7 Signs You Are Using End-of-Life Software.

7 Signs That You Are Using End-Of-Life QMS Software...

...Why You Should Be Concerned, and What to Do About It

Regulatory compliance is mission-critical, and the tools you use to manage it must be modern, reliable, and actively supported. Unfortunately, many Quality Managers, Lab Directors, and Founders are unknowingly relying on end-of-life (EOL) software that is no longer fit for purpose. Here are the 7 warning signs—and what you should do about it.

But before we dive in, let's first answer some important questions:

What is EOL software?

In the software business, a software solution is considered EOL when it is determined to no longer be a strategic growth priority for the organization.  This can occur for a variety of reasons, but usually it is done simply to prioritize the business' limited resources towards focused strategies that have been deemed more fruitful.  When the decision is made, the resources are stripped away from that product line and its operations are set to the lowest possible cost.

What types of companies EOL software?

The older a business is, the more likely its solutions are able to experience the entire life cycle of a product.  And usually, you will see more EOL activities occurring in businesses whose growth strategy significantly centers around acquisitions of other solutions.  Because these businesses are using their available capital to purchase other businesses, they are not significantly investing in innovation, improvements, or future proofing of their products.  Instead, they treat products like players on a professional sports team.  After they buy them, they squeeze what they can out of them and then eventually replace them with a new model.

How could my software be EOL and I not know it?

Most products that reach EOL status have a significant number of legacy customers still using the product.  That means the product is still making significant recurring revenue for the business.  Even though they have chosen to no longer invest in that platform as a growth strategy for the business, they want to retain the existing revenue as long as possible until it slowly withers away over many years.  In this scenario, they are actually banking on the fact that you do not know they plan for the product to die.  As long as you don't know that the gig is up, maybe you will hold on to hope that things will eventually improve.  Their insurance is usually the simple fact that changing platforms is hard.  The longer you use the solution, with limited support, and limited improvements, the hook actually sinks deeper until you eventually go down with the ship.

If you don't want to be stuck in that position, here are some ways of diagnosing if you are on a sinking ship:

1. Product Updates Have Slowed or Stopped

What to Look For:

• No new features or even minor fixes have been released in over 6 months.
• You’re told “the system is stable” rather than “here’s what’s new.” 
  • If this has been your status for multiple years, you may already be nearing a cliff's edge.
• Be Cautious: Improvements to the user interface by changing branding or color schemes should not be confused with making investments. 
  • In old school software circles, there is a commonly used tactic of "Putting Lipstick on a Pig". 
  • Changing surface level things like look and feel tend to be the easiest ways to appear to make marketable changes for a very limited investment.

Why It’s a Problem:

Stagnant software can't keep pace with evolving compliance standards or security threats.  Even if a software stands still, the world around it does not.  This means that legacy software solutions have a fixed amount of maintenance required, regardless of the number of customers or associated revenue.  However, in these types of EOL models, maintenance costs are managed according to a fixed cost of operations that has nothing to do with the actual costs required.  This is a very familiar recipe for eventual failure because when resources are constrained the amount necessary for "Keeping the Lights on" the software will reach an irrecoverable state of obsoletism.  Your risk grows every day you continue to rely on EOL software.  The question comes down to if you trust that they would tell you if you have already passed the point of no return?  I wouldn't bet on it.

The Opposite Experience:

A high performing software company that is actively investing in its software is:

• Highly communicative with RoadMap planning.
• Delivering against the planned RoadMap in a reasonable timeframe (within 6-12 months).
• Prioritizing both improvements to existing functionality as well as delivering new and innovative options.
• Is engaging you for regular feedback rather than you giving it unsolicited.
• There are indications that releases and updates are occurring daily or weekly, rather than monthly or quarterly.

2. Support Quality is Declining

What to Look For:

• Support tickets take longer to resolve.
• Responses feel more like canned replies than real solutions.
• The support team lacks the necessary product knowledge to resolve your issue(s). 
• Red Flags:
  • Are there context clues that the personnel have been replaced or offshored? 
  • Does your support rep appear to be responsible for providing support to multiple products?

