Free Upgrades For Life

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!