I bought before the Kivi Media move: do I still own it for life, and who is the $100/month for?

You read the email saying Booked Solid OS is now part of the Kivi Media family, got to the line about Otto being $100 a month flat, and your stomach dropped. Two owners wrote in within hours of each other asking the same thing in different words: "When we first bought Otto, I was told no subscription, own for life. Is that still true?" and "I bought Otto. Are you saying that I have to pay 100 dollars per month?" The answer to both is no. If you already bought Booked Solid, you own it for life and you do not pay again. This article sets out exactly what you own, who the $100 a month is actually for, what the 12 months in that email really means, what happened to the one-time payment option, and the one honest boundary on a lifetime license, so that boundary does not ambush you a month from now.

If you already bought, your purchase is untouched

If you bought Booked Solid as a one-time payment, whether from Chris Michael or from Kivi Media before the price list changed, you own it for life: no subscription, no monthly fee, ever. The move of Booked Solid OS to Kivi Media changes nothing about that. Your license, your leads, your history and your login all carry over. You open the app and sign in with the same username and password you have always used, and the account service recognizes legacy accounts automatically.

The $100 a month is for brand-new customers signing up from here on. It does not apply to anyone who already bought. It is not a conversion, it does not switch itself on later, and there is no date at which your app starts asking for a card. Do I have to pay again? No.

One owner asked for it in writing: "I bought Otto on July 6. Please confirm I retain lifetime access with full services included." Confirmed. The lifetime access is real and it is permanent. There are a small number of things a lifetime license does not carry, and rather than bury them at the bottom, they have their own section below.

How to tell which one you are, in ten seconds

Open Settings > General and find the Your account box. It spells it out in one line:

• Signed in as yourname, lifetime license. means you are a one-time owner. The pricing further down this page is not something you will ever be charged.
• Signed in as yourname, monthly license. means you are on the $100 a month plan. The app keeps working while the subscription is active, and if a payment ever fails, the article in this folder on the license pause and renewal is the one you want.
• Signed in as yourname. with no plan named means your record does not have a plan stamped on it. That is worth a ticket rather than a guess, and it is not a sign that anything has been taken away.

The 12 months is not a license term

This one caused real worry, and the wording of the announcement is why. An owner put it like this: "Seems like this is moving to a subscription based application. Does this mean that after our 12 months of support we will need to move to a subscription based format?"

No. An existing purchase does not turn into a subscription after 12 months, or ever. Existing lifetime licenses are honored, there is no clawback, and no expiry is planned. You keep the app, your license, the update channel, and the full help center at booked.kivimedia.co/support.

What the 12 months in that email was actually about: Booked Solid was framed as a way to get an AI edge over the next 12 months rather than as a five year investment, because AI is moving fast enough that promising anything about 2031 would be a lie. That is a statement about the industry. It is not the length of your license and it is not a countdown running on your app.

Here is the honest part. Whether a specific 12 months of support was promised at the time you bought is still an open question internally, and nobody should settle it for you in passing, this page included. If that is the piece you actually need pinned down, open a ticket and ask for it in writing. It gets answered once, properly, against your real record.

What happened to the one-time payment option

Straight answer, because someone asked exactly this and deserved a better one than silence: "What happened to the one time payment option?" For the main Booked Solid OS desktop app, it is gone. The current price list is one line: Otto, the full desktop app with the agentic booking system, is $100 a month flat. No tiers, no one-time fees, no upsells.

One-time purchases do still exist, but only in the DJ and AV edition at booked.kivimedia.co/dj:

So if a one-time payment is what you are after, the DJ and AV edition is the only place it still exists. On the standard Booked Solid OS page there is no one-time option to find, and no amount of scrolling will produce one.

One more thing that trips people up: KM Hub is a different product from the same team, not a cheaper tier of Booked Solid OS. Booked Solid runs on your own PC and expects you to be comfortable with where your files live. KM Hub runs in a browser and on your phone and holds your data for you. It has its own pricing and its own trial, and buying one is not a cheaper route into the other. If you are weighing them up, the article in this folder on Booked Solid OS versus KM Hub is the one to read.

The one cost that is not ours: your Claude plan

This applies to lifetime owners as much as to anyone, so it is better said here than discovered later. Otto does its thinking on your own Claude account, and that account is paid to Anthropic, not to us. Claude Pro, about $20 a month, covers most performers. If you run Autopilot hard every day, you may need Claude Max, about $100 a month. The free Claude tier does not work. We never add a usage bill on top: a heavy week simply draws on your own Claude plan.

What a lifetime license does not carry

This is the part we are not going to soften, because a blanket "everything is yours forever" would be a promise the app then contradicts on your screen.

A lifetime license is real and permanent, and it carries the interactive app: chat with Otto, the Today briefing, the Gig Desk, Tasks, the Inbox, the Dashboard, the Brain, Connections, Studio, and the Plays you run by hand. All of that is yours for life at no further cost, and none of it is being taken back.

The main thing it does not carry is unattended scheduling: Otto running your Plays on a schedule, on its own initiative, with nobody sitting there. That is the Otto plan, the one that adds the unattended layer on top. If the Set up the Autopilot schedule card in the Plays tab reads Upgrade to schedule instead of Do it for me, that is what you are looking at. It is not a billing error, and it is not your lifetime license being revoked.

We would rather you heard the rest from us than found it on your own screen. A few individual tools are also on the Otto tier even though you start them by hand:

• Run Library Radar and Run School Radar, the two scanners that go looking for library and school bookings in your area.
• Milestone Radar, the Play that scans for anniversaries, retreats and appreciation events. The app will tell you it is "part of the Otto tier" if you start it.
• The Clean these up button on Brain health. You can always see what needs attention; having it fixed for you is the part that sits on Otto.

Everything else you do with your own hands, including Fill the Room for finding buyers, stays yours at no further cost.

The full explanation, including the honest reason Autopilot may have run for you for a while and then stopped, is in the article in this folder about the Upgrade to schedule prompt. Read that before you buy anything. And if you think your account has been given the wrong tier, open a ticket and say so. We would rather read your actual record than have you pay for something you may already own.

What the handover added, at no cost to you

• A help center with over 100 plain-language guides at booked.kivimedia.co/support.
• Email support answered by a human, usually the same day.
• Product updates that keep arriving, shipped several times a week.
• Live group coaching calls with Ziv, three times every week, on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays. Tuesdays at 8am New York and Wednesdays at 2pm New York, both at kivimedia.co/zoom. Thursdays at 3pm New York, at kivimedia.co/ahod. Same hours every week, three different times of day so one lands inside your working hours. Bring your setup questions, and you do not need an invitation to come.

Nothing on that list costs you anything extra, and nothing on it puts a card on file.

If this is you, you are in the right place

People ask this in a lot of different ways. All of these mean the same thing, and this page is the answer to every one of them:

• When we first bought Otto, I was told no subscription, own for life. Is that still true?
• I bought Otto. Are you saying that I have to pay 100 dollars per month?
• Seems like this is moving to a subscription based application. Does this mean that after our 12 months of support we will need to move to a subscription based format?
• I bought Otto on July 6. Please confirm I retain lifetime access with full services included.
• What happened to the one time payment option?
• Do I have to pay again now that Kivi Media runs it?
• Is my lifetime license still good after the move?

If it still does not add up

If a screen is asking you to pay and you believe you already own the app, do not pay it to make the message go away. Submit a ticket from this help center, or reply to your license email from booked@send.kivimedia.co, and tell us the email address you bought with plus what the screen says. We can read your record and tell you exactly what it carries, usually the same day.