The decision got made in a conference room on Tuesday. Finance ran the numbers, product agreed, and the CEO signed off: the product line that put the company on the map is being shut down. Now it is Thursday afternoon, and you are the person who has to tell everyone. Customers who still pay for it. The three reseller partners who built services around it. The trade reporter who covered its launch and will notice the moment the pricing page changes. Your own support team, who will be answering the angry emails. You have a blank document, a legal team that wants to review every word, and leaders who would prefer it went out on a Friday with no fuss.
Do not bury it. A product discontinuation announcement is one of the few pieces of communication where customers will read every line, forward it to their boss, and judge your company by how specific it is. A vague sunset notice turns loyal users into churned users who tell people why. A clear one can keep many of them on your other products.
Below: a structure, the order to tell people in, a full template, and the language for refunds, support, and migration.
Build the announcement on four dates
Every discontinuation notice I have reviewed that went wrong had the same flaw. It said the product was “being retired” or “reaching end of life” and gave one date, or no date at all, and left customers to guess what happened in between. I build every sunset announcement on what I call the Four-Date Spine, and I do not let a draft leave my desk until all four dates are in it.
The first date is the Announcement Date, the day the news goes public. Naming it inside the message (“as of today, October 26”) anchors everything else and gives reporters a clean peg.
The second is the Last Sale Date, the final day anyone can buy, sign up, or renew. Stopping sales on the Announcement Date and selling spares for a few more weeks are both defensible. Silence is not.
The third is the Service End Date, the day the product stops working or stops being delivered (servers off, cloud features dead, firmware frozen). Customers care about this date most, so put it in the first two paragraphs.
The fourth is the Data and Support Sunset Date, the last day customers can export their data, get help from support, or claim a refund. It is the date most companies forget, and without it the support queue fills with the same question for months.
Google’s shutdown of Stadia is a useful public example of the spine done well. On September 29, 2022, Stadia vice president Phil Harrison announced in a Google blog post that the service would shut down on January 18, 2023. Android Central and Gematsu reported that Google would refund Stadia hardware bought through the Google Store and game and add-on purchases made through the Stadia store, that refunds were expected to be completed by mid-January 2023, and that players would keep access to their library until the shutdown date. Harrison also gave a reason in plain language: Stadia had not “gained the traction with users that we expected.” Fans were unhappy, but nobody had to guess what was happening or when.
In your own draft, give each date a sentence of its own.
Who hears first, and in what order?
Sequence is where most sunsets go wrong, because the order is itself a message. My rule: the closer someone is to the product’s revenue, the earlier they hear, and nobody should learn about it from a reporter.
Your internal team goes first, the day before if you can. Support, sales, and account managers need the full announcement, an internal FAQ, and the exact refund and migration terms before customers start writing in.
Partners come next, also ahead of the public announcement, under embargo if you need it. Resellers, integration partners, and agencies who built a business on your product deserve a personal call or a direct email from someone senior, not a mass notice. They made promises to their own clients based on your product. Give them the four dates, the commercial terms that apply to them (inventory buyback, revenue share through the Service End Date, referral terms for your replacement product), and a named contact.
Customers hear on the Announcement Date, from you, no later than the public. That means an email to every active account, an in-product banner or notice where possible, and a dedicated page on your site with the full details. Google’s Podcasts sunset showed how far in-product notice can go. When Google announced on September 26, 2023 that Google Podcasts would be discontinued in 2024, it said users could download an OPML file of their subscriptions to take to another app. By December 2023, Android Central reported, the app showed a popup and banner explaining the shutdown with an “Export subscriptions” button, and Google gave April 2, 2024 as the end of the app’s support. Customers who never read a blog post still met the news inside the product they used.
The press comes last, and the press release is often the least important piece. For a small product, a newsroom statement and a note to the one or two reporters who covered it may be enough. For a well-known one, plan for coverage whether you pitch it or not.
The product discontinuation announcement template
Here is a customer-facing product discontinuation announcement that can double as the core of a press statement. Replace the bracketed text, keep the order, and skip the long strategy paragraph at the top. Customers want the dates first and the reasoning second.
Subject: [Product name] will be discontinued on [Service End Date]. Here is what happens next.
Today, [Announcement Date], we are announcing that [Company] will discontinue [Product name]. The product will continue to work as it does now until [Service End Date]. After that date, [describe exactly what stops: the app will no longer load, devices will no longer connect to cloud services, orders will no longer ship].
