The Capture One Loyalty Program is a small way for us to say thank you for being part of our community and using our products.
We have lots of great additions planned over the coming year and we want to continue to improve the program with your help. So please let us know in the comments below what else you’d like to see in it. We won’t be able to reply to all of your suggestions but we’ll read through all of them
Please choose from one of the following:
I have a subscription to Capture One Pro
As a subscriber, you’ll automatically be part of our Loyalty Program. It’s pretty simple, the longer you’re a subscriber, the more benefits you’ll get.
Even better, we’ll take the start date of your current subscription, so every year you’ve already been a subscriber counts towards your benefits, even if you started your subscription before we introduced our loyalty program.
What do I get?
You get 20% off the cost of a perpetual license for Capture One Pro for each year you’ve been a subscriber. Yes, that means after 5 years on a subscription, we’ll give you a copy of Capture One Pro completely free.
The perpetual license will be for whatever version of Capture One Pro is available at the time. It doesn’t come with any free updates with new features but it’s yours to keep, works as long as your hardware and operating system support it, and there’s nothing to pay. You can think of it as getting a ‘snapshot in time’ of Capture One Pro.
So if you find you’re no longer using Capture One Pro very often, or don’t need new features and updates anymore, this is a way for you to stop your subscription while keeping access to a version of the software that supports your catalog.
Prices in USD / GBP / EUR are indicative and may vary in your local currency set by our payment provider. USD prices are excluding sales tax, while GBP and EUR prices are inclusive of VAT. If you have a business number the VAT will be removed on checkout.
NOTE: Only active subscriptions participate in the loyalty program. If you had another subscription that had been canceled right before you initiated the current one, it may also count in the offer. But the gap between two subscriptions should not be bigger than 1 month.
How do I get my discount?
Simply contact our friendly customer support team and we’ll provide you with a code you can use to get your discount.
I have a perpetual license for Capture One Pro
The Capture One Loyalty Program replaces the old 'upgrade pricing’ available under your account at captureone.com.
Under the Loyalty Program, you'll receive benefits based on how recently you bought your perpetual license for Capture One Pro.
What do I get?
Prices in USD / GBP / EUR are indicative and may vary in your local currency set by our payment provider. USD prices are excluding sales tax, while GBP and EUR prices are inclusive of VAT. If you have a business number the VAT will be removed on checkout.
How do I get my discount?
You should have received a code by email that you can use to claim your discounts in our store. If you have not received it, simply contact our friendly customer support team here and we’ll provide you with a new one. We’re working to make this a much simpler process so please bear with us in the meantime.
I have a multi-user or enterprise license for Capture One Pro
Currently our loyalty program is only available for those with a single-user license.
Comments
154 comments
https://support.captureone.com/hc/en-us/profiles/368674517198-Ramon-B-Rodriguez
As a subscriber, you’ll automatically be part of our Loyalty Program. It’s pretty simple, the longer you’re a subscriber, the more benefits you’ll get.
Even better, we’ll take the start date of your current subscription, so every year you’ve already been a subscriber counts towards your benefits, even if you started your subscription before we introduced our loyalty program.
I think you should challenge that decision then
Michael Parker
So just to be clear. The initial subscription starting date is rewarded! The whole program is retroactively rewarding the subscription status of long time supporters. Great, but if you paid for perpetual licenses for 8 years (like I did) you are "rewarded" with an upgrade price of $179 at best, and you will be stuck in feature freezes from now on (there is no history rewarded beyond 24 months). In the old program, C1 was offered for $159 during Pre-Sales/Black Friday (2022). The incentive is to switch to the more expensive subscription, to keep getting feature updates. If you want to exit, you have to pay the perpetual license on top of it to be able to work with your catalogs (ah, these database updates ... the "old" perpetual license will practically be of no use anymore). OK, after five years you will get a license for free. In effect, that means I did pay (increasingly more) for 13 years to get a perpetual license again. So loyalty towards customers that have chosen and will chose to buy instead of subscribing is pretty limited. The amount of criticism is not surprising.
mountainview
Yes that's pretty much how I feel.
I've posted previously the loyalty scheme is only for subscribers, and even for them only kicks in when they decide to stop paying subscriptions, and so ironically becoming un-loyal ! In fact in the early years it's not even that much of a scheme, you really need to have subscribed for 4 or 5 years to get much real value.
Michael Parker
There are some underlying assumptions this program is based upon. And it is fair to assume that subscribers may have some anxiety about what happens if they choose to exit. So this is certainly a novel feature that is commendable (and has unforeseen side effects in perception as you pointed out).
