're not doing

Some LTD structures we deliberately avoided:

Not stacking codes. Some deals let buyers purchase multiple codes to stack tier benefits. We don't. Each purchase is one tier, one user pool.

Not selling top tier only. Some sellers put only the enterprise-adjacent tier on AppSumo to filter buyers. We include four tiers so genuine solo operators can enter at $59.

Not adding hidden costs. No "AI credit top-ups" required. No forced upgrades to unlock features. Tier features are all listed at purchase.

Not "AppSumo exclusive" features. We're not adding LTD-only capabilities to make the deal seem special. LTD is a pricing structure, not a special product edition.

For founders structuring their first LTD

Five principles:

  1. Model your 10-year cost per customer. If your cost is > your net revenue, you're building a negative flywheel.

  2. Bound expectations at purchase. What's included, what's not, what usage is metered. In plain language.

  3. Create a separate SKU. Don't sell your main product at discount. Create a bounded LTD-appropriate SKU.

  4. Design metering that protects unit economics. If usage patterns can vary 100x, meter something.

  5. Have a clear upgrade path. LTD should be an entry point, not a ceiling.

We're launching Week 12. If we get this right, the LTD launch becomes a customer acquisition engine that funds our Q1 2027 product investment.

If we get it wrong, we've saddled ourselves with forever-negative-margin customers.

The structure matters more than the launch.

→ avery.software — LTD live Week 12.