Monthly billing is here — and your switch will fire whether you're paid up or not
Pay monthly, pay yearly, or let your subscription lapse — once your deadman switch is set up, it fires on schedule no matter what. Here's why we made it work this way, and the new pricing that comes with it.
For the longest time I refused to add monthly billing to Killswitch.
Not because the engineering was hard. Because every time I sketched out the flow, I'd end up in the same place: a customer signs up, sets up their switch, picks a few beneficiaries, uploads a will and an insurance policy and a list of online accounts. Months go by. They forget the switch is there — that's the whole point. And then a card expires, or a bank flags a foreign transaction, or whatever. The subscription lapses.
Now the worst-case scenario isn't theoretical anymore. The switch is supposed to fire when the person stops checking in. But a lapsed subscription is the same signal as "stopped checking in." How is the system supposed to tell the difference?
The cowardly answer is "we'll just stop firing when you stop paying." That's how every other tool in this category works, and it's the reason I didn't ship monthly billing for a long time. The whole point of a deadman switch is that it works especially in the messy moments — illness, emergencies, the people in your life dropping the ball on your behalf. A switch that only fires when the credit card on file is current is a switch that was never going to do its job.
So we did the brave thing instead.
The always-fires guarantee
Once your deadman switch is set up — items linked, beneficiaries chosen — it fires on schedule. Period. Subscription status doesn't matter.
That's the whole guarantee. It's enforced in code, not in marketing copy. Specifically:
- The background worker that checks for missed check-ins doesn't read your subscription status. It only cares about whether your check-in is overdue.
- The trigger pipeline that delivers shares to your beneficiaries bypasses subscription policy entirely. There's no hook anywhere that could decide to skip you because you stopped paying.
- The 90-day "we delete inactive accounts" cleanup process now skips any account with a healthy switch. You can stop paying, fall off the face of the earth, and your beneficiaries still receive your encrypted documents the next time the timer runs out.
- You can still check in with email and SMS reminder links during a lapse. Your subscription is your editing privilege; it's not your family's lifeline.
If your subscription lapses you lose the ability to upload new files, edit existing ones, or set up new switches. That's the upgrade incentive. But the switches you've already configured keep working. The check-in links you get in your email and on your phone keep working. The delivery pipeline keeps working.
What changes for you
We added monthly billing because the original reason not to is gone. If a missed payment can't break the protection your family is counting on, then there's no reason to force everyone into a yearly commitment up front.
Here's what the new pricing looks like:
| Plan | Monthly | Yearly | 3-year |
|---|---|---|---|
| Starter | $7.99/mo | $79/yr | $67/yr |
| Pro | $19.99/mo | $199/yr | $169/yr |
| Legacy | $39.99/mo | $399/yr | $339/yr |
A few things worth calling out:
- Starter dropped from $99 to $79 a year. I wanted the math to make sense across both options. $79/yr works out to about $6.58 a month, so picking yearly saves you roughly 18% over paying monthly — a real discount, not a manufactured one.
- 3-year plans save you another 15% on top of yearly. Same as before. If you're confident you're sticking around, that's the cheapest possible way to use Killswitch. Lock in the rate, save the money.
- Monthly cancels at the end of the period. You're not on the hook for anything beyond what you've already paid. Yearly plans still come with our 30-day money-back guarantee — same as before.
Why I'm telling you all this
The point isn't that you should switch to monthly. Most people probably shouldn't — yearly is cheaper per month, and locking in a 3-year rate is even better. The point is that the option is now available without compromise.
If you're new and want to try Killswitch without committing to a year, the door is open. If you're an existing yearly customer who'd rather pay $7.99 a month going forward, your billing portal can switch you over (Stripe handles the proration, you don't lose any prepaid time).
And if you're worried about what happens to your family if your card declines while you're traveling, or if your bank reissues your card and you forget to update Stripe, or if any of the dozen other ways a payment can quietly fail actually happen to you — the answer is now the same one I'd want to give a friend.
Your switch will still fire. Your beneficiaries will still receive what you set aside for them. Whatever happened on the billing side stays on the billing side.
Bottom line
A deadman switch is only useful if it actually fires when it's supposed to. Tying that to whether your credit card on file is current would be a betrayal of the entire premise. Your subscription pays for the editing surface — the ability to upload, set up new switches, change beneficiaries. The protection itself, once you've configured it, is yours to keep.
That's what makes monthly billing safe to ship. And that's what makes Killswitch different from every other tool in this space.
— Jacob
Killswitch is a zero-knowledge deadman switch for the documents your family will need when you're gone. Encrypted in your browser, delivered automatically when you stop checking in — even if your subscription has lapsed.