The Excel tables also look nice in board presentations. We covered everything, right? Except they did not anticipate the widespread backlash. Which in effect means, they seemingly know little about a probably sizable share of their customer base. If you Google today, there is not one magazine, blog, forum, etc. that is not critical about the decisions made. Even worse, many customers are airing their dissatisfaction. C1 really destroyed a lot of goodwill here.
Worse, you get the feeling that you are ungrateful for criticizing this software we are invested in. As if everything should be free, NO. Many customers have been strong advocates for this product, and now C1 is effectively telling them. Well, thank you for financing our journey so far, but now we take a different path. A path that is only clear in its financials (there is no guarantee, though that they would not increase the prices within the above projected five years) and, of course, no roadmap. Judging by the speed and quality of development over the last years, limited trust. No roadmap, no trust. No transparency, no trust. Other companies share their development plans with their customers and let them participate publicly. Why? To create predictability, accountability, trust and last but not least to innovate! C1 is unfortunately mostly a black box.
If their financial outlook is not that rosy, then talk about it, try to get your customers on board and do not cover it under a so-called “Loyalty” scheme that obviously offends many. The only way to grow and stay profitable as a company is to keep offering an attractive product/service. It is not a novel insight that it is much more expensive to gain new customers than to keep existing ones. I do fear C1 underestimated the amount of attrition and overestimated their potential share of market with their new “Loyalty” program and pricing structure.
Michael Parker
https://support.captureone.com/hc/en-us/articles/8824180384285/comments/9415819239325
Of course I did challenge... no reply for now...
Christine Monberg
Michael Parker
Not really so... I've been a subscriber for 5 years, with 3 different activation keys, and they are denying me moving to a perpetual license for free when my actual subscription expires, next April. They say only last active subscription applies, that would be only 1 year for me.
They didn't mention any of that in the article above posted by Christine Monberg
Still waiting a reply from the Support Team. We shall see, but I fell frustrated, disappointed and fooled.
Ramon B Rodriguez
So do they actually mean the start date of your latest unbroken subscription?
If so they should make that clear, which plainly they haven’t by saying ‘so every year you’ve already been a subscriber counts towards your benefits, even if you started your subscription before we introduced our loyalty program.’
I guess, as you say you have three licences, you’ve not got an unbroken subscription?
My concern is not so much for now but for the future. The product is excellent and the vast majority of people on here have stayed with CO because they think it is a superior product rather than through any sense of loyalty so I don’t see an ill-conceived ‘loyalty’ programme to be the answer.
What I would like to see is CO’s vision of the future. Do they want a widely used product with a big amateur user base and income to match or is the intention to make it more niche and aim it at people whose livelihood depends on photography? This could possibly survive with a lower user base but at prices vastly higher than the competition.
This change has obviously upset a huge number of people, a lot of whom will no doubt leave Capture One thus reducing future income stream. In my view the only way to be able to keep up the spend to continue innovating and staying ahead of the competition with a reduced user base in that situation would be to raise prices for those who remain thus alienating even more who will leave……
I don’t think the answer is to try and take on Lightroom in the subscription stakes as CO will unfortunately not win that battle - LR has far lower prices and a huge critical mass of users with which CO will not be able to compete (for those of you old enough remember the VHS/Betamax war - Betamax was widely considered the superior product but VHS got in early in this country and gained a big following before Betamax could get going).
The only outcome I can foresee is that CO have decided that a smaller market paying vastly higher prices is the way forward for them.
I am not going to jump ship immediately, I will remain with my current perpetual licence and see what happens in the next six months to a year which means no upgrade from me and no subscription so a reduction (admittedly small) in revenue for CO which is opposite to their wish. I believe that the future will either be subscription at a much higher cost in which case I will reluctantly leave or a rethink from CO which is what I am hoping for
When I watch the conversation between Paul Reiffer and Rafael on Youtube I get an impression the main focus for Capture One are the professional users. However which part of the half-million users are professional?
Unfortunately they didn't really discuss the Loyalty of long time Perpetual License holders and the way CO is planning to support bug-fixes to older versions of the program.
Henk de Haan
In the conversation, the CEO was talking about a quarter million users (I just checked again). Which makes Nick Sellick's argument even more valid.
Michael Parker
Yes, exactly, they try to count only since the last unbroken subscription, that's 1 year, instead of 5 years.
I generated a new subscription twice, for reasons that had to do with my credit card, but those were continuous over 5 years in total... even overlapping for a short period of time, if I remember well.
One way or the other, they talk about "loyal customers" but seem don't care...
In this thread initiated by Christine Monberg there's no mention about broken or unbroken subscriptions... actually it says:
"You get 20% off the cost of a perpetual license for Capture One Pro for each year you’ve been a subscriber. Yes, that means after 5 years on a subscription, we’ll give you a copy of Capture One Pro completely free."
