A life-time membership costs 12 - 23 times more than the monthly subscription fee depending which package you choose. I'm not sure that paying a huge lump sum for a subscription I don't want is a good alternative to taking a monthly subscription that I don't want.

Generally agree with this, though they do frequent sales that bring the lifetime price down substantially. For myself, I thought that the bundled sequencing plus lifetime membership ($400) was fair just for the sequencing itself, so I didn't mind too much.