

When buying software outright, most companies also provide minor bug fixes and security updates at no additional charge, and a company as big as Microsoft is certainly no exception. It doesn’t have an expiry date, and you will be able to continue to use what you’ve purchased for as long as you like. “Lifetime” or “perpetual” software licenses simply mean that the version of the software you buy will not arbitrarily stop working. Join a book-of-the-month club, you get every new book that comes out in the club. That’s seldom the case when making one-time purchases of anything. While paying a monthly subscription fee for software can get pricey, one of the major selling points is that you’re almost always guaranteed to get all future version upgrades included. Q: What is a “Lifetime” License? If this works “forever” does that mean every future upgrade is free? What happens when Office 2024, or Office 2030 comes along?

In this era when most software is now sold by subscription, it’s easy to get confused by exactly what it actually means to buy a software license, but thankfully it’s still possible to pay once for your software and have it continue working indefinitely without the need to pay another single cent.
