Elements is not a subscription model (Realmac should really change that wording on their website - it’s confusing @dan).
What Elements is, is a one-off purchase including 12 months of updates. If you desire more updates, you’ll need to purchase another year of updates for a fee. This goes on ad infinitum, until you decide to stop paying.
If you don’t pay for the/another extra year, Elements will continue to work perfectly fine. You just won’t get the latest features.
Think of it as “extended warranty”.
This is different to how, say, Microsoft 365 or Adobe Creative Ripoff Cloud works - those products actually do stop working if you stop paying, and are therefor true subscriptions.
Cheers,
Erwin