Why It’s a Problem:

Decreasing support quality often signals that internal resources are being redirected elsewhere—typically to a newer platform or product line.  Some organizations even establish low cost, off shored, EOL product support teams whose sole focus is supporting multiple EOL products.  

The Opposite Experience:

A high performing software company that is actively investing in its Support is:

• Hiring support personnel where you live.  The more they are invested in you, the more they are hiring where you live and work.
• Support personnel tend to be experts in their domains, whether that is a particular industry, product, module, etc.
• There are more issues being able to be resolved successfully at the Tier 1 level than being escalated to somebody that actually knows how to help.
• Focuses more on your experience and receiving sufficient guidance and service than closing out the case as fast as possible.
• When you leave negative feedback about an experience you had with Support, there is sufficient follow up to help rectify the situation and attempt to keep it from reoccurring.

3. Your Account Manager is Suggesting an Alternative, albeit Similar, Software.

What to Look For:

• Your vendor is encouraging you to “upgrade” to a separate platform, often with new pricing and a manual data migration process.
• The other platform appears to accommodate the same outcomes but may just look a bit newer.
• There is not a push button upgrade option, but rather a complete move from one platform to another.

Why It’s a Problem:

This isn’t an upgrade; it’s an abandonment. You're being funneled into a new system because the old one is effectively retired—without transparency or support for your transition.  Sometimes even good intentioned software companies will decide they need to rewrite or overhaul their products in order to provide the best possible future for their customers.  But data migration from one product to another is notoriously difficult and expensive.  Sometimes, the logic required to translate data from one system to another, can take just as much time as building a new product from scratch.  Because it is so difficult, building a clean and automated upgrade is typically not pursued if the product has already been determined to be EOL because it's a significant investment in, what's referred to as, "throw away code", or development time that can't be sold, via new features or modules, in the future.  What usually occurs is that they replace the development investment with manual services time that they try to sell back to you.  If they are already suggesting their own alternative, then it's too late.  If they are keeping it as an option, then you know they have chosen not to invest in the migration tooling required.  What's worse is that the only type of business that would take this approach, is almost guaranteed to repeat the behavior again in the next 3-5 years when the "Next Generation" solution becomes obsolete and there is a "Next Next Generation" solution they have acquired.

The Opposite Experience:

A high performing software company that is actively investing in its Commitments is:

• Continuing to evolve the product that you are already using.
• Doing the expensive work of major rewrites or migrations without you ever knowing.

4. The User Experience Feels Like an Afterthought

What to Look For:
Every time a new employee joins, it takes hours (or days) to train them on the system. Tasks that should be simple—like routing a document for review or pulling a report—require internal cheat sheets or vendor assistance. The interface feels cluttered, outdated, or outright confusing. You catch yourself saying, “It works… once you know how to work around it.”

When a product is EOL, most of the technical priority is applied to "Maintenance", or priorities that keep the platform running but don't necessarily make it better.  It should be noted that there is a big difference between User Interface (UI) updates in colors and looks vs. User Experience (UX) updates that evolve the solution to mimic the most intuitive use case of a user. 

Why It’s a Problem:
User experience isn’t just a design preference—it’s a critical factor for compliance and team performance. If your team avoids using the system, creates parallel workflows in spreadsheets or email, or constantly misuses features, then you have a quality system in name only.

And the more effort it takes to use the software, the harder it becomes to:

• Train new team members effectively.

• Sustain audit readiness.

• Maintain accurate and complete records.

• Ensure accountability across the quality lifecycle.

In fact, a 2023 Forrester study found that 52% of compliance software users report experiencing productivity loss due to poor usability—and 38% said it negatively impacted their ability to stay compliant.

Clunky UX also often signals deeper rot:

• Design investments have stopped.

• User feedback is ignored.

• The vendor is focused on retention, not growth.

All are hallmarks of an EOL solution.

The Opposite Experience:
Modern platforms invest in streamlined workflows, clear navigation, and interfaces designed for everyday users—not just power admins. You know you’re working with a forward-looking system when:

• Users can adopt it without formal training.

• Common tasks feel natural and consistent.

• There’s visual clarity, not visual clutter.

• Onboarding new team members takes hours, not weeks.

• You never hear “I just export to Excel because it’s easier.”

