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Discontinued in 2010, still earning millions
Keeping old versions running
Most software companies force every customer onto each new version. 37signals kept its old versions running instead, because a customer who bought something that did the job often feels control slipping away when a new release arrives and there is something new to learn.
Where the profit comes from
The 2004 version costs almost nothing to keep alive. There is no new development, only a little maintenance to keep it secure, so nearly all of its revenue is profit. People who have used a discontinued product for 16 years rarely ask for help, because they already know how it works.
Some of them started around 2008 and have never seen a single feature added since, and they still love it.
Highrise and the promise
The same promise covers Highrise, a customer relationship tool that became the company's second biggest hit after Basecamp. The founders stopped using it themselves and moved on, but it still runs as a multi-million dollar business for a core of happy users, frozen and finished. The plan is to keep every product running until the end of the internet or until the company closes, whichever comes first.
Why does old software cost so little to run?
Software does not wear out the way machines do, and copying it costs almost nothing. Once development stops, the main expenses are servers, hosting, and a small amount of maintenance. Those costs stay roughly flat while revenue keeps coming in, so most of it falls through to profit. Economists call the expense of making one more copy of a product its marginal cost, and for software it is close to zero.
Why do users resist new software versions?
Learning a new interface costs time, and that cost falls on the user whether or not the new version is better. Economists call this a switching cost. Researchers William Samuelson and Richard Zeckhauser described a bias toward the status quo in a 1988 paper, finding that people often stick with a current option even when alternatives are as good. Repeated use also builds muscle memory, which a redesign erases.
How does old software stay secure?
A web application depends on libraries, language runtimes, and servers that keep receiving security patches. Keeping an old product safe means updating those pieces and testing that the product still works, without changing what users see. Researchers keep finding new vulnerabilities in old code, which is why unmaintained software eventually becomes unsafe. The Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures list, started in 1999, catalogs known flaws by identifier.
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