We made this decision because [one or two honest sentences: the product did not reach the adoption we needed to keep investing, or we are focusing our team on (replacement product)]. We know many of you depend on [Product name] every day, and this was a hard call.
Starting today, [Product name] is no longer available to new customers. Existing customers can [renew, purchase add-ons, buy replacement parts] until [Last Sale Date].
If you paid for [Product name], here is how refunds will work. [State the policy in plain numbers: customers on annual plans will receive a prorated refund for every unused month after the Service End Date, issued automatically to the original payment method by (date). Hardware purchased directly from us after (date) is eligible for a full refund.] You do not need to do anything to receive it. [Or: To request a refund, visit (URL) before (date).]
Your data belongs to you. You can export [describe the data] at any time from [location in product] until [Data and Support Sunset Date]. After that date, we will delete it. Our support team will continue to answer questions about [Product name] at [support channel] until [Data and Support Sunset Date].
If you want to keep doing what [Product name] does for you, we recommend [replacement product or named third-party alternative]. [Describe the migration path in one or two sentences: existing customers can move their account with one click and keep their current price for (period), or our team will migrate your data for free if you request it before (date).] Full migration steps are at [URL].
We are grateful to everyone who used [Product name], gave us feedback, and built on it. If you have questions, reply to this email or contact [named person or team] at [address].
[Name], [Title], [Company]
Notice what the template leaves out. No “exciting new chapter.” No “sunsetting this product to better serve you,” which customers read as an insult. And the signature belongs to a real person, because a notice signed by “The Team” reads like nobody wanted to own it.
For the press version, keep the order and add a paragraph of company context plus a quote from a named executive. “We are proud of what we built” gives a reporter nothing. A quote that explains the trade-off, in a sentence a human would say out loud, gets printed.
Say the number on support, refunds, and migration
The single biggest predictor of how a discontinuation lands is whether the money question is answered in specifics. “Eligible customers may receive a refund” generates a support ticket from every customer. “Annual subscribers will receive a prorated refund for unused months, issued automatically by December 15” generates almost none.
Decide the refund policy before you write a word, and get finance to commit to it in writing. The common structures are a full refund for recent purchases, a prorated refund for subscriptions, a credit toward a replacement product, or some combination. Credits are cheaper and keep the customer, but if a credit is all you offer, say so and expect pushback. If refunds are automatic, say that the customer does not need to act. If they require a request, give the URL and the deadline in the same sentence.
Support needs the same precision. Say what support covers until the Data and Support Sunset Date (bug fixes, security patches, export help) and what it does not. If security updates stop before service does, say so, because enterprise customers will ask.
Migration is where you can turn a loss into retention. If you have a replacement product, make moving to it easy and cheap: price protection for a defined period, free data transfer, a named migration contact for larger accounts. If you have no replacement, recommend a competitor by name when one fits. It feels strange, but customers remember the company that helped them land somewhere. Google’s Podcasts sunset leaned on both approaches at once, pushing users toward YouTube Music while still offering an OPML export so people could take their subscriptions to any other podcast app.
Then publish one canonical page with all of this and link to it from every message. Add a “last updated” date at the top. Reporters will cite it, and your support team will paste the link a thousand times.
What the press wants from a sunset story
Most discontinuations are not big news, and the best outcome is a short, accurate story that matches what you told customers. When a sunset will draw coverage (a well-known consumer product, a passionate user base, any hint of trouble at the company), answer the reporter’s questions before they ask.
They will want to know why, in a sentence that is not marketing language. They will want to know how many people are affected, and if you will not say, they will look for proxies like app download counts. They will ask about customer data, about layoffs, and about whether customers are being treated fairly, which is where your refund and migration terms become the story.
Give your spokesperson the four dates, the refund terms, and a direct answer on staffing, even if that answer is “no roles are being eliminated as part of this decision” or “affected team members are moving to (other product).” If there are layoffs, do not let a reporter discover them from a former employee’s post a week later.
Send the statement to the reporters who covered the product’s launch, because they have context and tend to write a fairer piece, and link the canonical customer page so their story points readers to the right details. A product discontinuation announcement is a case for a short, personal note, not a broad blast to your whole media list.
A discontinuation handled with four clear dates, real numbers, and a named person signing it is the kind of announcement customers remember when you launch the next thing.