Lifetime License Option

Hello,

I'd like to sugest the creation of a lifetime home use license (for a higher price), which would permit the license owner to update the antivirus product forever. I think it would be good, because many user opt for a free antivirus product like avg or avast.

At some point they have/are still providing this option. more details here:

http://www.bitdefender.co.uk/support/Bitde...dition-905.html

Hi Diogo Rocha,

I think that could be kind of hard to implement and keep track of. When BD launched a Lifetime option for the software (approx. 1-1.5 years ago?) users were a little put of in some cases of not seeing the fine print of the license not being transferable to a new PC. I think it also mentioned it was a 5 year license (approx. lifespan of a PC), and thus not truly a lifetime license Needles to say, it didn't go over very well.

It may be to hard for BD to keep track of where their licenses are going and being used, for them to be able to allow that on a paid version, compared to maybe the free version?

I think it could be hard, but it's possible. A many other software vendors made that. Example: Getright, mIRC, Malwarebytes. They offer all the future upgrades, the license is linked with the person, and it's for home use. I think it should be better than offer an free antivirus version.

Nice follow up, as far as that brings up the area of, overhead, and why you probably don't see the top tier AV companies offering truly lifetime licenses. Those that you mentioned above, probably (do) have lower overhead in being smaller companies, and try to draw revenue from lifetime licenses (or donations) to help defray costs. They tend to be smaller, niche companies.

In the case of the bigger top tier companies which have higher overhead due to multiple headquarters over multiple continents, advertizing costs, those who are in the stock market and their shareholders expectations, analysis labs, constant updates, Cloud maintenance costs (MyBitdefender) yearly upgrades, etc, etc, make it prohibitive for a company to lose yearly income revenue to supply money for the above, that could never be compensated for with lifetime licenses. Bottom line, these bigger companies need the yearly, monthly new, or renewing subscribers, to keep the machine going, and profitable.

Just my take, for what it's worth