ONCE

Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson launched ONCE in 2023 as a new product line from 37signals built on a radical premise: software you buy once and run on your own server, forever. No subscriptions, no recurring fees, no data held hostage. The first product was Campfire — a group chat tool ($299 one-time). The code was open source after purchase. ONCE was a statement: that the software industry's move to subscription-everything had gone too far, and some tools should be owned rather than rented. DHH and Jason promoted ONCE extensively on social media, generating enormous discussion in developer communities about software pricing models, self-hosting, and ownership. The ONCE philosophy resonated with developers who were subscription-fatigued and organizations that wanted to control their own data. Subsequent ONCE products included Writebook (collaborative document tool). While revenue figures weren't public, the products generated significant sales from 37signals' huge existing audience and the cultural conversation they sparked.