My seating planner software program, PerfectTablePlan, is now at v7. Main upgrades are paid (discounted 60% in comparison with new licences), which suggests I’ve carried out 6 cycles of paid upgrades. I used to be interested by how lengthy it took folks to improve, and what number of gross sales are upgrades. So I took a couple of minutes to crunch the numbers direct from my licence key database, utilizing my knowledge wrangling software program, Straightforward Information Remodel.
Listed here are the variety of improve licences I offered for every week after the foremost improve. Every launch is in a distinct color. The values are normalised in order that the height is identical peak for every launch:
That appears somewhat messy. So right here it’s with the values for the 6 upgrades summed:
There’s a lengthy tail of upgrades. Even when the hole between releases was 6 years, I used to be nonetheless getting common improve purchases.
With the v5 to v6 improve it took:
- 23 weeks earlier than 50% of the upgrades had been offered.
- 74 weeks earlier than 75% of the upgrades had been offered.
So it isn’t a neat exponential decay.
This desk exhibits what number of customers truly upgraded from v5 to v6:
| Version | Upgraded |
| House version | 12% |
| Superior version | 31% |
| Skilled version | 45% |
Many of the House version purchasers are shopping for a licence for a one-off occasion, akin to a marriage. So it’s not shocking that they’re much much less more likely to improve. However I feel it additionally exhibits that much less price-sensitive clients are considerably extra more likely to improve, even when the improve is costlier.
This graph present the share of PerfectTablePlan licences offered every month that had been upgrades, over the 20 yr lifetime of the product:
You may see that upgrades are nonetheless more and more necessary over time. Upgrades are price lower than new gross sales, so promoting 80% improve licences in a month doesn’t imply 80% of income is from upgrades. Nevertheless, upgrades are nonetheless an more and more important income for us. I’m glad I by no means conform to free upgrades for all times.
May I’ve made extra gross sales with extra frequent main upgrades? Positively. However I used to be additionally engaged on different initiatives. And I’m not out to squeeze each final penny out of my loyal clients.
May I’ve made extra gross sales with a subscription mannequin? Probably. However subscriptions weren’t actually a factor for desktop software program, once I began 20 years in the past. And I by no means felt like making a significant change to a licensing mannequin that had labored properly for me, to this point.
