Product End-of-Life: 6 Steps to Success

Almost every product manager talks about the stages of the product life cycle like Conceive, Qualify, Launch, and Deliver. You know what no one seems to ever mention? The final chapter of a product, the end of life. That’s a problem, a big problem. Neglecting the end of life for your product can devastate customer loyalty and drag down future sales of new products. We’ve seen it time and time again. It’s something you want to avoid at all costs, and today, we’ll go over how you can avoid making the mistake that so many product management teams make when it comes to writing the roadmap for a product’s end of life.

Why End-Of-Life Planning For Products Matters

A poorly handled end of life for a product doesn't just annoy the users of that one product. It can have surprisingly impactful results that most product managers don’t see coming.

• It damages the brand (not just the product). Your customers won’t distinguish between "this specific tool was retired badly" and "this company can't be trusted with things I depend on." That perception transfers to every other product in your portfolio and can hurt your sales in the long run. The benefits of a strong brand are incredible, ranging from customer advocacy to commanding premium pricing power, all things we cover in our The Hidden ROI of Brand Management article. It’s not something you want to give up due to an unplanned end of life.
  
• In the era of tech, it can create security and compliance exposure. Unpatched, unsupported software left running in the wild becomes an attack surface. This is exactly why enterprise IT and security teams track official end-of-life and end-of-support dates as seriously as they track new releases.
  
• It burns goodwill with your most loyal users. The people most affected by the end of life for a product are usually your power users and long-time customers, the ones who adopted early, gave feedback, and told other people to use your product. They are the last audience you want to alienate.
  
• It's a predictable, plannable event, unlike most product failures. Unlike a bad launch, you know an end of life is coming. There's no excuse for it to feel chaotic and unplanned to the customer.
  
• It shapes whether customers trust your next product. As we noted in Stop Building Products No One Wants, strategic credibility compounds. A company that retires products with dignity earns the benefit of the doubt on the next launch. A company that doesn't, doesn't.
  
  

How To Get It Right As A Product Manager Planning For A Product’s End-Of-Life

So, you’re ready to retire that product. Here are six steps your product team can take to help ensure a successful end-of-life for your product.

1. Give advance notice to your customers. This is measured in quarters or years, and definitely not in weeks. There should be enough time for customers to budget, plan, and migrate without scrambling. Bonus points, especially if it’s software, for you to disclose the end-of-life date to customers before they ever purchase the product. A great example of this is the Google Pixel phones. With every release, Google announces how long they’ll continue to cover security updates and patches to the phone. This information helps your customers make informed purchasing decisions and builds trust.
   
2. Build a real migration path, not just an export button. Tell people where to go next, and help them get there. If you’re looking for a stellar example of this practice in action, take a look at the Atlassian Data Center. They announced their end-of-life and migration plan for Singapore and California come March 28, 2029. But they didn’t stop at a simple announcement, which would have left customers stuck not knowing what to do. They followed it up with critical dates, milestones, and a clear migration plan.
   
   Here are some of the resources they offered that you can explore for your end-of-life product announcement.
   
   • They made it easy for customers to book a consultation to help get clarity on what they need to do on the same page as the announcement.
     
   • Videos were included that detailed how to migrate or move on to other options.
     
   • A migration path comparison was clearly laid out with options from their business and those from their competitors.
     
   • Risks of failing to migrate were communicated so that customers understand what’s at stake if they don’t migrate.
     
   We recommend including a variety of the above in your communications about the end of life for your products.
3. Coordination with the ecosystem. If partners, integrators, or other vendors depend on your product, they need to hear about the sunset before your customers do, not after. Failing to notify your business partners and vendors in advance of your product's end of life can destroy valuable relationships and harm future dealings. They shouldn’t be getting notified about the end of your product's life by customers asking them what they’re going to do. That will not go over well.
   
4. Security and support commitments that are explicit. State exactly when patches stop, when support ends, and what happens to data after that date. Similar to what the majority of big players in the phone space do, like Google or iPhone. All of their new releases have clear statements about how long security patches will be issued. Cisco even has an end-of-life policy that they lay out clearly on their website letting their customers know exactly what they can expect. It shouldn’t be a guessing game for customers about how long you’re going to secure a product.
   
