PlanSwift killed its "lifetime" licenses. Here's what owners should do.

What actually happened

For most of its life, PlanSwift sold what it called perpetual or "lifetime" licenses: pay once, use the software indefinitely. Thousands of estimators built their workflow on that promise. In 2025, the promise was withdrawn — perpetual licenses were revoked, and users who had paid for lifetime access were told to move to an annual subscription (now $2,000/yr list, July 2026) or lose access to the software they thought they owned.

The reaction was what you'd expect. An April 2025 review on Capterra is titled, verbatim, "Bait & switch scammers." That's a customer who paid for a product describing the vendor that sold it to them.

And this wasn't an isolated event. Bluebeam killed perpetual sales in September 2023 and its last perpetual version, Revu 20, reaches end-of-life this December. Drawboard converted its paid PDF apps to subscriptions and generated the same backlash. There is a pattern here, and it's worth naming: in construction software, "you own it" has quietly become a revocable claim — unless the license contract says otherwise.

Why this matters beyond PlanSwift

An estimating tool isn't an app you can casually swap. Your assemblies, your item costs, your muscle memory, and years of archived takeoffs live inside it. That switching cost is precisely what makes a forced conversion work: the vendor is betting that re-buying is cheaper for you than rebuilding. Every time that bet pays off, the next vendor is more tempted to make it.

The defense isn't cynicism — it's contract language. Which brings us to the practical part.

What to demand from any vendor before you buy "perpetual"

If a vendor offers a perpetual license, ask these questions in writing and keep the answers:

• Is the license grant irrevocable? The word "perpetual" alone only describes duration. You want "perpetual, irrevocable" in the grant clause — otherwise the vendor may argue it can terminate the license at will.
• What exactly stops if I never pay maintenance? Acceptable answer: updates and support stop, the software keeps working. Unacceptable: the software deactivates, or "core functionality" gets redefined later.
• Does the app phone home to stay activated? If a license server must approve every launch, your perpetual license is only as durable as the vendor's willingness to keep that server answering. Ask what happens if the company shuts down or is acquired.
• Can the terms be changed unilaterally? Look for clauses letting the vendor "update these terms at any time." For a subscription that's annoying; for a perpetual license it's a trapdoor.
• Can I get my data out? Takeoffs, assemblies, and estimates should export to open formats (Excel/CSV at minimum) so the license question never becomes a hostage situation.
• Will you put it in the order form? Marketing pages change. An order form or license agreement with the irrevocability language survives the vendor's next pricing strategy meeting.

The alternatives, priced honestly

If the revocation was your last straw, here's the field — all vendor list pricing, verified July 2026:

Notice the column that matters for this article: of every serious takeoff tool on the market, exactly one still sells ownership. Head-to-head details are on our PlanSwift comparison page, and the broader field is covered in our alternatives roundup.

Why we still sell perpetual — and put no-revocation in writing

Groundwork Takeoff's perpetual license is $2,500 per seat, one time. Maintenance is $295/yr and genuinely optional: skip it and you keep the version you have, fully working, forever — you just don't get new updates until you resume. The license grant is perpetual and irrevocable, and we put that language in the order form, because after 2023 and 2025 we understand why nobody takes a marketing page's word for it.

Why commit to this when the rest of the industry ran the other way? Partly conviction — an estimator's tool should be an asset, not a lease. Partly cold business logic: the subscription-conversion play only pays off once, and it costs the vendor its reputation permanently. Ask PlanSwift's Capterra page how that trade is going. We'd rather charge $2,500 and still be recommendable in ten years.

And if you prefer subscription flexibility anyway, that exists too — $95/seat/mo or $950/seat/yr, with crew discounts at 3+ and 5+ seats. The point isn't which billing model you pick; it's that the choice is yours and stays yours. Full pricing is public, no quote call required.

Moving a PlanSwift workflow

Practical footnote for anyone switching: your plans are PDFs, so they open anywhere. The real migration work is rebuilding assemblies and cost items. Groundwork's assemblies carry material, labor, and waste per item and feed a live estimate grid as you measure, so most teams rebuild their top templates in an afternoon and fill in the long tail as bids come up. The 14-day trial is long enough to run a real bid end-to-end before any money changes hands.