Technology

You got lucky. Companies can, and frequently do, either completely go under after a few years, or revamp their service, shutting down the old one, and saying "This is a NEW service. It requires a NEW lifetime membership."

Unless it's protected by a legal definition, the only thing between your lifetime membership and getting nothing at all is the good will of a company that does not care after they already have your money.

Even if they ARE an "honorable" company, and I use that term loosely, the moment someone buys them, they have absolutely no obligation to honor lifetime memberships. Most EULAs for lifetime memberships give the company total discretion to shut it down at any time for any reason.

Beyond that, $750 seems a LOT like a "kill the golden goose to get the eggs" move. Would look GREAT on a quarterly report of revenue, coming with huge executive bonuses, before selling and getting out, and letting someone else manage running the infrastructure on reduced revenue.

Bottom line? The lifetime membership MIGHT work out, but it's a GAMBLE. It's a gamble that you get in early enough to get your value out before the marks in a ledger indicate it's not worth providing anything for you anymore. Meanwhile, doing the Open Source solution is free now, free forever, and has NO gambling component.