Buy or Subscribe?
It appears purchasing the yearly updates costs more than the yearly subscription fee (and, by the way, the full price of several competing software), so is it better to subscribe? If you decide to stop the subscription, do you have a working copy of the software, or are you out of luck, like with Adobe subscriptions? I cannot find any information on the Capture One website that answers my question.
Thank you.
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Francis,
As with all subscriptions that I am aware of, once the subscription ends so does the service the payment provides.
A perpetual license, on the other hand, allows you use that release of software (and several earlier ones if required for some reason) until such time as you now longer have operating system or computer on which they will run.
Since the license relates to the use of the software and not a complete service package involving access to remote storage, you would still have the data and the edits should you ever wish to reactivate the subscription or obtain a perpetual license.
I hope this helps in some way.
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Jeremy,
One of the good aspects of using Capture One is that they still offer a perpetual license and full access and use to all earlier releases for about the past 10 years (limited from going back further by technical needs as I recall) and if, as you suggest, you intend to stop paying for upgrades you will still have the option to use the license you have for as long as Apple and Microsoft deign to allow software to run as it ages and the systems can be kept running.
The entire software industry tends to run on people buying stuff they never use - it always has. - but these days it is hardly surprising that people are observing how mobile phone users are happy to pay monthly for the promise of services that they probably rarely use anywhere close to the "allowance" they are ostensibly paying for and deciding the same thing can be done with software, thus providing nice smooth cash flow not tied to the annual release model dictated by technological change and the "agile" development theories.
Some time back Capture One explained that the reason for the Subscription model was that businesses had requested it as manes of managing a variable number of "seats" and having an option to choose monthly payments (for regular cash flow as well) to have working "seats" as and when a project required them.
This is exactly the same situation that I have with Microsoft managing Office 365 as a subscription. I don't really want to do that but it bundles in email for a business and some remote colleagues when I need then and they need the service. I can update the seats and the features/Programs (and the Direct debit to pay for them) whenever I like.
At that time they stated that there was no intention to drop the perpetual license option and I have seen nothing to suggest that such a policy has changed. Of course it may do. Anything is possible, but so long as perpetual licenses are being requested in enough volume to justify supporting them I would imagine there would be no logical benefit to going "full Adobe"
The upgrade choice is entirely yours. Mostly I have waited some time after a new version release before going for the update. Sometimes there is feature, maybe more than one feature, that I feel fully justifies an early update. I think at least once I skipped a release.
I will admit that I prefer an 18 month release cycle for software but as most developers seem to have shifted to an annual cycle with the advent of "Agile" development and the stream of perpetual changes that has induced from Apple and Microsoft and others, I doubt all users would find an 18 month cycle to their liking these days.
I have observed the effects of cash flow and fixed release cycles both as a consumer and as an employee of a developer.
Much as I dislike the idea of ending up renting an entire life experience I do understand the likely benefits to the developer due to heading down the subscription road. Still don't like it. But it seems that the investors in some companies are delighted with the results of such policies and, by inference of their success, that most customers are also happy to go along with it.
I'm grateful to have an alternative to subscription, no matter how "cheap" it may look because it includes to many facilities that I will never need or, like mobile device contracts, service options that one would have difficulty to use fully on a personal level.
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I'm not sure which calculation you're making, Francis, but at the moment a C1 Pro subscription costs 220 EUR per year, whereas an upgrade of a perpetual license costs 169 EUR. I agree it's not a whole lot of difference but the subscription is more expensive. I can't compare the upgrade price of the dedicated Fuji / Nikon / Sony versions as I have the Pro version myself but can't imagine it being otherwise.
BTW, the upgrade prices are ridiculously high in my opinion. There's simply no justification to ask more than double what they used to ask several years back.
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not 100% sure but I very much think CO is not making the same equal offer to every customer !
and yes CO is greedy and dishonest in my view because their is a clears indicator that they try hard to push user to subscription with unreasonable upgrade prices and to make things worse deliver less and less . funny i still pay the same price for adobe cc since i signed up 7 year ago but some fanboys still think co is their friend and adobe is evil..... haha
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Emile, I haven't found it easy to determine upgrade pricing and I have no idea if the quoted dollar price is U.S. or Canadian.
It seems to me that you're not allowed to have fun in the Capture One world - paying for it, using it, talking about it - not fun.
Thanks everyone for your thought and opinions.
Francis.
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has anybody here ask himself why they moved the upgrade options inside the user profile away from a public web store ? they still could have used geo data to tailor their pricing but when the offer is locked away invisible to other user it is much easier. hiring more marketing & sales experts instead of developer for sure pays off in this regard, the side effect is a bugy software with slowed down development.
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I have asked myself that question CSP.
I would imagine it is partly to do with the way that FastSpring works.
Being able to tailor the offer to a local area allows things like local tax rules to be included in the price shown and local currency to be used, so taking into account the needs for exchange rates that make for different offer prices.
But I suspect the main reason for making it explicitly personal is simply that it makes the available options very clear along with the pricing for them. And hopefully it avoids people making mistakes, complaints go back years even in the forum archives so presumably there are many more that are not public knowledge. People often seem to have managed to buy the wrong thing. Of have bought another new licence instead of an upgrade for example.
As the number of options has increased I think the idea of a totally tailored options list makes a lot of sense.
On the other hand it could all be simplified further by moving to a subscription only model based on a single currency.
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@SFA
fast spring is more than a simple check out solution taking care of the vat tax and c1 is not the only company using tools like this but there is only one reason for all - maxximise profit and manipulate customer as much as possible ! so even in the EC some user may pay more or less than others just based where the live. this explains why sales and marketing have become more important here than a great bug free software. it is an easy calculation using tools like fast spring guarantees more revenue so why hire additional software engineers when you can reach your business goal this way and much cheaper too ? this is the sad new normal of the e commerce world.....
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While using and upgrading C1, I have lived in four different countries across two different continents (EU, US), and have never seen anything that supports the theorem that Phase uses tailored upgrade pricing. Somehow that wild idea seems to have gone from theory to absolute truth within a few posts.
I do have a few nuts to crack with Phase, but not as much as I had with Adobe. I used Lr from its inception all the way up to 6.14 and used v8 as a subscription to see where they were headed but it had its share of acknowledged but unresolved bugs that hindered me. I've lost countless hours of work due to botched Lr updates.
I really like C1 and have used it since v3, mostly next to Lr. It's not perfect. There are bugs. I find the upgrades are too expensive these days. That's roughly as far as my grieves go. It's certainly not an evil empire.
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@emile well the upgrade price you said you have to pay in your post is for sure not the same as I would have to pay even corrected for vat tax, this made me actually thinking about and dig the fast spring website...
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