Why do I need to renew my license every year?

In some marketplaces, you can pay a single price, say $50, and you'll keep getting software updates forever. Unfortunately, this is just not a sustainable business model for a software product. The first few years are fine, but beyond that it gets a little scary. For example:

Year 1: $1000 in sales, I'm supporting 20 people — per customer value: $50
Year 2: $1000 in sales, supporting 40 people (20 new + 20 previous) — per customer value: $25
...
Year 5: $1000 in sales, supporting 100 people (20 new + 80 previous) — per customer value: $10
...
Year 10: $1000 in sales, supporting 200 people (20 new + 180 previous) — per customer value: $5

This of course fluctuates, but what it shows is that even if I sell the same amount of licenses per year, the support and need for updates (bug fixes and features) grows to the point that the cost to manage those is just not sustainable. This shows it happening after 5 years, but it can happen much more quickly depending on many variables.

TLDR; License renewals pay for the ongoing updates and support. If sales slow down, the idea is that with this modal, I can depend on the renewals to keep things moving in the right direction. Isn't that what we all want? :)

Please Remember: License renewals are required for continued updates and support, but if you're happy with the current version of the plugin when your renewal time comes up, you can just keep using it forever and not have to renew. If an update comes out that you have to have, or you need technical support, you can renew at a later date.