It is really hard to read through all that marketing nonsense. Not sure if I should cry or burst out in tears from laughing.
In any case I can't stand all that false statements. Let's take this one for example:
> Subscription demands constant improvement of our product and enables us to make $Product better for you — faster.
In fact, the opposite is the case! Just look at Adobe. Or maybe CAD/BIM products, like Revit from Autodesk. The only thing that was new in this years version was slanted walls (!). Something competitors have for ~20 years already.
So for me subscription basically is equivalent with the opposite. As soon companies decided to switch from the possibility to let me buy their software, as in "I own this thing and I can use it indefinitely." to "rent" their software, progress came to a grinding halt most times.
The reason why this doesn't work like in the PR statement above is the way things work in real life.
First you lock them customers in: all their files are now in your proprietary format. The presumption from above is, that you won't renew you subscription when you don't like the new yearly version – but then you can no longer access your files you need, since you do business! So cancelling of subscriptions basically never happens, turning your company into a gold mine.
Yearly realases are bad btw and nobody likes them. Except shareholdes maybe.
Completely agree here. I think subscribtions are bad for customers, AND THE DEVELOPERS too. Basically companies cut down on R&D instead of pushing on R&D to gain new upgrade and customers fees.
I bought GraphicConverter [1] a zillion years ago, and I just upgraded to their v11, and so I paid them probably more than I've ever paid any other software -- BUT, they always come up with a list of improvement 5 pages long, and I've been using that stuff on/off for 20+ years.
I have no problems pushing money their way, I know where that money is going ultimately. It certainly doesn't go in shareholder or marketing drone's pocket.
This is driven by the shift toward valuing companies entirely on recurrent revenue. I've been told that non-recurrent revenue is meaningless and is often ignored.
Its not a fad. Recurring revenue has always been worth than non recurring because valuations are forward looking and recurring revenue is lower risk. Look at smartphones. Just because someone bought a smartphone last year doesnt mean they'll buy one this year. That sale last year does not matter as much for your current valuation as if you sold a subscription
Yep. Subscription models become a necessity when companies have a mature product and the feature set and stability changes don't apply pressure to update. Once the product is mature, people don't upgrade because it costs money and the old version does what they need it to do. That's a losing proposition for an MBA dominated world. So you counter that by making it so no one can ever own their software but they have to subscribe to it so you can continue to extract value.
You never owned the software, just purchased an indefinite license to use it. This has turned out to be ultimately unprofitable and has changed from infinite subscription terms to finite ones.
I don't know why you think it hurts R&D. The alternative is a dead company.
Because before they had to make the product a lot better to sell you on an upgrade.
> The alternative is a dead company.
Were software companies dead before 2013?
Of course, it is legal and fair for them to run this particular business model. The other poster is just expressing that as a consumer they like it less.
Conversely they're not charging you a massive one time update fee. They're charging many smaller fees for smaller updates which is more representative of the development costs of the product, where you'd have to split next years development on updates and bug fixes for customers that would never give you another dime.
This is unsustainable for many software shops which is why many of them died. We're seeing such growth in SaaS today because pricing based on how much value your product creates for users, on a schedule that reflects how much it costs to deliver it is much better for everyone involved.
Like Adobe is a good example of this. Their products are much better today than they used to be and more affordable for everyone. The real trouble is the CC runtimes which are just shitty software, the pricing model is not a problem.
I understand and agree with basically all of that.
All I'm saying is that in the old model there was a more urgent incentive for them to add great stuff. In certain circumstances this benefited consumers. There were plenty of companies that did just fine without Saas.
> In fact, the opposite is the case! Just look at Adobe.
Well from some points of view, they're right - I had an Adobe CC subscription for a little while, and after six months of no improvements, I abandoned Adobe products entirely.
> Historical Adobe releases were years apart but you're unhappy with a couple of months because it's a subscription? I can't follow this logic.
I was unhappy with the overall product/service. Since I was paying on a subscription basis, I'd spent less money over those months than I would have on a full release, so had more money to switch to an alternative. There's also no psychological burden of a sunk cost on the status quo - you feel free to switch at any time there's a better alternative.