5. Critical Issues with Performance, Data Integrity, and Availability Last for Hours or Days, Instead of Seconds or Minutes

What to Look For:
You regularly experience slow page loads, random logouts, or periods of unavailability. Performance depends on specific browsers (often outdated ones), and you're told to “clear your cache” or use Internet Explorer (yes, still).

Why It’s a Problem:
This isn't just about user frustration—it’s a fundamental infrastructure failure. Systems that lag under normal conditions are unlikely to withstand audit pressure, sudden user spikes, or compliance incident responses.

• In a Datadog 2023 report, organizations with high-performing systems had error rates below 0.01% and average response times under 250ms.

• In contrast, systems without modern cloud infrastructure saw up to 12x slower response times and significantly more outages.

And Downtime Isn't Just Annoying:
According to the Ponemon Institute, the average cost of an unplanned outage in regulated industries is $9,000 per minute—and most take more than 2 hours to resolve.

Poor uptime can also impact:

• Data trustworthiness: errors during save/load cycles corrupt records.

• Audit preparedness: if you can’t retrieve documentation instantly, you fail.

• Team morale: nobody wants to fight with their tools.

The Opposite Experience:
Future-proof platforms are:

• Built on cloud-native, auto-scaling architectures (AWS, Azure, GCP).

• Delivering 99.99% uptime SLAs with real-time monitoring.

• Committed to performance observability (via platforms like New Relic or Datadog).

• Transparent about incident histories and resolutions.

6. Employee Turnover Seems Excessive

What to Look For:
You notice that the faces, names, and voices you've come to associate with your software vendor keep changing. Your account manager, support rep, or product specialist disappears without notice. Team members you’ve built trust with are suddenly replaced—often with less experienced or less responsive counterparts. Meanwhile, communications from the company seem increasingly generic or templated, and strategic conversations become harder to initiate.

Why It’s a Problem:
High employee turnover within a software vendor—particularly in support, product, or customer success roles—is often a symptom of broader internal dysfunction. It could mean the company is:

• Deprioritizing the product and moving resources elsewhere.

• Experiencing a toxic culture, poor leadership, or low morale, driving voluntary exits.

• Downsizing intentionally to reduce costs and boost short-term margins.

• Outsourcing or offshoring roles to lower-cost labor markets without sufficient knowledge transfer.

Each of these scenarios correlates strongly with software products that are slipping toward end-of-life status.

📉 A 2024 Gallup study found that companies with high internal turnover (above 20% annually) are twice as likely to underperform on customer satisfaction and four times more likely to have inconsistent product execution.

📉 McKinsey & Company’s 2023 SaaS Benchmarking Report also noted that “sustained turnover across technical and customer-facing teams is a leading indicator of product stagnation, roadmap drift, and customer churn.”

How It Shows Up for You:

• New reps aren’t familiar with your use case or industry.

• Product conversations shift from proactive planning to reactive support.

• You're asked to explain your history repeatedly to new contacts.

• There’s a noticeable dip in product updates, innovation, or roadmap communication.

• Your trust in the vendor begins to erode as the relationship becomes transactional.

The Domino Effect on Quality:
Employee instability leads to:

• Weaker product stewardship – roadmap accountability disappears.

• Inconsistent support experiences – fewer experts who "just know" how things work.

• Slower feature delivery – especially if key engineers or QA leads leave.

• Broken feedback loops – because the people capturing your input never stick around to act on it.

And in the compliance world, these gaps can be dangerous. A vendor that’s unable to maintain institutional knowledge, consistent expertise, and stable relationships becomes a liability.

The Opposite Experience:
A stable, customer-committed software company:

• Invests in long-term employees with deep product and industry knowledge.

• Maintains low turnover in customer-facing and technical teams.

• Promotes from within to ensure continuity and expertise.

• Communicates openly about transitions and introduces new team members proactively.

• Uses tools like success plans, account histories, and role-based handoffs to ensure consistency—regardless of personnel changes.

