[sandofsky]

I'd be worried about the requirement to switch billing. I'm not sure there's a clean way to switch a customer from one billing system to another without requiring user intervention.

In general, recurring billing is a scam by its opt-out nature. If you aren't on top of your accounting, tiny charges slip by. When you spot them, you may be too lazy to immediately cancel it, so you forget.

It isn't enough to know how many users are billed, but how many users are active on the service and willing to jump through the hoops when they have to update their account.

Also, beyond the server requirements, consider the cost of a support infrastructure. It costs much less for 37signals to support one more project in their portfolio than for a new company to spin up a support team from scratch.

[rockarage]

> We’ve put Sortfolio on the clock: We either sell it by July 1, or we close it down.

I'm wondering, If you had $480,000, why not spend 10% of that to build an alternative, and release it on July 1. After all the customers are going to have to signup to a new payment system either way.

[g0su]

It's a customer challenge not a technical one.

[alex_g]

Because 37 Signals is more popular than you are.

[joshaidan]

So if 37 Signals is more popular than you, what value there in paying $480,000 for a site whose customers may not be interested in it after 37 Signals leaves?

[muhfuhkuh]

The brand value because of the 37 signals past cachet. The same reason brand x can be owned by random hedge fund company and people will still buy it.

[rockarage]

Exactly, so you should expect some customers will leave once there is a sale, perhaps a significant amount. And if there is no sale they will be closing shop on July 1, so 37signals won't compete with your product if you build an alternative.

[citricsquid]

I was auditing my finances last week and discovered in the last year I spent over $300 on a tenderapp.com subscription that I had forgotten about. I'm inclined to agree with you there, especially when the target sortfolio customers are businesses, $99/m is easy to forget about until you're asked to renew your details. I wonder if 37 Signals will publish information on how many of their $99/m paying customers (although at $99/m that's only about 200?) actually login and use the site every month, although maybe they'll disclose that to interested parties.

[pbreit]

Unless I hear differently, I would assume that the buyer gets the recurring billing account.