My problems weren't that Adobe hadn't made general improvements in the six months time frame, it's that I had specific issues that they didn't address, and I didn't want to keep paying a monthly fee to be having those specific issues.
> It's that I had specific issues that they didn't address, and I didn't want to keep paying a monthly fee to be having those specific issues.
So let me get this straight. Adobe has adopted a payment model that allows customer to more easily switch to alternatives (thanks to no large upfront cost), while simultaneously making more changes overall to the software over the same fixed-period of time, but because those changes didn't match your exact needs in the moment you had them you switched to an alternative?
How is Adobe the bad guy in this situation? Not necessarily saying your comment is painting Adobe negatively, but that seems to be the general feeling towards Adobe's subscription model in this thread.
It seems like a pretty good deal to be able to minimize your investment in a software product.
I don't have a problem with Adobe's subscription model - just providing my own anecdote about how subscription models saved me from giving Adobe money, and avoided software lock-in. I'm incentivizing faster improvements by only giving my subscription dollars to companies who deliver - and I can evaluate who delivers on a monthly basis.
Because they were new versions and they had to sell you on the upgrade.
Presumably one of the advantages of subscriptions is they can make ongoing improvements regularly as opposed to big releases. They release updates now, they just don't have many new features.
The feature cadence over a 2-year period doesn't look any different to me. The only change is you're getting piecemeal changes faster vs. a large number of changes all at once.
Blender is great. I use it myself (3D resin printing). But I've also used similar software I had to pay for, which was much better than Blender overall. Same way Photoshop is better than Gimp, and Windows UI is still better than Gnome/KDE. Sometimes to get great software and experience, you have to pay for it. And that's ok, it doesn't make the free software, like Blender, any less eff'ing awesome.
I can't justify an Adobe CC subscription since I use it so sporadically. A few months ago, I happened across Affinity Designer[1]. I bought it and I've been very happy. It has all of the functionality I would know how to use in Illustrator anyway.
Combined with Sketch, another non subscription product, it provides everything I need for the little UI design I do.
Adobe, please just fix bugs and stop taking away functionality. Exporting as SVG in Animate is under the "legacy" option and I figure they're going to take it away soon. There used to be multiple vector export options (svg, eps, fxg).
I think all these companies rely on /captive audiences/. ie people who have invested in their product already, and they can somehow "up sell" them the subscribtion for a while and it sounds like a GREAT plan.
However, any 'new' customer will not let themselves be trapped. It's happening with Adobe Photoshop and stuff, where they've been skinning their customer base for years, but quite frankly who would now as a new potiential customer decide to shackle themselves to that? I know quite a few people who will use inferior tools JUST so they don't have to hook up to Adobe blood-suck.
Say Adobe Lightroom. Super product, but updates started to slow down and slow down and WOW now look it's all ONLINE baby for a price. I bought all updates until LR6, but now I know it's a lot cheaper to archive my machine with LR6 in a corner and use it for my photo edit than switching to the 'super value online thingy' for $$$/year. I don't use it that much to want that, and next time I want to use it, it actually might be incompatible with /whatever is in my chain of hardware/ anyway.
I'm sad to say Sketchup is doing this, if they had a $100 upgrade price every year or so, I'd pay happily -- however here's lies the other main problem: these companies don't WANT to invest in R&D enough to have a 'valid' reason to have a new major version every 12-18 months, they actually think people will just keep paying.
Well guess what, perhaps some people will, but no NEW people will. In the case of sketchup, whatever the marketing blurbs have spattered about, NOTHING IS NEW for like 10 years, I mean, they try to add 'hooks' here and there, but the main program is exactly the same, same bugs for that long. I suspect the devs who know how to do matrix multiplication have long left after google dumped the product, and they are now left with a handful of webheads.
Do I want to pay for that?
Hmm wait until I clean the coffee off the front my t-shirt.
I'm still on Lightroom 5, I bought it years ago and that's where all my photos live. If I'd been forced into a subscription the total cost would have been many multiples of what I paid. I don't rent my camera for years on end- why would I rent the software that organizes all my photos?
