Hello!
As I an getting closer to finishing my first subed month, I keep glancing over at that lifetime sub. So I have questions.
Nothing lasts forever and when/if wanikani ceases operations for whatever reason, is my then lifetime purchase somehow garentied in some form? Like access to the sourcecode? Export/import of progress to an clone site?
Or will it just be a “everything is gone, though luck” ?
With the API you can export your progress and most of the item data locally. There are a bunch of third-party applications (some open-source) that could fairly easily target a new endpoint that could potentially be run by community members. You can also easily export the content to an Anki deck for instance.
Overall I’m not aware of any commitment by the company to give access to the code or anything like that should the platform shutdown, but thanks to the API the situation is better than most other platforms.
You should also consider that, in all likelihood, your lifetime membership is only going to serve you for a few years before you move on to other things, you’re probably not going to be using WaniKani 15 years from now.
Going offline is a worry for any service (and generally speaking most lifetime services are for the lifetime of the product, with no guarantees if the product/company disappeared or even if it got bought by a new company and merged into a different service), but the way I see it:
WK has been around for a long time, probably over 10 years. It is a very mature product with lots of third party support. This means, even if the WK team stopped doing anything other than making sure the app was online (no content updates), there would still be people using the service because it’s not missing anything crucial. So from a business perspective, as long as the revenue was greater than the expenses of keeping the service online, there is no reason not to keep it available.
It’s like how Final Fantasy XI is massively old but is still available with minor updates, because the revenue they get is greater than the cost of small updates and keeping the service active.
Your answers did satisfy my curiosity on this topic. Thank you.
I’m actually on my second run through Wanikani after burning everything, and then forgetting everything in the years that followed, so all-in-all quite happy with my lifetime purchase.
Also, I believe back then (don’t know if they still do this), they had a special Christmas sale where lifetime became 200 dollars instead of 300.
And also interesting, if you do a year subscription now and wait for lifetime during Christmas, you will be discounted the remaining costs of that year. (So let’s say you start now and half a year later you get lifetime, you get half a year’s worth of money discounted from the lifetime cost).
Again, this was years back, don’t know if the policy changed at some point.
EDIT: Found the records, you can see a discount for the month that I didn’t use (which isn’t much but it’s there).
Also I’m flabbergasted that Wanikani has committed to keeping prices the same for like 7 years even through massive inflation and dollar devaluation (EDIT seems I’m thinking of dollar to euro exchange, the dollar is doing just fine (for now… 
)). Massive props to them!
The Christmas sale is still a thing.
Ah ok, in that case I would highly recommend (if you’re thinking of getting lifetime anyways) to get a year subscription, and then buy lifetime when it is (very likely) on sale during Christmas. Will save you about 55 bucks.
And you can then just sacrifice that money to the Crabigator by buying indulgences for the sin of not starting to learn kanji when you were 3 years old.
People should think about lifetime subs as lifetime of the company not the user.
Based on info in other threads when this question has come up, the annual Christmas sale has occurred every year since it was first started but it is not something that is guaranteed, they could always decide to not offer it or change the details of the offering. Based on past behaviour, I would expect it will happen again this year, if I was placing a wager. But as they warn you when investing or betting, past behaviour is not a guarantee of future performance 
That should elicit some comments 
I shall duck and run now. BTW, I agree with your statement, but then there are a few “it is unusable as is” folks around. I always wonder why, if they believe that, they are still around…
I think it’ll be alright. I would hope people realize that I am referring to the very core premise of what WK offers and not referring to much-requested features (like the beloved undo/redo button that I very much preach for myself). In this theoretical future where development stops as it enters a support-only mode, as long as the 3rd party features kept working, it’d be the same as now. So by crucial I mean that the core curriculum is complete and the API remains available.
To contrast this I was recently using a newer app for some anime-based vocabulary practice and about 10-20% of the flashcards had some kind of error, because the product is not mature. In such a product, if development stopped, going offline would be a very clear eventuality as no one would stick around since there would be no hope of the core being fixed. Thus a lifetime for that one is more risky and is more about supporting the idea of the product’s future rather than its current version. That is the difference between lifetime for a mature product versus an immature one.
New fear unlocked, of putting in all the effort and forgetting every bit of it.
Don’t worry I didn’t forget everything, it’s just that I noticed forgetting some Kanji that i had burned in there at some point, and thought I should pick wanikani back up again. It’s also a motivator to start reading early on this time, and to keep a daily reminder on my phone in the form of reviews that Japanese exists as a language.
I agree that it would be nice if companies going out of business published the source code so that enthusiasts could continue what they started as long as there is public interest.
I’ve been on here for 7 years now. I’ll make 15 easily! 
Technically, 15 more “from now” would be 22
Hopefully, I’ll only be here 8 more years!!! 
I probably should do this too, but I am still using the review burned items thingy and that’s helping. Having over 9000 items with no idea of the next one is good practice.
Lowkey annoyed that two new items just dropped a few weeks after I finally burned everything. But it’s good to see the site still alive.
This video comes to mind.