5. One clear source of information. A dedicated end-of-life page is an absolute must. Customers shouldn’t have to navigate through a scattered mix of blogs, social media posts, and support tickets. By failing to lay out all of the information in one key place, customers may leave with missing information, additional confusion, or just frustration. After all, how would you feel if your favorite product suddenly declared that it was going to end and then you had to go on a hunt for breadcrumbs to find out more?
   
6. Consistent, repeated communication, not a single announcement that customers can easily miss. Repeat information and messaging across channels, on a regular basis, and make sure to refer back to your end-of-life page for all the information.
   
   

The Businesses That Got End-Of-Life For A Product Right

Now it may surprise you that our first example is none other than Google. While they have certainly had their fair share of what have felt like hastily done end-of-life for products, they really got it right for the end of Google Podcasts in 2024. If you’re not familiar with the story, here’s some background. In September of 2023, Google announced that it would shut down its standalone podcasts app, Google Podcasts, in April of 2024.

With this announcement, they shared a timeline for the app’s shutdown and, despite the app being discontinued in April, ensured their users could still migrate or export subscriptions through July 2024. This deadline would even be extended by another month, into August, to ensure everyone had the chance to move their subscriptions over. They created a new migration tool that appeared in their Google Podcasts app with step-by-step instructions to help people move to YouTube Music. For those who didn’t want to switch to YouTube Music, they made it possible to export subscriptions to an OPML file that could be imported into any other third-party podcast app. The time they gave customers and their ability to be flexible on the end-of-life dates were both critical components in maintaining customer goodwill throughout this process.

What Happens To The Businesses That Got End-Of-Life Wrong

While Google got the phase-out for Google Podcasts right, they are also a great example of what happens when businesses get end of life wrong (really wrong). Say hello to the Nest Revolv Smart Hub debacle. Nest, owned by Alphabet, which is the parent holding company of Google, quietly announced it would shut off cloud service behind its $299 Revolv smart home hubs. This effectively turned their pricey $299 product into literal paperweights with only 75 days of notice. Needless to say, customers were fuming. People who set up their landscape lighting, security lighting, burglar deterrents, and more that all functioned using the smart hub would only have 75 days to try to find ways to run their home systems without it. It didn’t help that Nest had no product to replace it with, or recommendations for one (even if it was from a competitor); it was just shuttering the Revolv.

Not to mention that initially no advance compensation was offered, and refunds were granted only after intense backlash and on a case-by-case basis. It got so bad that the FTC even opened an inquiry into the practice, which then closed once refunds were promised. Articles like, Nest's Hub Shutdown Proves You're Crazy to Buy Into the Internet of Things by Wired, Nest's Revolv Shutdown Debacle Underscores Business Model Challenges For 'Internet Of Things' by Business Insider, and Nest smart home customers furious, Google pays them off by Fox13 Seattle underscore just how volatile customer sentiment became towards Nest and the idea of tech for their homes in general. A quote from Gilbert on Medium stated, “Imagine if Apple put out a new policy that not only won’t they replace the device for defects, but they will actually be bricking your phone 12 months after purchase.”

To say that this damaged Nest’s brand and reputation as well as harmed the sales of all smart home devices would be an understatement. As we mentioned in our article, The Secret To Great Products That Succeed In The Market Lies In Empathy, Not Just Cold Data, new product launches are already fraught with so many failures and risks. Why would you want to leverage the deck even more against you with an egregious end-of-life for a product that you could have ensured ran smoother?

An End-Of-Life Checklist For Product Managers

If you're staring down the retirement of a product, feature, or platform, use the following checklist as a good starting point.

• Set a public end-of-life date as early as you possibly can. Even an approximate date beats silence. Customers should have a clear understanding (especially with tech and software) of how long they can expect support and service.
  
• Publish one authoritative source of information (an EOL page, a dedicated FAQ) and keep linking back to it, rather than letting the story live only in a single announcement post. This helps you organize all of the information and keeps it clear for customers.
  