I agree and there are pieces of software I've only purchased once and have used for decades. But that also creates a bit of an incentive not to worry to much about quality. After all, selling you a fixed progress bar in the next version gives people an incentive to upgrade.
Its really to bad, that paying for software isn't more about rewarding good behavior.
Agree on all points but I'd be surprised if sketch up had a captive audience? It's not like adobe that basically just had to put a fence around the herd, they basically just closed the doors with no one inside. Unless a lot has a changed I remember sketch up barely working much less being used by professionals? it's very weird to make their product less accessible at this stage.
Edit: to clarify I'm not saying you can't be professional and use sketchup, it's more that it's hard to really pull the subscription bait on switch on non corporate users on a niche product like this. Especially a niche that has alternatives.Maybe sketchup is actually used in business now though.
I have two LR6 licenses, so 4 computers (my desktop, my wife’s laptop, my laptop and one spare). The second license I bought less than a year ago (DVD from B&H, I was surprised it was still available for sale). With DNG converter, it even works reasonably well with my newer cameras (Nikon Z7 and Fuji X-T4, my Ricoh GRIII being supported natively).
At some point it will stop working with macOS the way CS6 did, but I also flipped the bozo bit on Apple so my plan is to switch to Linux and DarkTable, which is making great strides.
As one who has used SketchUp for many years (because it was free for Makers), and even bought a pro licence at one point, I can say with confidence that this product is NOT worth more than $25/yr. It's riddled with bugs and the resultant models are extremely unreliable in terms of precision. Even with Pro, you need to buy a ton of plugins to do things you would think would be pretty standard for a Pro license like rendering, animation, pipes from lines, etc (there isn't really a decent animation plugin either that isn't buggy).
This is for making quick rough concept models only. For any serious engineering or 3D printing, I recommend Blender, Autodesk Inventor, or Solidworks.
Do not waste your money on SkethUp. You will waste a lot of time working around bugs and you will need to buy extra pluggins to do basic tasks, many of which are barely supported by their owners (there are exceptions). It's a product that had great potential, but has simply devolved.
I guess it depends what you use it for. Definitely it is not OK for engineering or 3D printing.
But it is really quite good for planning interiors, where no other tool I have found is as easy to navigate and change a model in broad and in detail in one fluid movement.
The latest version is the best, least buggiest version I have used in the past 5 years at least. It is well with buying a classic licence before they shelve it in November.
But though I easily get the value from the cost of subscription, the fact that you cannot access your models in the event it expires is really shit. (Well, you might be able to access your models on the web version, but mine generally weigh in at 150-200mb, they just don't load.)
Plus at least half the value of sketchup is in extensions from people like thomthom, fredo, or eneroth (and being able to their in your own script here or there). Do these even work on the web version?
The UI, both mouse and gestures were really fantastic. SketchUp gravity points and gesture inference was exceptional. I've used it to get thoughts out quickly since 2013. I'd pay $25/yr for it. Although I've never 3D printed anything, I just find it intuitive and a fast sketchpad.
I guess for businesses the whole annual pricing is fine, if not preferred, but I wonder how many of these companies are killing any possibility of non-businesses buying their software. Maybe that's ok with them and they have some internal calculation that those people cost them more than they are worth.
I hate subscriptions, for a lot of the reason others have said (ex. getting locked into a piece of software that holds my data hostage), but I got a few others. Its been a royal pain in the butt to have a bunch of subscriptions during this time. I have a lot more outgoing cash and living closer to the paycheck since others need the savings. Companies are just lazy about subscription scheduling.
It must be paid on the first day of the month or a fixed day. For the most part, people pay rent on the first. I wonder how many creators on Paetron would make more money if the timing could be changed.
Let's say you have a product that is used by seniors in the USA. You might want to seriously consider doing a bit of work an allowing them to schedule to pay you on the third Wednesday of the month or the Thursday following the third Wednesday of the month.
The common refrain is that you shouldn't be buying product X if this is a problem for you. Well, maybe, but dips like this are a pain and not getting into a situation where accidents happen would be nice. Accidents resulting from a bank fee is just a pain.