So we shall see where is my "copy of Capture One Pro completely free"... 😉
The way they are managing this is confusing, frustrating and irritating...
I fell at the first hurdle, contacted customer services as suggested. I receive a reply to say I can get 60% off a perpetual licence as I have subscribes for 3+years. I have actually subscribed since March 2017 so just under 6 years, but alas no free licence.
Ramon B Rodriguez, there has been an update to this page, I'm hoping its relevant for you:
First, can the person in charge please be honest. There is no such thing as a software subscription. It is software rental. By definition, if I no longer have access to a thing when I stop paying for it, it is a rental. Full stop. Do you "subscribe" monthly to live in your apartment?
Second, and as amplified across the entire customer base, the "Loyalty" program is a fiasco and an abuse of the word. Again, just be honest and say "Our new venture capitalist owners want everyone to become software renters so we can take your money ahead of any commitment to actually do anything and you will have no recourse if we do just that." Every company that moves to a rental model becomes bloated, unresponsive and apathetic. Since the VC model is to "pump and dump", as long as they've made bank before they bail out who cares what debris is left in their wake? Is there a single software company taken over by a VC that hasn't moved to a rental model?
As you subtly state, terms can change at any time. Meaning, "Once we've coerced the majority of our 'customer' base to become renters, we can increase the rental fee as often and to whatever amount as we wish." As for the "Perpetual" license, "We'll just dangle that bit of bait for a while longer, continuing to increase the cost until we've converted them to renters."
Third, you are providing a tool. That is all. A tool that lets me take my data and manipulate it in a fashion that suits me. If the terms and cost of using that tool become nonsensical—as they have, then I'l go look for a different tool.
In the end, it's your business and you get to run or destroy it as you want. Just dial back on the "Loyalty" hype as, let's be honest again, you're (now) only in it for the money.
Man, this is difficult. I can't be the only person paying for both Adobe products and C1 products. My Adobe LR and PS cost me $10 USD/mo., and my perpetual license for C1 will cost me $20+/mo. if I stretch it out over two years, which will be a year and a half unsupported. I have to have PS to do the things C1 cannot and likely never will do. As much as I like C1 (21), I might have to explore recent upgrades in LR. Like other commenters here, I had to read the options forward and backward to try to ascertain what I was getting. Still not certain I understand. It's difficult to put a value on something that isn't clear.
FirstName LastName
Have you ever delved into Affinity Photo? Might be worth checking out as a PS replacement, depending on your needs of course.
First, can the person in charge please be honest. There is no such thing as a software subscription. It is software rental. By definition, if I no longer have access to a thing when I stop paying for it, it is a rental. Full stop. Do you "subscribe" monthly to live in your apartment?
Second, and as amplified across the entire customer base, the "Loyalty" program is a fiasco and an abuse of the word. Again, just be honest and say "Our new venture capitalist owners want everyone to become software renters so we can take your money ahead of any commitment to actually do anything and you will have no recourse if we do just that." Every company that moves to a rental model becomes bloated, unresponsive and apathetic. Since the VC model is to "pump and dump", as long as they've made bank before they bail out who cares what debris is left in their wake? Is there a single software company taken over by a VC that hasn't moved to a rental model?
As you subtly state, terms can change at any time. Meaning, "Once we've coerced the majority of our 'customer' base to become renters, we can increase the rental fee as often and to whatever amount as we wish." As for the "Perpetual" license, "We'll just dangle that bit of bait for a while longer, continuing to increase the cost until we've converted them to renters."
Third, you are providing a tool. That is all. A tool that lets me take my data and manipulate it in a fashion that suits me. If the terms and cost of using that tool become nonsensical—as they have, then I'l go look for a different tool.
In the end, it's your business and you get to run or destroy it as you want. Just dial back on the "Loyalty" hype as, let's be honest again, you're (now) only in it for the money.
C1 wrote:
I'd like to see free bug fix releases including operating system support for a year (or better two years according to EU direction) starting with the date I will be buying or upgrading a perpetual license.
Henk de Haan
Yes it is relevant for me, thanks for that. They added a new condition: "But the gap between two subscriptions should not be bigger than 1 month."
Changing requirements in the middle of the game is not what I could define as Fair Play...!!!
I've been claiming the Support Team for a free perpetual license since I've been a subscriber for 5 years, but seems I am losing and will lose the battle. So good for C1.
I wonder why in the table above, the exchange rate USD/EUR is so creative. As of today's rate, $239 = €226,43, and not €279. Making big money I guess.
