kljpmsd opened this issue on Mar 09, 2015 · 254 posts
AmbientShade posted Tue, 24 March 2015 at 7:50 PM
I've answered it 3 times now. I don't know what part of what I said in those 3 different posts that you don't understand.
Buying a license is more expensive up front and provides you with no access to future upgrades without paying more. Even on a monthly payment plan - which is all that Allegorithmic is offering, it's not a subscription - you still aren't getting upgrades without paying more.
The subscription plan is cheaper and provides you with constant updates. You never have to worry about your software being outdated and it doesnt' cost a small fortune to upgrade. You're paying for those upgrades through your subscription.
A one time license to the CS suite is $3,000. That does not include updates. It's $3,000 as-is. And next year, if you want to upgrade (pretending they were still upgrading CS for sake of argument), it would be an additional $1200 to $1500, and that would go on perpetually.
With a subscription, that same $3000 gets you 5 years worth of the use of that software at their current rates, including all upgrades. Based on the old model, in 5 years time you would have paid $3,000 initially, and approximately $1200 to $1500 every 12 to 18 months if you intend on staying current, putting your grand total at the end of that 5 year period somewhere around $6,000 to $8,000.
Assuming their fees will go up exponentially is just baseless fear-mongering to make them sound greedy. So far their subscription fees have only DECREASED since the release of CC.
And a subscription model to any software, makes pirating that software much more difficult.
I can't make it any clearer than that.
If you don't like that model, that's fine. No one is forcing you to use it. But the idea that they're a greed machine is your opinion. My opinion is that their current model is more favorable and more affordable to more people than it ever used to be.