[quote name='parodius420' timestamp='1438810119' post='225797']
Thats what I have been making about a year on the site =P
[/quote]
Your site only brings $385 per year in profit? Or am I misunderstanding?
To maybe simplify the difference between lifetime and subscription licenses.
When you buy a lifetime license you get a license to use that version of the cart forever. When you make this purchase, you also get one year of upgrades included in the initial purchase. For upgrades beyond one year, you need to prolongate (interesting word) the upgrade portion of your license on an annual basis. To get the addons included in the subscription product, you need to purchase them separately. It seems that there is NO lifetime license for these products but rather these are subscriptions (right to use the service for a year). Not sure what happens when those subscriptions expire. I would guess your access to the service is then denied.
For a subscription product you are basically leasing the product for a year including some additional addons. If you stop paying the annual rate, I would assume your store becomes inoperative (like storefront is forced to catalog mode and backend changes are denied).
Seems like cs-cart should just offer their addons not included in the base product in the marketplace just like other products. However, if they are truly subscription services, then a separate marketplace area needs to be provided for “subscriptions” versus “addons”. That would make it clear to everyone what they are buying.
Triplets:
[quote]A U.S. company would never get away calling this a lifetime license if upgrades are not included.[/quote]
Sure they would. Commercial software products are purchased at a version. You then usually pay about 20% of that up-front cost annually as a “maintenance contract” which includes support and possibly upgrades. If you stop paying “maintenance contract” then your software is frozen at the version it is at and your support ceases without paying “per incident”. If you purchase without a “maintenance contract” then you just get that version of the software licensed to use for as long as you want. And there will come a time when a version of a product is no longer supported nor works properly in the changing world we live in.
Thanks for explaining that. In most cases a lifetime license means that all upgrade fees are included. So the term is confusing in that regard.
[quote name='kingsleypress' timestamp='1438812814' post='225800']
Your site only brings $385 per year in profit? Or am I misunderstanding?
[/quote]
A lot of people run small sites and are happy for a very small income to go towards their full salery from elsewhere. For those people perhaps their profit per year is say $4,000 so that mean their shopping cart licence takes about %10 off that. These are the people cscart will be losing. I cart doesn't make me a living, I already know I won't pay for anything so when the current version become unsecure or obsolete I'll just move to another cart.
Often it's a business decision, I've been on lots of these shopping cart forums and I'm amazed how many people spend their time updating their cart while they should be getting people to their cart. A lot of the people make very little and then when their spent a fourtune on addons and extra only then do they start asking “how can I get more sales”. It's back to front, get the sales to justify the investment, I can't justify it.
[quote name='kickoff3pm' timestamp='1438959912' post='226022']
A lot of people run small sites and are happy for a very small income to go towards their full salery from elsewhere.
[/quote]
Yes, I totally get that. I also work a full time job and operate my online store in my spare time. But at those profit levels I can assure you I'd be looking at spending my time on something else.
Also, the $385 isn't a yearly thing. It's a one-time expense. The updates are $110/year if you want to keep current.
[quote name='kingsleypress' timestamp='1438961447' post='226024']
Yes, I totally get that. I also work a full time job and operate my online store in my spare time. But at those profit levels I can assure you I'd be looking at spending my time on something else.
Also, the $385 isn't a yearly thing. It's a one-time expense. The updates are $110/year if you want to keep current.
[/quote]
Well it all adds up, if you want a decent site and to be honest I don't see the value now in this shopping cart. I don't see why I should pay extra each year to fix some bugs and get back some different bugs. To be frank I wish I hadn't had to move from cscommerce. It may not have had fancy features but it had the features I needed and worked well for me. This has become a bind and annoying at times when it can't do simple things like tiered packages.
I have times when I get frustrated with it and start researching alternatives. I’ve done that two or three times since I first adopted CS-Cart back in 2009. But each time research the alternatives, I always come back thinking CS-Cart is not so bad after all. 
[size=4]kickoff3pm…
Maybe the Free version might suit you. It doesn't have all the bells and whistles but the
'number of items listed' restriction appears to have been removed.[/size]
Maybe it was never there and I got it mixed up with the Merchium free version…lol
[size=4]YOIKS…[/size]
[size=4]I became curious about Cscommerce and went to pay a visit.[/size]
[size=4]Google popped up this…[/size]
[color=#212121][font=Roboto,]“This site may be hacked”[/font][/color]
[quote name='termalert' timestamp='1438990601' post='226052']
[size=4]kickoff3pm…
Maybe the Free version might suit you. It doesn't have all the bells and whistles but the
'number of items listed' restriction appears to have been removed.[/size]
Maybe it was never there and I got it mixed up with the Merchium free version…lol
[size=4]YOIKS…[/size]
[size=4]I became curious about Cscommerce and went to pay a visit.[/size]
[size=4]Google popped up this…[/size]
[color=#212121][font=Roboto,]“This site may be hacked”[/font][/color]
[/quote]
Cscommerce was perhaps the first open source cart to be worth bothing with. But I think development stopped a few days ago. Eventhough you still see site using it or a flavour of it today. It's very versatile and easy to code so loads of FREE addons. I don't need the free version as I have a licence just won't do the updates now. The are plenty of carts out there, this one is fine for large shops with plenty of profit.
On the upside kickoff3pm…
A few years down the track CS-Cart may have a stable version with bells
and whistles right up your alley plus a great upgrade centre.
All you would need is $160.00 and you could update to the latest version.