I am just thinking in your case, if someone looks up a device, you really shouldn't suggest you don't know who owns it: If they've ever subscribed, you do know.

But perhaps you should have a system where there's a recovery fee for a lapsed account. If your service costs 24 a year or so, perhaps it's 150 or 200 for you to connect up a recovery on a lapsed account. So the risk of not paying is having to pay a lot more if you lose your drone and aren't subbed.

Thanks for your feedback - I think you're right about showing the aircraft is registered even if a subscription has lapsed - it's the right thing to do.

I'll think of a way to queue the notifications to the owner so that they get sent once a subscription has been set back up, and a warning to them that someone has their drone in the meantime.

There's basically three ways to pay for this kind of service, and I'm not sure you picked the best one.

Upfront: Pay to cover a given device once, and it's covered for the life of the device. (Upside: No subscriptions to worry about and you get more cash right at the start. Downside: You need a steady source of new registrations (or you need to save a good chunk of that upfront fee towards ongoing operations).

On recovery: Pay a much higher amount only when someone tries to return your drone to you through the service. (Upside: People can join for free since there's no reason not to! Downside: If people don't lose their drones, you may go out of business.)

Subscription: What you've got. (Upside: Revenue is extremely consistent. Downside: You end up in situations where you could help someone recover a five grand drone but aren't because they didn't pay you two euros this month.)

I'm only really comfortable with the model I've chosen and since people are already paying for it (the service is paying for itself right now which is great) I think it's been validated.

There is scope for offering a higher specification service to commercial operators but I'm not sure I want to get involved with the liability aspects - I did build this for my own purposes in the first place and I figured I could provide a cheap, reliable service to other hobbyists.

Thanks for your feedback, I appreciate the time you spent.

Glad to be of any service, if I gave you ideas or something to ponder, I did my job. ;)

Oh, one more question: It's a .co.uk address. Are you able to do this for UK customers only, or is it a global service? If you're just putting people in contact with others, I'd think that there'd be no reason people in other countries couldn't use it, but I don't know.