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Affinity Designer is an excellent piece of professional creative software, but Serif’s business model is broken. They’ve erred on the other end of the spectrum

Affinity Designer is an excellent piece of professional creative software, but Serif’s business model is broken. They’ve erred on the other end of the spectrum from Adobe. Rather than get greedy and force users into renting their software as Adobe has, they’ve tried to stretch out a very low price of entry into a multi-year series of free updates – and it’s not working. I paid a mere $50 for Affinity Designer half a decade ago. While it’s seen some valuable updates since then, the core promise of an Illustrator killer remains out of reach: Key features like blends, pattern brushes, distortion envelopes, and more have sat on the 1.x roadmap for years, and the marquee feature of 1.8, released a few weeks ago, was a years-in-the-making bugfix for the expand stroke feature. I want to give Serif more money so they can bring Designer up to speed with Illustrator, as fifty dollars every 5+ years clearly doesn’t support the kind of development effort this requires. I don’t want to subscribe to Designer either, but there are other proven models: Look at Sketch, which has an optional, annual upgrade program, and has shipped vastly more functionality than Designer has in the same time period. My criticism isn’t entirely fair as Serif has also been occupied with launching Photo and Publisher during this time, but there’s no escaping the conclusion that Designer has stagnated. I really hope the company finds the right course correction that keeps the Affinity range affordable while sustainably funding development.

Ididntdothis 7y ago
I tend to agree. Development for Photo also has slowed down after a burst of new features after release. I am definitely wondering how they are doing financially.
- sbuk 7y ago
  I know that they’ve been focussed on getting Publisher out. Whether that is the reason for any slowdown isn’t clear.
jstummbillig 7y ago
Don't look too hard at Sketch. While they have been the first movers on what was (and to a lesser extend still is) a glaring gap in the designers toolkit, Figma has been clawing market share at lightning speed over the last 2 years. Sketch has delivered on a lot of things, but I do not think their business model is root cause of their success.
- jbverschoor 7y ago
  They only recently changed their business model. Their success was the excellent piece of software. This has been copied by many now. I don’t want cloud only software. Do you want to offer syncing? Use my Dropbox or iCloud for that. You want some shared library? Use my Dropbox of iCloud for that. Give ME control over MY assets and don’t take my work hostage.
  - mattkevan 7y ago
    That’s the primary reason why our design team chose Sketch over Figma. Lock in with Figma is worse than with Adobe - there’s no way to export other than flattened SVGs or bitmaps and almost nothing else understands their proprietary file format. Plus, if you stop paying the subscription you potentially lose access to your files. Yes, there’s a generous free tier, but that’s essentially VC funded at the moment. There’s no guarantee that will last forever, especially if they need to actually make some money. At least with Sketch the file format is well understood and you can keep using whatever version you end up with when your licence expires.
    - robenkleene 7y ago
      I agree 100% with this thought process, I have trouble understanding why people are willing to use a product that gives them so little control over their work. Because of this, I've spent a lot of time reading about why people choose Figma, and the reasoning is simply that they value working together more efficiently more than they value data ownership. There are a few interesting take-aways that come from that observation: 1. Over time, there might be a divide with file-based apps for personal use on one side, and web apps for group use on the other (we're probably already here outside of some areas, like video editing and programming, where people still collaborate by editing files). 2. Even for the file-based apps, outside of expert users, it's actually probably preferable for most users to use a web-based app and take their risks with the company behind it, rather than keep track of those files themselves. E.g., picture users with no backup strategy, and all their files on one computer in their house. For these users, dealing with the future of Figma is probably safer than them keeping track of their files themselves. 3. Another fascinating angle here is that programming ends up side stepping all these trade-offs entirely, just because of version control (which is facilitated by plain text file formats), which solves both problems simultaneously (collaboration and offsite backups). Version control, and by extension plain text, are such powerful concepts that they end up splintering off programming from the trajectory the rest of the software industry is on.