The other problem is now you are a Netflix, Hulu, Disney+, Utility, and Rent competitor. There is a big difference between a one-time purchase and signing up for a continuing cost along with all the others.
I'm so tired of this bullshit. Fuck proprietary formats and fuck proprietary software.
The only reliable, long-term way to guarantee that you'll have perpetual access to software that you rely on is for you to own a copy of the source for that software.
We can have additional conversations about open source licenses and funding, but if you don't have the source, you will eventually be fucked.
So they are going from 700$ for perpetual license to 300$ per year subscription. How on earth are they framing it as a net benefit for their customers?
Probably the quality of their product will increase because they will not have the pressure to engage the yearly upgrade circus, adding dubious features just to justify upgrading and competing with themselves.
Also they will be more likely to stay in business due to the recurring business so you will not have to fear a mature yet useful product going away because their demand dries up.
Subscription aligns objectives. They want your continued business and you want that a product that does something you need is not abandoned when you reach a point where upgrades do more harm than good.
> you will not have to fear a mature yet useful product going away because their demand dries up.
Now you have to fear it much more. With perpetual licenses, you never lose access to your work and your files. Maybe you have to keep a computer working with current version of Windows, because the software does not work with the next one. But you can continue using the software, well, in perpetuity. Many people are still using the last non-subscription version of Lightroom, Photoshop, etc. Some people are still using Lotus Agenda and WordPerfect.
In contrast, with subscription software, if the company does not do well and goes out of business, or does moderately well and gets acquhired, or if for any reason loses interest in continuing providing the software, you get an email about their incredible journey and how proud they are and oh yeah, the service will stop working in 20 days and your files and years of work locked in a proprietary format will become inaccessible.
Hopefully you will not have to reinstall your perpetual license application when the vendor activation server is long gone.
Since the long term survival chances of businesses based on permanent licenses are a lot lower, then your odds will be better with freeware, open source or pirated software.
SketchUp died the day it was bought, I mean, it's awesome for its purpose and I've been using it for +12 years, but it lost the magical essence from when it was owned and made really great by Google.
This is of course driven by the desire to have predictable and steady revenue. It's easier to plan and resource, but I would also say it's easier to coast for a mature product. If you need to push a release to generate a revenue influx, you would be more motivated to deliver. However, in the case of a mature product each feature will probably have diminishing returns. For the user this makes the incentive to skip an upgrade tempting, so locking them into a sub model while there's still leverage is a strategy.
I've been using the free SketchUp (now SketchupMake) for many years, and it seems that no longer exists. I think it's been replaced with a new web-only free version. I found it to be pretty nice for simple woodworking and home projects, with a rather intuitive interface. My use was so casual and infrequent that I never really considered the paid version.
Is there a good alternative (free or reasonably priced paid) for very simple and casual 3D modeling?
TinkerCad is owned by AutoDesk. So I would not be surprised if it ends up in a similar situation as Sketchup. If you want a totally free product that is also open source - your 2 options are
This is annoying. I recently got a 3D printer that actually works (as opposed to one that requires endless tinkering) and I've been using SketchUp a lot lately.
Just today I encountered an issue with some bad mesh and I was thinking "you know, I like this product, I might just give them money, at least I'll get a perpetual license out of it".
This makes me reconsider that. I really think JetBrains went the right route here for their subscription/license and I was excited to see Trimble follow in their footsteps, until now.
And also this marketing copy is just a giant slap in the face. Give me the numbers!
In my experience, Sketchup consistently produces poor STL meshes. The only solutions I've found are to import the meshes into Blender and repair them manually, or redesign the project in a different CAD program. (I've settled on Solvespace for my personal use.)
I didn’t realize the Trimble GPS company made 3D modeling software. I am in the market for some since I got a 3D printer to go beyond TinkerCad, hopefully less overwhelming than Blender.
Subscription pricing is an absolute deal-breaker as far as I am concerned, so I am glad to learn this so I can avoid SketchUp. I have largely switched over from Adobe CS to Affinity (only Lightroom remains tricky to migrate from, even though I’ve done 4 DAM migrations before).