• Name the alternative. If there's a successor product, internal or third-party, say so directly. Don't make your most loyal users go find their own replacement; that’s a recipe for breaking customer loyalty.
  
• Loop in every dependent party before the public announcement, including partners, integrators, and enterprise customers who may have contractual or technical dependencies you don't see from the outside. This will be key to maintaining important relationships for the future.
  
• Be explicit about the mechanics: the date patches stop, the date the product stops functioning, and what happens to customer data after that date.
  
• Treat communication as ongoing, not a one-time event. Repeat the message across every channel your customers actually use, in the weeks and months leading up to the date, not just once at announcement time.
  
  

The Life Cycle Doesn't End At Launch

It's easy to pour all of your strategic energy into the beginning of a product's life and treat the end as an afterthought, something Legal and IT handle once the roadmap has moved on. But as the Google Podcasts and Nest’s Revolv Smart Hub prove, the ending is a strategic decision with real consequences, for revenue, for security, and for whether your customers trust you enough to buy whatever you build next.

Retiring a product with the same discipline you used to launch it isn't just what you should do. It's good product management. AIPMM's Certified Product Manager® (CPM) program and the ProdBOK® both cover the full product life cycle, including end-of-life and retirement planning that most training programs skip entirely. So, your team has a repeatable, defensible process for winding down a product rather than improvising under pressure.

Sources

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AIPMM. (n.d.-b). The secret to great products that succeed in the market lies in empathy, not just cold data. AIPMM Product Management Buzz. https://aipmm.com/product-management-buzz/the-secret-to-great-products-that-succeed-in-the-market-lies-in-empathy-not-just-cold-data

Android Police. (2024, July 30). Google Podcasts migration tool lives on, ready to die next month. https://www.androidpolice.com/google-podcasts-migration-tool-lives-ready-die-next-month/

Cisco. (n.d.). End-of-life policy. https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/products/eos-eol-policy.html

Finley, K. (2016, April 5). Nest's hub shutdown proves you're crazy to buy into the Internet of Things. Wired. https://www.wired.com/2016/04/nests-hub-shutdown-proves-youre-crazy-buy-internet-things/

FOX 13 Seattle. (2016, April 7). 'Nest' smart home customers furious, Google pays them off. https://www.fox13seattle.com/news/nest-smart-home-customers-furious-google-pays-them-off

Gizmodo. (2016, April 6). After bricking their devices, Google will help Revolv owners 'case by case.' https://gizmodo.com/after-bricking-their-devices-google-will-help-revolv-o-1769284292

Hern, A. (2016, April 5). Revolv devices bricked as Google's Nest shuts down smart home company. The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/apr/05/revolv-devices-bricked-google-nest-smart-home

Information Officer. (n.d.). Atlassian data center end of life. https://www.informationofficer.com/dc-eol/

Mashable. (n.d.). Revolv smart home shutdown. https://mashable.com/article/revolv-smart-home-shutdown

The Register. (2016, April 5). Nest bricks Revolv home automation hubs, because evolution. https://www.theregister.com/off-prem/2016/04/05/nest-bricks-revolv-home-automation-hubs-because-evolution/1081665

TechCrunch. (2023, December 7). Google launches migration tool ahead of Google Podcasts' 2024 shutdown. https://techcrunch.com/2023/12/07/google-launches-migration-tool-ahead-of-google-podcasts-2024-shutdown/

Tilley, A. (2016, April 12). Nest's Revolv shutdown debacle underscores business model challenges for 'Internet of Things.' Forbes. https://www.forbes.com/sites/aarontilley/2016/04/12/nests-revolv-shutdown-debacle-underscores-business-model-challenges-for-internet-of-things/

Tom's Guide. (n.d.). Google just announced a surprise upgrade for Pixel 6, Pixel 7 and Pixel Fold. https://www.tomsguide.com/phones/google-pixel-phones/google-just-announced-a-surprise-upgrade-for-pixel-6-pixel-7-and-pixel-fold