So this works for me, using an old Mac that can only support upto C1 22 not upgrading my system anytime soon,so not upgrading C1 anytime soon (although have C1 23 working ok at the moment on a non-supported mac. subscriber for 6 years. Now have my free licence.
Ramon B Rodriguez
The USD price is without VAT, the EUR prices include the VAT (19% to 25% depending which country you're in).
The big money goes to the EU, not to Capture One.
Henk de Haan
The USD price is without VAT, the EUR prices include the VAT (19% to 25% depending which country you're in).
The big money goes to the EU, not to Capture One.
_______________________________________________
Seems more info has been added to the footnote in the first table, again: "Prices in USD / GBP / EUR are indicative and may vary in your local currency set by our payment provider. USD prices are excluding sales tax, while GBP and EUR prices are inclusive of VAT. If you have a business number the VAT will be removed on checkout."
If the EU VAT varies +/- 6% among countries, how come C1 is charging a fixed amount of 279€, VAT included...?
And if at first they say the price in EUR is only indicative, why do they say later is VAT included...? VAT of which country...?
I bet the footnote will change again in the next hours...
Be glad you're not in Australia, where some software vendors have 'very special' exchange rates...
Capture One subscription price $41/mth, annual $304 and 'perpetual' $507.
Compared to Lightroom + Photoshop for $14.29/mth - but no perpetual option.
Kicking myself though - two weeks ago the C1 'perpetual' license was $328 because my previous licence was recognised. Now it's not. Oh, and my C1 Sony v20 perpetual version has stopped working and cannot be reinstalled because my "licence key has no free upgrades", even though I am not asking for an upgrade. So much for loyalty...
As a hobbyist, I use only two of the 'features' that differentiate Pro from Express, making it extremely hard to justify any of these prices. I'm only likely to upgrade with each new computer every 3-4 years, so I'm now looking for something else to process my photos. Tips?
You leave me wordless... no tips, thinking myself what to do... C1 is a great product, no doubt and that's why we are here, but all along these past years I always had the feeling they care little or nothing about their customers, a polite way of saying they treat us like trash...
I would submit a request to them asking for an explanation and remediation. A perpetual licence should work in perpetuity, imo.
I, too, would like to express my disappointment with the evolution of Capture One.
There were three main reasons, among others, that I chose Capture One as my RAW developer:
1. perpetual license, no force to a subscription
2. very good image quality
3. some very good tutorial videos in German language
At first I was put off by the high price, but when Capture One was offered cheaper as part of a special promotion in April 2020, I bought a permanent license. By October - just 6 months after purchase - I already had to pay 135,20 € to upgrade to Capture One 21. This was the "early bird price" and I bought the upgrade without knowing what it offered, since Capture One didn't say anything concrete about the new features. But I suspected that such a reputable company would have some very good features to offer for that price.
When the upgrade was released, I found that the new features and improvements in no way justified the high upgrade price. Very few features added with the updates the year were useful to me: e.g. the Style Brushes, Magic Brush, Redesigned Exporter with Proofing Viewer. I did not notice the performance improvements that were mentioned. So in the end the feeling remained that price/performance ratio for the upgrade does not fit.
In October 2021, the price for the early upgrade was already 167 €. Also this time I paid without knowing what value for money I would get. Since I had bought an R5 in the summer of 2021 and was very disappointed that the lenses I had bought for it were not supported by Capture One, I had hopes that this would get better with the upgrade or one of the updates in 2022. However, that has not happened to date.
The upgrade brought Panorama Stitch and HDR Merge, Auto Rotate, and Wireless Tethering (which worked out of the box with my R5), among other things, interesting features for me. So I thought it would get better in terms of the tradeoff for the very expensive upgrade. But Panorama Stitch and HDR Merge gave astonishingly poor results and neither has been improved to date but remained at toy level.
The newly introduced Capture One Live I felt was more of an attempt to squeeze even more money out of customers without delivering a correspondingly good return. The few other new features introduced with updates over the year (e.g. wireless tethering for Sony and Nikon cameras or another cloud service) were all of no use to me. Again, I couldn't see any significant performance increase, even though that was promised in the release notes.
When Capture One 23 was announced in October 2022 I asked myself if what I had gotten with Capture One 2022 for the very high upgrade price had been worth the money and clearly realized that here the price/performance ratio was just not right and I had paid a lot of money for little new equivalent value and very little additional benefit. So I thought very hard about buying the upgrade to Capture One 2023 at all. I decided to buy the upgrade for several pro reasons, but they only slightly outweighed the cons. For example, the upgrade price remained the same and I still had hopes that Panorama Stitch and HDR Merge would finally be brought into a usable state and that my Canon RF lenses would finally be supported.
