First of all, thank you for such a thoughtful and understanding message. It genuinely means a lot, especially during a difficult transition like this.

You are absolutely right that the platform itself still has strong potential, and over the past months I personally invested a huge amount of time, money, and energy trying to push Airloupe forward. Unfortunately, the way the original lifetime deals were structured before I acquired the platform created a situation where the long-term operational costs became extremely difficult to sustain as the service continued to grow. Storage, bandwidth, video delivery, infrastructure, support, and development costs all keep increasing over time, and climbing that mountain while honoring extremely generous LTD terms proved harder than expected.

I would not personally call it a “disaster,” but rather a very difficult business reality that many SaaS products eventually run into with unlimited or heavily underpriced lifetime deals. A less generous LTD structure may have been sustainable, and honestly, self-hosted/open-source solutions are indeed a golden solution for many creators who want full long-term control over costs and infrastructure.

That said, I still wanted to do the right thing for the community, which is why I chose to work directly with AppSumo so users could recover their investment. In the real world of startups and angel investments, money is often never recovered at all once a project struggles financially, so I felt this was the fairest path possible under the circumstances.

Also, if you do end up building your own platform or project someday, I’d genuinely love to see it happen. People who understand both the technical and operational realities behind these services quickly realize how challenging this space actually is.

Thank you again for the fair review, the understanding, and for giving Airloupe a chance in the first place. I truly appreciate it and wish you the very best moving forward.