Founders keep 90%. Buyers see real metrics. Lifetime pricing doesn't kill good products. The honest alternative to lifetime-deal sites that take 70%, demand the lowest price you'll ever charge, and disappear when founders burn out.
~40% of lifetime deals shut down within three years. Not because the founders were lazy — because the math does not work. You can't take one $49 payment from a customer who'll cost you $200/year in API fees and infrastructure forever.
Meanwhile, the platforms take 70% of every sale, demand the cheapest price the founder will ever offer, and walk away when the company collapses. The buyer is stuck. The founder is broke. The platform takes the next 70%.
FairDeal is the simple inversion: founders keep 90%. Buyers get annual founding-member pricing instead of suicide-pact lifetime deals. Both sides see real metrics — MRR direction, churn, last commit, last update — before any money moves.
It's not radical. It's just honest.
Locked in the bylaws. If we ever raise it, founders can leave with their customer lists.
The longest discount we'll allow is 3-year founding-member rates. Long enough to be a great deal. Short enough not to bankrupt anyone.
Every listed product publishes MRR direction, active users, last release date, and founder activity. Buyers see what they're buying into.
Founders own their customer data and email list. Leave anytime. Take everything.
The platform doesn't compete with sellers. Period.
Ranking is by transparent metrics: revenue growth, customer rating, founder responsiveness. Money doesn't move you up.
Before a buyer clicks Pay, they see this. Founders agree to publish these metrics — automatically pulled from Stripe, GitHub, and Intercom — as the price of being listed.
Compare this to: "Tier 4 Plus — limited stock, ends soon." That's what we replace.
I built this because I'm a working publisher and indie maker. I've watched founders I respect destroy their own businesses by accepting lifetime-deal terms that no math can ever rescue. I've watched buyers — many of them indie authors, small agencies, side-hustlers — pay $49 for tools that died inside a year.
The marketplace doesn't have to work this way. The platform fee can be 10% instead of 70%. The metrics can be public instead of hidden. The pricing can be a great deal without being a death sentence. We just have to choose it.
I'm building this whether 10 founders join or 10,000. If you've been burned — as a maker or a buyer — get on the waitlist. We'll keep it honest.
Early founders get featured placement at launch. Early buyers get the first founding-member offers. Both sides shape the platform — we're building this in public.