One founder, three lifetime tiers, one decision

Count the documents you actually send in a week, not the ones you draft and discard. A founder chasing twenty right people a week writes proposals, terms and follow-up notes, and each one needs a deadline and a paper trail behind it. That weekly count, not the feature list, tells you which tier you belong in.

Action plans and document drafts are the first thing you will lean on, because they turn a client conversation into something you can send the same afternoon. Deadline and evidence checklists come next, keeping the trail tidy when a matter drags. You are not buying a department. You are buying the hours an assistant would have spent assembling the same pages.

Setup time is the objection worth testing first. Ask how long it takes before your first real document leaves the tool, because a week of configuration costs a solo founder more than the tier itself. Judge each option by that first send, then by how often you return to it across a month of actual client work.

Personal lifetime is the entry point, and for most founders it covers the everyday work: a draft, a checklist, a plan for what to do next. Read it as the tier you grow out of rather than the one you finish with, because a founder who sells steadily will meet its edges within a few months of regular use.

Professional lifetime sits above it, and the difference is best read as headroom rather than features. When your weekly count rises, or when a matter needs more than one pass, the higher tier keeps the work moving without you rationing requests. Check the published tiers on softwareprogrammer.app for what each one includes before you decide.

BYO key lifetime is the third route, and it suits a founder who already pays for a model key and prefers to keep usage under their own account. The trade is control against administration: you manage the key, and you accept that billing and limits sit partly outside the product. Pick it only if that arrangement already fits how you work.

Most founders asking about tiers are really asking whether they can avoid hiring. That is the honest question, and the answer depends on volume rather than on ambition. If your week is twenty conversations and a handful of documents, a tool plus your own judgement covers it. If matters multiply, the tool stops being the constraint.

Escalation routes mapped matters here more than any draft. A founder working alone needs to know when a matter has outgrown the tool, and a mapped route gives you that signal before you have spent an evening on something a lawyer should see. Treat the mapping as the real feature and the drafting as the convenience around it.

Local rules change, so verification is part of your routine rather than an afterthought. Build a habit of checking each deadline and form against the current official source before anything is sent. That habit costs minutes and protects the relationship you are trying to build with the twenty people you are writing to.

Moving up a tier buys fewer interruptions. On the lower tier you start weighing each request; on the higher one you stop counting. For a founder whose time is the scarce input, that shift is the whole purchase. It is not extra capability so much as permission to use the tool the way you already work.

It also buys a cleaner record. More usage means more drafts, checklists and plans stored in one place, which helps when a client asks what was agreed and when. A founder without a team relies on that record, because there is nobody else holding the thread of a matter from first message to final document.

What no tier buys is a lawyer. High-stakes matters need a qualified person, and the tool prepares rather than replaces them. Before paying, decide which matters you will always route out, write that rule down, and let it guide the tier you choose rather than the other way round.