5 ms·

You can keep using your last paid version forever.

by flixic 5y ago

danpalmer 5y ago
I missed this when first reading their site. It seems that they're really pushing for the $9/month subscription – the old 12 months of updates pricing is in the small print below a huge box selling their subscription. Maybe they too are moving in that direction? I wouldn't blame them.
- jasonlotito 5y ago
  That's why I prefer JetBrain's version. You pay for the product you get. That's it. Simple and done. You can benefit from updates for a year, and if you pay for another year, you get to keep those benefits. But at the end of the day, you get exactly what you pay for.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - devmunchies 5y ago
    sounds like UaaS (upgrade as a service). sounds nice. any cons? it seems to me like a company might try to withhold some features until the next release so you upgrade. Or is that expected out the gate and any "updates for a year" are just for bugs?
    - iudqnolq 5y ago
      Jetbrains seems to take a broader view of life. They do lots of things that don't immediately benefit them. For example, their open source Rust plugin gets new features much more often than once a year, and I'm not even paying for it.
    - Andrew_nenakhov 5y ago
      With Sketch, the 'cons' are that if you withhold from upgrading, then after some time the app will get increasingly less useful: plugins are generally supported only for the latest version, and it is rare when you can get old versions of plugins. Design resources too always seem to be available for the latest versions only. So if you work completely independently from external world, it migth not affect you much, but if you are not, it is cheaper to buy upgrades. Maybe not every 12 months, but every 18 months or so. But anyway Sketch is that good that we pay it's price gladly.
    - rudi-c 5y ago
      It would be quite challenging to make such a business model work with collaboration-centric features. Features such as multiplayer editing, in addition to requiring some carefully designed technology, require the two clients to be running the same version of the code. As soon as you introduce a new feature -- e.g. a new type of object that you can insert into the document, you need all clients connected to the same file to be able to understand that object. This is just one of many types of edge cases that can crop up. It's kind of like database migrations except a lot of work happens client-side too. You could put the onus on the user to deal with making sure everyone you're sharing a file with has the same version (or whatever asset is involved in a particular tool, this is not design-tool specific). But the friction to sharing raises considerably. Even if your whole team is on the same version, what happens if you try to share a file with an external client, etc. You'll be making tons of tradeoffs in engineering time and feature design to deal with the fact that users don't get the latest version of your app just by loading the page. Your tool, though it might still be excellent in other regards, probably won't end up having collaboration as a central selling point.
      - deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
  - mortenjorck 5y ago
    That is actually the same model Sketch offers; they just promote the other (subscription-based) option.
  - Toutouxc 5y ago
    Yeah, that's one of the things that, sadly, feels almost surreal these days. Their products are packed with features, they let you keep your old versions, there are discounts for students and loyal customers and open-source projects and even without any discount the prices are very reasonable for such an important part of my workflow. It's the only subscription where I'd happily attach a "Thank You" note to the money. I'm just curious -- I don't recall any high-profile dev getting screwed over by JetBrains, was there ever a case like that?

You can keep using your last paid version forever.

by flixic 5y ago

You can keep using your last paid version forever.

I missed this when first reading their site. It seems that they're really pushing for the $9/month subscription – the old 12 months of updates pricing is in the small print below a huge box selling their subscription. Maybe they too are moving in that direction? I wouldn't blame them.

jasonlotito 5y ago
That's why I prefer JetBrain's version. You pay for the product you get. That's it. Simple and done. You can benefit from updates for a year, and if you pay for another year, you get to keep those benefits. But at the end of the day, you get exactly what you pay for.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- devmunchies 5y ago
  sounds like UaaS (upgrade as a service). sounds nice. any cons? it seems to me like a company might try to withhold some features until the next release so you upgrade. Or is that expected out the gate and any "updates for a year" are just for bugs?
  - iudqnolq 5y ago
    Jetbrains seems to take a broader view of life. They do lots of things that don't immediately benefit them. For example, their open source Rust plugin gets new features much more often than once a year, and I'm not even paying for it.
  - Andrew_nenakhov 5y ago
    With Sketch, the 'cons' are that if you withhold from upgrading, then after some time the app will get increasingly less useful: plugins are generally supported only for the latest version, and it is rare when you can get old versions of plugins. Design resources too always seem to be available for the latest versions only. So if you work completely independently from external world, it migth not affect you much, but if you are not, it is cheaper to buy upgrades. Maybe not every 12 months, but every 18 months or so. But anyway Sketch is that good that we pay it's price gladly.
  - rudi-c 5y ago
    It would be quite challenging to make such a business model work with collaboration-centric features. Features such as multiplayer editing, in addition to requiring some carefully designed technology, require the two clients to be running the same version of the code. As soon as you introduce a new feature -- e.g. a new type of object that you can insert into the document, you need all clients connected to the same file to be able to understand that object. This is just one of many types of edge cases that can crop up. It's kind of like database migrations except a lot of work happens client-side too. You could put the onus on the user to deal with making sure everyone you're sharing a file with has the same version (or whatever asset is involved in a particular tool, this is not design-tool specific). But the friction to sharing raises considerably. Even if your whole team is on the same version, what happens if you try to share a file with an external client, etc. You'll be making tons of tradeoffs in engineering time and feature design to deal with the fact that users don't get the latest version of your app just by loading the page. Your tool, though it might still be excellent in other regards, probably won't end up having collaboration as a central selling point.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
- mortenjorck 5y ago
  That is actually the same model Sketch offers; they just promote the other (subscription-based) option.
- Toutouxc 5y ago
  Yeah, that's one of the things that, sadly, feels almost surreal these days. Their products are packed with features, they let you keep your old versions, there are discounts for students and loyal customers and open-source projects and even without any discount the prices are very reasonable for such an important part of my workflow. It's the only subscription where I'd happily attach a "Thank You" note to the money. I'm just curious -- I don't recall any high-profile dev getting screwed over by JetBrains, was there ever a case like that?