Buy once, use forever A directory of one-time purchase software

As others have also expressed, a lot of the software here doesn't really live up to the what most people mean by 'one-time purchase'.

Screen Studio: $9/month vs $220 "one-time purchase" with only one year of support.

Sizzy browser: $12/month or $499 one-time purchase.

Then you often have a one device limit - I can't be two places at once but I do have both a laptop and desktop machine.

Who in their sane mind would choose these? Note that the problem with "one-year of updates" is not that you'd want free access to a newer major version of the app, but a year+ is enough time to have a new OS version make your app unusable or subject to security updates. While companies in the before times would quickly release a patch to keep their old users happy, the one-year term just ensures you'll be left hanging.

This is just paying lip service to the idea of a one-time purchase.

It used to be that one time purchase never came with any updates and a new version came out for the same price the next year. I’m all for pushing back on subscriptions, but the expectation that users should get indefinite support without paying for it is silly.

QCAD uses this pricing model. I bought QCAD once over ten years ago. Since then I've bought it a couple more times to get some new feature, but even the original binaries I downloaded over a decade ago work fine on my modern linux/windows installs.

I'm not sure which operating system is obsoleting all your software on a yearly basis, but it doesn't sound like a very stable computing environment.

Regarding Screen: Agreed.

Originally I was going to say that's not what I'd assume "Support" to mean (Personally, I would differentiate between patches/updates and support, as in, customer support), however, we should point out that in their own words, on Screen Studio's own site, the fine print under "Pay Once" Says:

> Renew to get the latest updates or keep using the version you have forever.

So indeed, that's disingenuous in my opinion as a "one time purchase" option for the reasons you point out.

Sizzy however states:

> The lifetime plan includes all future updates

So I would think that passes the muster of "one time purchase", not just paying lip service.

Broad picture, I think you bring up an important distinction regarding "one-time purchases" and the expectations therein.

I mentioned that in my comment. You wouldn’t get new versions, but in case of security or compatibility patches you could download them for free to keep running your old version, not just for one year.