The upgrade to 2023 and the updates so far have been another disappointment for me. Not only was the number of new features very small, but the features themselves were "nice to have" but not "must have". I have also not been able to see any performance improvements so far. So far this upgrade has not been worth the money either.
In December I found out about the new pricing policy and was shocked. I have been watching the communication on this over the past weeks and have been shocked over and over again. I completely reject software subscriptions (if you want to know why, read at the end of my comment) and the permanent license will be way too expensive for me as a hobby photographer in the future. In addition, there are now too many disappointments about Capture One, because my RF lenses are still not supported and features that would be really useful for me have not been added or further developed. Also, there are no AI features that would make developing images easier or speed it up for me. And, the several times I have used Capture One support it has been a disappointment. Response times were sometimes several weeks and I was not given a solution to any of my queries.
All of this has been making me think about alternatives to Capture One for some time now, because the impression that I as a customer and the quality of the product do not count, but only a massive profit increase are in the foreground, had solidified more and more in the time in which I used Capture One. That other RAW development programs get more and more functions, which are interesting for me, but in Capture One nothing of the same happens, disappointed and frustrated me more and more.
When I learned about the new pricing policy, I began without hesitation to explore alternatives to Capture One. And I found what I was looking for. The trial period of the alternative program will run for another week and I am already determined to purchase the permanent license. With this program, both my cameras and all my lenses are supported in an exemplary way. I will now use Capture One and the other program side by side for a period of time until Capture One is no longer supported by the operating system. Then I will leave it as an archive program on the old computer and my time with Capture One will finally be over.
Actually, I didn't want to waste a lifetime commenting on the pricing policy. But I like to work with Capture One and I can get very good image results with it. Also, besides the reasons already mentioned, I bought the expensive upgrades to support the company that offers perpetual licenses. The way Capture One is going is determined by management and management should at least know this way that I am in no way willing to be dealt with in the frustrating way that has happened over the last three years and would happen worse in the future.
I am passionate about photography as a hobby, for whom image development is part of the creative process of photography and who is willing to invest some money in the hobby. But I won't be fooled. Therefore, at this point after 3 Years with Capture One: Goodbye, Capture One.
As mentioned above, here are some reasons why I completely reject software subscriptions:
Subscriptions are way too expensive. The manufacturers paint them in golden colors, but the gold immediately crumbles when you look closer and reveals a great ugliness. Because the calculation is not only about the subscription costs, but mainly about the content = values that I create with the program.
Example: Let's say I work with Capture One for about 10 hours every week to develop my images. If we take a price of 12 € (average minimum wage here in Germany), this results in 6,240 € worth of working time in one year. Now, if I can't pay the subscription after e. g. 3 years, then I can't use the program without restrictions and lose not only the subscription fees i paid for these 3 years (219 € x 3) = 657 € but also the value of my working time and that results in a loss of 19,377 €. The value of the image edits that I can no longer get to, everyone must estimate for themselves.
In addition, I have to pay every year if I want to continue working and cannot decide for myself when I make which investments. This takes away my sovereignty over my budgets. Each additional software subscription drives up these costs.
When I buy a car, I'm not only interested in the purchase price, I also calculate the fuel consumption, insurance, tax, garage costs, depreciation and other factors. When I buy a camera, I'm also interested in other cost factors besides the purchase price, e.g. for lenses, necessary accessories, equipment insurance, and so on. Only with software subscriptions only the supposedly low monthly price is put in the foreground and all other costs are concealed.
So the serious question: What is so inexpensive about software subscriptions? For me there are only disadvantages.
What program did you settle on? Just curious!
David
Kaffeepause
So interesting your post...!!! Very instructive. Thanks for that.
My subscription expires on April 16th. As of today, I will buy a perpetual license with 20% discount. Should be a 100% discount, since I subscribed for 5 years, I claimed but that was a lost battle...
What I have now with C23 is enough, as I don't plan to buy more cameras or lenses, so I will stay like that for as long as I can until a new version adds true improvements . As you say, changes with every new version are not worth the money.
One major improvement that could make change my mind would be converting scanned film negatives, but I don't think C1 is interested in that.
Anyway, good luck with your new software...!!! 😉
https://support.captureone.com/hc/en-us/articles/8824180384285/comments/9546067683485
Thanks BeO. I did ask for verification of my existing perpetual licence and do now have a means of using it, but no upgrade path to the current version without paying full price or the impost of subscription pricing. Here is what I wrote in reply:
Thanks for verifying my licence key and explaining how it only works with a download version that is not offered from the website, at least not where I could find it.
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