The subscription trap is real I read recently about people paying hundreds of pounds to cancel subscriptions they'd forgotten about. One person mentioned £500. That stuck with me not because it's shocking, but because it's completely predictable. Someone signed up for something, got value once or twice, then the company made it harder to leave than to stay. That's not a business model. That's predatory. And if you're thinking about adding subscriptions to what you do, you need to know the difference. I've sat with people running their own thing who think subscriptions are the answer because the venture capital world treats recurring revenue like oxygen. Investors love it. The metrics look clean. But metrics don't tell you whether your customers actually want what you're selling on a recurring basis, or whether they're just trapped. When subscriptions actually work Subscriptions work when there's a genuine, repeating need. SaaS tools work because you use them constantly. Gym memberships work because you go back. Software subscriptions work because the software updates and improves. The customer gets value multiple times, and the company gets predictable income. What doesn't work is pretending there's a repeating need when there isn't one. I've watched people try to sell subscriptions for things that solve a one-time problem. A design template. A course. A guide. They slap "monthly access" on it and wonder why people cancel after 30 days. The brutal truth is this: if your customers would only naturally come back 1.5 times per year, a subscription model will make them resent you. They'll feel trapped. They'll forget to cancel and feel ripped off. You'll spend more time managing cancellations and complaints than you would have spent on one-off transactions. The real questions to ask yourself Before you build a subscription model, answer these properly. Not what you hope is true. What's actually true. First: how often would a customer naturally use or need what you're offering? Not how often do you want them to. How often would they actually want to come back? If the honest answer is "once or twice a year", subscriptions aren't your model. If it's "multiple times a week" or "whenever they need it and they need it regularly", you're in the right territory. Second: what happens if you don't offer subscriptions? Can you survive on one-off sales? If the answer is yes, be honest about that. You might not need subscriptions at all. You might just need to get better at selling to the same people multiple times through different products. That's harder work, but it's more honest. Third: are you adding real ongoing value? Or are you just locking people in? There's a difference between "you get new features every month" and "you get access to the same thing you got last month". One creates loyalty. One creates resentment. Fourth: can you actually deliver on the promise? I've seen people launch subscriptions without thinking through the operational side. Customer support costs spike. Refund requests increase. You end up spending 60% of your time managing the subscription infrastructure instead of building the product. The economics matter more than the model Here's what I think most people get wrong: they focus on the subscription model and ignore the unit economics underneath it. Let's say you sell a product for £200 one time. You acquire a customer for £50 in marketing costs. You make £150 profit per customer, minus your time and operational costs. If you acquire 50 customers a year, that's £7,500 in gross profit. Now you try subscriptions at £25 per month. You need 8 customers to stay subscribed for a year just to match one £200 sale. But your churn will likely be 40 to 50% monthly. So you need to acquire 16 customers to keep 8 paying. At £50 per acquisition, that's £800 in customer acquisition costs to replace the ones who leave. For 8 customers paying £25, that's £2,400 in annual revenue. Minus the acquisition costs, your margins look different. I'm not saying subscriptions don't work mathematically. They do, if the numbers are right. But most people don't do the maths. They just see "recurring revenue" and think it's better. What you should actually be asking Do your customers come back naturally? Not because they're forced to, but because they want to? If yes, a subscription model might make sense. It simplifies the transaction and gives you predictable income. If no, don't do it. Sell them something once. Sell them something different later. Build a business on genuine repeat customers, not on making it annoying to leave. The strongest businesses I've worked with don't rely on subscription lock-in. They rely on being so good that people come back. That's harder to build. It takes longer. But it means your customers actually want to pay you, not that they forgot to cancel. What to do this week Monday: Write down honestly how often your customers would naturally use what you offer if there was no subscription model. No wishful thinking. What's the real number? Wednesday: Map out the unit economics. How many customers do you need to acquire each month to maintain a subscription base at your expected churn rate? Does that number work with your current marketing costs? Friday: If you're still considering it, talk to five of your best existing customers. Ask them straight: would you pay a monthly fee for this, or would you rather pay once when you need it? Listen to what they actually say, not what you hope they say.