Wowfunhappy 7y ago
Isn't it a bit presumptuous to worry about this without knowing their finances? Outside of glaring exceptions like MoviePass, I generally assume that if a business is willing to charge $X for a product, they do it because they believe $X is a sustainable price. There are any number of reasons feature updates might be coming more slowly than is ideal. As I'm sure everyone here is well aware, throwing more money at a development team doesn't necessarily make it faster.
- vosper 7y ago
  > As I'm sure everyone here is well aware, throwing more money at a development team doesn't necessarily make it faster. But it does, especially over a multi-year timespan. Unless you really screw up in managing or hiring. Assuming you hire reasonably skilled engineers and accept that they will take some time to integrate with the team (and that this will temporarily slow the team) then eventually you can build more stuff in any window of time. For reference, see almost every software company.
  - Razengan 7y ago
    9 women don’t birth a baby in 1 month. Even the richest companies with thousands of developers usually struggle with delivering promised features on time. > For reference, see almost every software company. Like Apple, who has had to delay stuff meant for a .0 release to a .x update, a few times? Or Microsoft or Google who kill projects outright and still can’t decide which API to settle on? Or Facebook etc. who took months to implement Dark Mode?
    - vosper 7y ago
      Your points are all missing my point
- johneth 7y ago
  > Isn't it a bit presumptuous to worry about this without knowing their finances? FYI, you can view their accounts on the UK's Companies House website: https://beta.companieshouse.gov.uk/company/05041038/filing-history https://beta.companieshouse.gov.uk/company/05041038/filing-h...
greggman3 7y ago
I'm pretty happy with Affinity Designer (not so much Affinity Photo) and I agree with you I'm worried about their money situation. I even bought both apps twice. Once on Mac and once on Windows. Like you eluded to IMO they should just do the traditional thing, charge for upgrades?
- JKCalhoun 7y ago
  Yes, bought Affinity Publisher as an act of good will. Not sure I'll need/use it.
- chrisweekly 7y ago
  elude: escape capture vs allude to: mention or reference Not trying to nit-pick on spelling, but they're very different words -- and HN has many readers for whom English is not native. HTH
leokennis 7y ago
I don’t think their business model is broken, I think your expectations are wrong. Clearly it will be insanely hard to compete with Illustrator. It’s a brand name and industry standard. But if you can convince enough people that they can get a pretty good approximation of Illustrator for a fraction of the price (and you adjust your rate of shipping features accordingly), that can be a great business model.
- mattkevan 7y ago
  If you go for the volume licensing deal, that is an annual subscription, and it works out at about £13 per year per licence. One company I worked for had one laptop with Creative Cloud shared between an entire department because they couldn’t justify getting everyone CC just for occasional use. When I pointed out what good value Affinity was, they promptly rolled it out for the entire organisation.
- mortenjorck 7y ago
  This is a fair counterpoint, as there may indeed have been a contraction in Serif’s ambitions for the product. But there’s ample evience that Affinity Designer has fallen short of Serif’s own expectations: A 2014 post on the official Affinity product forum laid out a public roadmap for the 1.x cycle, including such Illustrator staples as mesh warping, blends, gradient mesh fills, and more. Some of the original roadmap was indeed implemented, such as the critical feature of artboards. But as the originally-promised “two years of free updates” stretched into more than four, the majority went unaddressed. The thread has since been deleted.