> You can subscribe for a year, skip a year, renew every year — it’s up to you. Whatever you choose, you’ll always have the latest version with the newest features
They may want to rework those sentences to be less absurdist. Those lines are more akin to "Cancel your subscription? - we'll still always give you the latest version! All bits must go!!"
I don't do architectural modeling, I build furniture, but check out bricscad.https://www.bricsys.com/en-intl/ I describe it to people as if AutoCAD and Sketchup had a baby. I bought it because it was a reasonable priced CAD with linux support, but it has gotten really amazing in the last few releases.
They even released a stripped down free version with a more sketchup like interface called BricsCAD shape.
Thanks for the link. Unfortunately, it looks more like an alternative to AutoCAD than Sketchup. It’s only a side gig so it’s not critical at the moment.
Is anyone aware analyses of how this affects a company, their employees, their products? I find it very difficult to reason about value with subscription services, especially when the costs are even more divorced from labor than normal.
Subscription software is just a way to fleece gullible people, most software before mass internet penetration allowed stealing software (I refuse to call software as a subscription a rational thing for 99% of software).
Is just a way for companies to sell you the same shit repackaged with only minimal effort. You don't seem to grasp the fundamental principle of a corporation is to give you the LEAST possible service for the highest possible price. AKA it's fuck you I got mine.
99% of the time Software as a service preys on gullible people and flaws in your psychology you aren't aware of. Best to stay away.
Piracy actually put pressure on companies to innovate because you could get the complete version for free there was some incentive to improve the product to make it better than the pirate version, as strange as that sounds. Piracy is actually good for competition because most people are honest, if that wasn't the case Microsoft, EA, Valve, etc couldn't have become rich pre-internet where it was trivially easy to pirate everything by just copying the files.
Modern DRM is literally holding files hostage using the internet as a dongle and using encryption.
So no software as a service preys on gullible people to sell you last years with minor tweaks at inflated prices.
Maximizing total number of goods is not the same as maximizing goods per dollar spent. You want 1 smart car, and you want to pay as little for it as they will let you.
I tend to agree (hence why I commented), but I was curious if there was any methodology out there for figuring out things like margins and man hours per subscription cycle—I am fairly illiterate in reading through quarterly releases, for instance, and I'm not even sure if this thing is required to be reported.
Software is largely enormous margin in an era of increasing drm and encryption because they can delay piracy indefinitely like on mobile with client-server gacha games.
Check out the revenue for mobile, it's insane because it preys on mass stupidity and tech illiteracy.
Either way many segments of software you can be sure are making insane profits like Overwatch, league of legends with selling flags for skins.
The internet has given tech companies 24/7 access to the super rich, the super gullible and super mentally ill.
Think about that for a second, before the internet people with brainless spending habits had no direct access to companies they got their products through intermediaries. The internet is a game changer for software companies because they can trap software inside "the world sized PC" we call the internet.
The internet remember, is the worlds biggest motherboard, and whoever programs the motherboard owns the motherboard. That's how we ended up with steam drm, uplay, origin, etc. We've been getting hacked software and slaughtered on the privacy freedom front because the average consumer is retard level stupid when it comes to technology.
Many software companies are getting away with the crime of the century. I'll see if I can't poke around and find some helpful guides for you to decode corporate speak.
In any case I can't stand all that false statements. Let's take this one for example:
> Subscription demands constant improvement of our product and enables us to make $Product better for you — faster.
In fact, the opposite is the case! Just look at Adobe. Or maybe CAD/BIM products, like Revit from Autodesk. The only thing that was new in this years version was slanted walls (!). Something competitors have for ~20 years already.
So for me subscription basically is equivalent with the opposite. As soon companies decided to switch from the possibility to let me buy their software, as in "I own this thing and I can use it indefinitely." to "rent" their software, progress came to a grinding halt most times.
The reason why this doesn't work like in the PR statement above is the way things work in real life. First you lock them customers in: all their files are now in your proprietary format. The presumption from above is, that you won't renew you subscription when you don't like the new yearly version – but then you can no longer access your files you need, since you do business! So cancelling of subscriptions basically never happens, turning your company into a gold mine.
Yearly realases are bad btw and nobody likes them. Except shareholdes maybe.