Thursday, March 09, 2017
Autodesk is Pushing Subscriptions Switch to Perpetual License Owner
CADnotes: If you are an owner of Autodesk perpetual license with maintenance plan (formerly subscription) probably has received an email about the changes. The email content is similar to this post in Autodesk forum. Autodesk will increase the maintenance plan so that it will be about the same price as the subscription
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Although I don’t agree with this kind of subscription plan, it does make sense for the company to do. Many Auto CAD customers aren’t even paying their own subscription fee because it is a work program. Most companies will provide this software for you in order to complete the job. And as a student, I receive the CAD software for free. So I must say, I don’t think this is going to make for a very upset user base. For the freelancers and people that just want the software, I can imagine them being annoyed but the expense change over time won’t be that drastic. At the end of the day, I think this is a smart and competitive more on Auto Desks part and I look forward to seeing a reaction from users. One thing I am curious about is if this will have an effect on their user numbers? Will this be something that causes people to change to a different CAD software?
I feel uncomfortable as I observe this growing trend within essential software companies to start "renting" their software out now that physical copies are no longer the norm, and online downloads are more and more common. I honestly think it's just a cash grab. I understand that it's hard to make continual profits when you have pretty much a single product like Autodesk, by at that point I want to say, tough shit. It's not like products like Adobe Creative Suite and AutoCAD will ever stop having new customers. I think that the only market this move makes sense for is the enterprise level. Companies have the means to be continually paying a subscription, even if the cost exceeds the upfront cost of a one-time purchase would. Individuals, though, are much more affected by this decision, as a subscription adds yet another load on bills, whereas a single time payment would be one and done.
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