Ididntdothis 7y ago

I tend to agree. Development for Photo also has slowed down after a burst of new features after release. I am definitely wondering how they are doing financially.

sbuk 7y ago
I know that they’ve been focussed on getting Publisher out. Whether that is the reason for any slowdown isn’t clear.

jstummbillig 7y ago

Don't look too hard at Sketch. While they have been the first movers on what was (and to a lesser extend still is) a glaring gap in the designers toolkit, Figma has been clawing market share at lightning speed over the last 2 years. Sketch has delivered on a lot of things, but I do not think their business model is root cause of their success.

jbverschoor 7y ago
They only recently changed their business model. Their success was the excellent piece of software. This has been copied by many now. I don’t want cloud only software. Do you want to offer syncing? Use my Dropbox or iCloud for that. You want some shared library? Use my Dropbox of iCloud for that. Give ME control over MY assets and don’t take my work hostage.
- mattkevan 7y ago
  That’s the primary reason why our design team chose Sketch over Figma. Lock in with Figma is worse than with Adobe - there’s no way to export other than flattened SVGs or bitmaps and almost nothing else understands their proprietary file format. Plus, if you stop paying the subscription you potentially lose access to your files. Yes, there’s a generous free tier, but that’s essentially VC funded at the moment. There’s no guarantee that will last forever, especially if they need to actually make some money. At least with Sketch the file format is well understood and you can keep using whatever version you end up with when your licence expires.
  - robenkleene 7y ago
    I agree 100% with this thought process, I have trouble understanding why people are willing to use a product that gives them so little control over their work. Because of this, I've spent a lot of time reading about why people choose Figma, and the reasoning is simply that they value working together more efficiently more than they value data ownership. There are a few interesting take-aways that come from that observation: 1. Over time, there might be a divide with file-based apps for personal use on one side, and web apps for group use on the other (we're probably already here outside of some areas, like video editing and programming, where people still collaborate by editing files). 2. Even for the file-based apps, outside of expert users, it's actually probably preferable for most users to use a web-based app and take their risks with the company behind it, rather than keep track of those files themselves. E.g., picture users with no backup strategy, and all their files on one computer in their house. For these users, dealing with the future of Figma is probably safer than them keeping track of their files themselves. 3. Another fascinating angle here is that programming ends up side stepping all these trade-offs entirely, just because of version control (which is facilitated by plain text file formats), which solves both problems simultaneously (collaboration and offsite backups). Version control, and by extension plain text, are such powerful concepts that they end up splintering off programming from the trajectory the rest of the software industry is on.

Wowfunhappy 7y ago

Isn't it a bit presumptuous to worry about this without knowing their finances? Outside of glaring exceptions like MoviePass, I generally assume that if a business is willing to charge $X for a product, they do it because they believe $X is a sustainable price. There are any number of reasons feature updates might be coming more slowly than is ideal. As I'm sure everyone here is well aware, throwing more money at a development team doesn't necessarily make it faster.

vosper 7y ago
> As I'm sure everyone here is well aware, throwing more money at a development team doesn't necessarily make it faster. But it does, especially over a multi-year timespan. Unless you really screw up in managing or hiring. Assuming you hire reasonably skilled engineers and accept that they will take some time to integrate with the team (and that this will temporarily slow the team) then eventually you can build more stuff in any window of time. For reference, see almost every software company.
- Razengan 7y ago
  9 women don’t birth a baby in 1 month. Even the richest companies with thousands of developers usually struggle with delivering promised features on time. > For reference, see almost every software company. Like Apple, who has had to delay stuff meant for a .0 release to a .x update, a few times? Or Microsoft or Google who kill projects outright and still can’t decide which API to settle on? Or Facebook etc. who took months to implement Dark Mode?
  - vosper 7y ago
    Your points are all missing my point
johneth 7y ago
> Isn't it a bit presumptuous to worry about this without knowing their finances? FYI, you can view their accounts on the UK's Companies House website: https://beta.companieshouse.gov.uk/company/05041038/filing-history https://beta.companieshouse.gov.uk/company/05041038/filing-h...

greggman3 7y ago

I'm pretty happy with Affinity Designer (not so much Affinity Photo) and I agree with you I'm worried about their money situation. I even bought both apps twice. Once on Mac and once on Windows. Like you eluded to IMO they should just do the traditional thing, charge for upgrades?

JKCalhoun 7y ago
Yes, bought Affinity Publisher as an act of good will. Not sure I'll need/use it.
chrisweekly 7y ago
elude: escape capture vs allude to: mention or reference Not trying to nit-pick on spelling, but they're very different words -- and HN has many readers for whom English is not native. HTH

leokennis 7y ago

I don’t think their business model is broken, I think your expectations are wrong. Clearly it will be insanely hard to compete with Illustrator. It’s a brand name and industry standard. But if you can convince enough people that they can get a pretty good approximation of Illustrator for a fraction of the price (and you adjust your rate of shipping features accordingly), that can be a great business model.

mattkevan 7y ago
If you go for the volume licensing deal, that is an annual subscription, and it works out at about £13 per year per licence. One company I worked for had one laptop with Creative Cloud shared between an entire department because they couldn’t justify getting everyone CC just for occasional use. When I pointed out what good value Affinity was, they promptly rolled it out for the entire organisation.
mortenjorck 7y ago
This is a fair counterpoint, as there may indeed have been a contraction in Serif’s ambitions for the product. But there’s ample evience that Affinity Designer has fallen short of Serif’s own expectations: A 2014 post on the official Affinity product forum laid out a public roadmap for the 1.x cycle, including such Illustrator staples as mesh warping, blends, gradient mesh fills, and more. Some of the original roadmap was indeed implemented, such as the critical feature of artboards. But as the originally-promised “two years of free updates” stretched into more than four, the majority went unaddressed. The thread has since been deleted.