7. The Pricing Makes No Sense

What to Look For:

• The cost of your system, and upgrades or downgrades, is more a discussion of what you can afford and less of a discussion about a reasonable standard pricing.
• They continue to tell you that you are on an old, legacy, or outdated pricing model.  
• The standard price book has gone through constant and recurring increases despite you not changing the way you use the system:
  • Reasonable annual increases range from 0%-10% for software solutions that are continuing to improve their existing solutions.  There is a valid argument for price increases in this range as a means to offset inflation and account for added investments in the product.
  • Atypical Corrective Increases may range from 10-30% if there has been an economic phenomenon, something to cause the company's costs to increase dramatically, or they have significant improvements that cannot be opted in or out of. 
    • This is only reasonable if it does not occur more than once every 5 or more years.
  • 30% or more for the exact same product offering is obscene and if it has occurred at more than one occasion, it's definitely predatory.

Why It’s a Problem:

Pricing is one of the dials a business can continue to change even if the product is not changing.  Because of this, EOL product customer pricing increases are generally seen as a preferred option to recover a financial year if sales are down.  Unfortunately, though, once a business, with limited conscience in its commercial practices, exercises this type of countermeasure, it becomes a drug.  This lever is now a part of their revenue model and is very difficult to put back in the box without making an impact to the following year's revenue performance.  They then continue to go back to the well year after year with the justification that what they are doing is sound as long as the revenue obtained by the pricing increases year over year continues to outweigh the loss of customer revenue due to churn as a result of the continued pricing increases.   This, however, has an exponential impact on the customers that continue to stay with the company.  Example:

In the table above, we are looking at the annual revenue for one of many software products owned by "Business X".  Notice how the Supplier Revenue for the product line has increased by 10% every single year.  But now let's look a bit closer...

• Year 1 - There were 5 different groups of customers all contributing $2M in subscription revenue.
• Year 2 - They lost 1/5 of their customer base.  But all is well because they applied a 37.5% increase against the remaining 80% of their customers.
• Year 3 - This year, 1/4 of their remaining customers decided to leave.  But in order to hide the churn again, they had to go big and apply a 61% increase to the rest of the customer base to make up for it.
• Year 4 - 1/3 of the remaining customer base decided to leave.  Now it's gone too far to go backwards.  The remaining customers appear to be stuck and the business can't report a loss of 33% of their revenue, so they keep the train rolling with an average of a 65% increase to each customer.
• Year 5 - Even though they continue to lose the same amount of customers year after year after year, the smaller the customer base gets, the higher percentage is leaving.    But because they are increasing the price dramatically every year, the average value of a customer leaving is that much more expensive.  This year they lost 1/2 of their remaining customers.  But they have already tarnished their relationship with their customers and there's no point in trying to pretend like they are going to do anything differently.  In order to keep the same trend going, they have to increase their customer pricing by 120%.

But let's also remember that the increase in price is not all that is happening here.  They are simultaneously squeezing costs out of the software product's operations to maximize their profits.

The table above shows a 5-year progression of squeezing out 20% of the software product's operating costs year over year.   As discussed in previous sections, these squeezes come from layoffs, offshoring, moving resources to other priorities, and overall reduction in spend related to Sales & Marketing now that the product is in an EOL state.  Despite a complete abandonment of the product, they have made a total profit of more than $32 Million over 5 years.  

Do they consider that a success?  

Well, if you weren't already fuming, this next part may be the most infuriating.  Business X probably purchased this software company for about $50 Million.  

A 5x Multiple of Annual Revenue is an average valuation of an average software company.

$10 Million Annual Revenue x 5 = $50 Million Purchase Price

So, this means that Business X is probably on the right track and will be able to make their money back, and maybe a bit more in the next couple of years.

However, this is not how these types of businesses think.  Similar to Real Estate, software companies like Business X think of products as assets and customer revenue as rental income.  If they know that rental income for this asset is going to start trending down after year 5, then they will have already made plans to try to sell it off before that, all under the guise of "Updating It" (Lipstick on the Pig) and increasing the average rent per tenant (Price Gouging) by 700% over 5 Years (Customer Group 1 from $2M to $16M).  They also get to tout an overall growth of 60% in annual revenues over 5 years.  All in all, that's a pretty compelling valuation story.  But staying conservative, let's say they sold the asset at the same valuation that they bought it for 5 years earlier.

