Subscriptions vs. One-Time Payments: The Math Might Surprise You

01 /The Concept

ONCE isn't a startup – it's a new product line from 37signals, the company that launched one of the first SaaS platforms ever: the project management tool Basecamp. As they put it: "In the early 2000s, we were among those who led the SaaS revolution. Now, 20 years later, we want to show you how to escape its results."

The ONCE manifesto, paraphrased:

Something went wrong with business software. You used to pay once, install it, and use it. You owned it – fully, genuinely.

Now software isn't a product you buy; it's a service you rent. You pay the same amount every month that you paid last month. Stop paying, and the lease terminates – the software stops working and your data disappears.

If you add up everything you've paid in subscription fees, you've long since paid enough to own the software outright.

The cloud model was convenient – partly because running and administering your own servers used to be genuinely hard. That's less true now. Security-conscious companies already self-host. And for everyone else, managed hosting with simple controls is available for very reasonable money.

So 37signals is announcing ONCE – a new line of business software:

- You pay once and get software you install on your own server – whether owned or rented from a cloud provider. Installation is a single command.

- You receive the source code, so you can see exactly what you're running – no hidden trackers, and the ability to modify it if you need to.

The first ONCE product is Campfire, a corporate chat that looks and works like Slack or Teams.

Campfire works as a primary team communication platform – but also fits several other use cases:

- A backup platform for when Slack or Teams goes down

- A separate, fully isolated chat for executives and/or the board – the most secure way to keep sensitive communications private

- A temporary chat channel for events: conferences, company meetups, all-hands meetings

Up to 250 simultaneous users: a server with 2 GB of RAM and 1 CPU is sufficient. Up to 5,000 simultaneous users: 32 GB RAM and a 16-core processor. Importantly, the license price doesn't scale with users – only your infrastructure costs do.

One license covers one domain.

There's no separate mobile app, but the developer says it's optimized for mobile web and works as a Progressive Web App in any mobile browser.

The license includes a basic level of support, though the developer notes they won't troubleshoot issues caused by custom configurations or modifications – which, to be fair, is basically the same support ceiling you get from most SaaS providers anyway.

Software updates are automatic by default, with a manual mode available if you prefer to control them. Within a generation (e.g., 1.0 to 1.1), updates are free. Upgrading to a new major version (e.g., 1.9 to 2.0) may cost money – but it's also optional.

The license price: $299, paid once.

02 /Why It Matters

Wait – if you're self-hosting anyway, why not just use open-source software, which is free by definition?

True, but only partly. Open-source developers of comparable tools tend to push users toward paid tiers quite aggressively.

For example, the "professional" tier of Mattermost – an open-source chat comparable to Campfire in functionality – costs $10 per user per month, even when self-hosted.

Campfire costs $299 once, with no per-user fee. Your only variable cost is hosting. And that will obviously be far cheaper than $10 per user – 250 users, remember, need just a single CPU and 2 GB of RAM.

One-time pricing still exists even at the big-player level. Microsoft still sells Office 2021 for $149.99 as a perpetual license, and Office 2024 was expected to follow the same model at roughly 10% higher. A lifetime license from Microsoft runs around two years' worth of subscription fees. A [recent review](/review/chem-obidnee-tem-vostrebovannee) covered ThriveCart, a cart optimization platform for e-commerce, which offers a lifetime license for roughly six months of equivalent subscription value – $495 once vs. $95/month.

Campfire's $299 price point feels like it lands in the same six-month-equivalent ballpark.

Charging only six months upfront when customers could theoretically pay forever sounds like leaving money on the table. But the math actually works in the developer's favor.

Here's why. B2B SaaS churn for small and medium businesses typically runs 2.5–5% per month on the good end – and many developers are quietly happy to reach 10% monthly churn. That puts average customer lifetime somewhere around 12 months.

And the churn isn't evenly distributed. The steepest drop-off happens in the first five months, where roughly 50% of paying customers leave.

So: charge six months upfront. If 50% of customers leave in the first six months – which is average – you've broken even compared to subscription revenue. If more than 50% leave early, you've actually come out ahead, because you already collected half a year's value from them on day one.

No billing hassles. No failed payments because a card expired. No waiting six months for revenue to accumulate – instead, cash arrives immediately and in larger lumps. Which means more budget for acquisition, with a faster payback on every dollar spent.

Meanwhile, the customer feels like they're getting a great deal – paying once for something they genuinely intend to keep using forever. And intended to pay for in monthly installments, at a rate that would only grow as more employees joined the platform.

In reality, the companies that survive, grow, and continue wanting the same tool are genuinely getting a great deal. But those companies are, by definition, the minority.

And even loyal long-term customers will periodically pay for major version upgrades. So the developer retains a monetization path with their best customers.

03 /Opportunities

As it turns out, the one-time payment model isn't a bad deal at all. For services with high early-month churn, it's actually quite good.

Better yet, you can position it as a user-first move – easier marketing, real competitive differentiation versus comparable subscription services.

The obvious objection: what does the developer live on after collecting all the upfront payments?

But that's not the threat it looks like. New companies are founded every year, and they need fresh licenses. About 5.5 million new businesses register in the US annually – more than enough to sustain a steady stream of new customers.

So the direction worth considering: revisiting your own product's business model in the direction of one-time payment instead of subscription.

This can also be combined with building a product suite for a specific audience – one that shares a useful common property. Like The Mobile-First Company from [yesterday's review](/review/strjomno-delat-stavku-tolko-na-odin-produkt), which decided to build a suite of mobile apps for small businesses.

One underexplored angle: targeting B2B software categories with a known churn problem, where customers would gladly pay a larger sum upfront to avoid the administrative burden of recurring billing, contract renewals, and vendor lock-in reviews. The pitch writes itself – and the unit economics, as the analysis above shows, may actually work in the developer's favor.