$16 Million Annual Revenue x 5 = $80 Million Purchase Price

Business X made a profit of $62 Million or 124% return on their investment.  And guess what they are going to use all of that money for?  Yep, to do it again... To another software product... To another set of customers.

What about the company that bought the software product for $80M?  Well, their model is to force transition to their single product that they can't sell to new customers, so they buy companies and force customers onto it, then kill the old technology.

So, congratulations... You are now paying 700% more for a software solution that is not what you wanted in the first place and is not retaining the data history you need.  But none of this is your fault.  So how do you avoid it?  The honest answer is that you can't.  You could not have seen any of this coming.  But what you can do is be very skeptical of your suppliers and be ever aware of the tell tales that they are moving in the wrong direction.  And when they do, make sure you were always staying nimble and have risk mitigation plans in place so you are ready to transition when the time is right.

Why End-of-Life Software Puts You at Serious Risk

When vendors aren't upfront about a product being EOL, it’s often because they want to quietly milk the last revenue from it while avoiding difficult conversations. But make no mistake—your organization pays the price:

• Compliance Risk: Unpatched vulnerabilities and unsupported workflows jeopardize audit readiness and regulatory status.

• Business Risk: The longer you stay on EOL software, the harder and costlier your eventual migration becomes.

• Reputational Risk: If your software fails in front of a regulator, client, or board, it reflects directly on you as the quality leader.

And remember: If a vendor can’t be honest about the lifecycle of their own product, how transparent will they be when a security issue or data loss incident occurs?

How to Future-Proof Your Compliance Tech Stack

To avoid this scenario, here’s what to look for in a modern, future-ready QMS or compliance platform:

• Transparent Roadmap: Public commitment to ongoing development and user-driven features.

• Modular Expansion: Ability to scale from document control into risk, audits, incidents, and beyond—without switching platforms.

• Cloud-Native Infrastructure: Built for performance, scalability, and modern access controls.

• No-Code Flexibility: Easily configurable by quality leaders—not just IT departments.

• Built-in Integrations & Open APIs: Plays well with the rest of your tech ecosystem.

Looking for More Proof that Your Software is EOL?

Any software company that has been around for longer than 5 years will have a datapoint called their Net Promoter Score (NPS).  You've seen this survey and it looks something like this:

It may have seemed like a typical Customer Satisfaction (CSAT) survey but it's much more scientific.  NPS is often used as an indication of how "sellable" your product is based on the experience of the customers that use it.  The idea being that because most of sales are ultimately performed via word of mouth from existing customers, understanding how your customers talk about your product is a likely rating of how easily or how hard it is able to be sold.

Here's a quick explanation... Notice how even though there are 10 possible rating options, those ratings are classified into one of 3 categories: Promoter, Passive, and Detractor.  Here is how the NPS is then scored:

Passives (7 & 8) are thrown out and considered neutral or non-votes.  Then you take the percent of Promoter votes (9 & 10) and subtract the percent of Detractor votes (0-6).  The remaining number is the overall NPS score.   

Why Does This Matter?  A good NPS score for a software company is between 30 and 50.  Anywhere above 50 is considered exceptional.  Anywhere below 30 indicates they have some issues.  If your software solution is on an EOL trajectory, you will likely see scores around 0 or below.  But more importantly, you are looking for a period of significant decline.  For instance, if a company has been growing to, or holding steady at around 25, but then then drop to around 0 or below within the span of a few years, it's a clear-cut cut indication that they are deep into the EOL cycle for that product.

Ask your Account Manager for NPS data and see if they sweat.  But look out for common tricks used to hide the truth:

• Ask for the overall NPS for the latest 5+ years so you can see if any trend lines exist.
• Make sure the data is specific to the product you use, and not blended with other solutions to pull the rating up.
• If everything looks good, ask them to share the number of respondents for each of the scores.  Some groups will try to manipulate their scores by shrinking the survey pool to only their most dedicated champions, and not the full user base.

Final Thoughts

End-of-life compliance software isn’t just inconvenient—it’s dangerous. If you recognize any of the signs above, don’t wait for a compliance incident or system crash to take action.

Instead, evaluate your alternatives proactively. The right QMS solution should not only meet your current needs but grow with you—securing your operations for years to come.