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> Yet it is too small for any company to care about to create competition (except Affinity). I'm curious about their business model for this. When the Affinity

> Yet it is too small for any company to care about to create competition (except Affinity). I'm curious about their business model for this. When the Affinity suite is ~$170 one-off cost, I wonder how many they have to sell each year to keep going and how big the market is. If someone is using this software every day as their main way to make money, that's incredibly cheap as well but could they charge more? People hate subscriptions, but paying $100s upfront when it's actually worth it given how much it earns you is unpalatable as well. I'm curious if there's any other approaching to charging. Not suggesting this would work here but for example game engines take a % of the sales generated so you only get charged when you start making money, which avoids upfront costs and subscriptions while you're getting started.

omnimus 3y ago
The way to do this is clear? If you release new version for 170usd every 18 months it's about 10usd/m subscription - so you are 6times cheaper?. The funny thing is that i think the pro market doesn't trust them because of the low price. It's possible Affinity found so much friction with pro market which doesn't want to change their processes that they figured out they have to go after the prosumer/hobby market. But as tools Affinity is not some kind of budget tool. The software is in many ways a lot better and doesn't have baggage ancient Adobe stuff has. The only thing they are missing for pro market is scripting/plugins. I think if they did that this would allow third parties to fill in lots of the functionality they don't have (same what InDesign and After Effects does). That could really really start to bite. The way i see it Affinity is one major update away from starting to eat away masses of Adobe customers. Everybody has been pissed at Adobe for years and once few bigger names start to do it because of costs it will fuel the confidence of everyone.
- seanwilson 3y ago
  > If you release new version for 170usd every 18 months it's about 10usd/m subscription - so you are 6times cheaper?. This would put them under immense pressure to come up with new features (useful or not) to get people to upgrade. At some point for certain users, the current version is going to cover 90% of what they need and they won't see the point in upgrading. I didn't look into it much, but Sketch moved from a one-off payment for the current version plus 1 year of updates, to subscription-based charging. I wouldn't be surprised if the real reason was most didn't need the latest features. Aside from this, has any software ever done something like "$170 upfront, or $20/month for 12 months only, then you own this major version"? I'm aware of Adobe's approach where if you cancel the monthly plan they'll surprisingly charge you the rest of the payments to make up 12 months, but you don't own anything after.
  - omnimus 3y ago
    Sketch still has 120usd desktop version. Their solution was to add server/collaboration element that is subscription based. > This would put them under immense pressure to come up with new features (useful or not) to get people to upgrade. At some point for certain users, the current version is going to cover 90% of what they need and they won't see the point in upgrading. Isn't this backwards? If you don't have anything to add to the software why should you charge for it? The thing with Adobe there is no shortage of enhancements/features people wanted. It's not lack of imagination. Adobe just realized they don't need to do much so why would you pay programmers if you have no competition and very little churn? Especially since what everyone wanted was stability, bugfixes, performance and hard stuff like versioning systems. How are you going to market that your software crashes 20% less? Also if anything software/hardware compatibility is always going to be reason for upgrading.
    - seanwilson 3y ago
      Ah, didn't see that for Sketch, thanks. > If you don't have anything to add to the software why should you charge for it? That's fair, but then ~$150 is too cheap for a lifetime license for a major version of software if you're using that professionally for 5 years to generate $10,000s. Asking someone to pay a higher amount upfront is difficult though. > Also if anything software/hardware compatibility is always going to be reason for upgrading. This is also one of the reasons that developers don't want to offer lifetime licenses as you need to keep software updated for security and compatibility as APIs, OSs, drivers, browsers etc. evolve over the years and to provide ongoing support to existing users. By the way, I'm not saying I like subscriptions or paying a lot upfront, but the alternatives have downsides to the software makers as well. I really don't know what a good compromise is.
      - omnimus 3y ago
        I agree that 150usd might be too cheap for pro market but like i mentioned maybe they found out they need to first go for amateurs. Who knows maybe they will make it more expensive in future or offer some kind of pro option. I also have to mention maybe your expectations are a bit skewed? Software dev got cheaper and not everything has to be breakneck hype venture capital squeeze. There is type design software Glyphs (https://glyphsapp.com/ https://glyphsapp.com/) used by basically every typedesigner now. It costs 300usd and it is very complex. But they seem to be doing OK. Its so niche compared to Affinity that there is maybe 5% of potential customers? Both Affinity and Glyphs are small private companies from europe where devs cost less. Maybe they are fine with smaller teams, slower pace and just OK profits.

omnimus 3y ago

The way to do this is clear? If you release new version for 170usd every 18 months it's about 10usd/m subscription - so you are 6times cheaper?. The funny thing is that i think the pro market doesn't trust them because of the low price. It's possible Affinity found so much friction with pro market which doesn't want to change their processes that they figured out they have to go after the prosumer/hobby market. But as tools Affinity is not some kind of budget tool. The software is in many ways a lot better and doesn't have baggage ancient Adobe stuff has. The only thing they are missing for pro market is scripting/plugins. I think if they did that this would allow third parties to fill in lots of the functionality they don't have (same what InDesign and After Effects does). That could really really start to bite. The way i see it Affinity is one major update away from starting to eat away masses of Adobe customers. Everybody has been pissed at Adobe for years and once few bigger names start to do it because of costs it will fuel the confidence of everyone.

seanwilson 3y ago
> If you release new version for 170usd every 18 months it's about 10usd/m subscription - so you are 6times cheaper?. This would put them under immense pressure to come up with new features (useful or not) to get people to upgrade. At some point for certain users, the current version is going to cover 90% of what they need and they won't see the point in upgrading. I didn't look into it much, but Sketch moved from a one-off payment for the current version plus 1 year of updates, to subscription-based charging. I wouldn't be surprised if the real reason was most didn't need the latest features. Aside from this, has any software ever done something like "$170 upfront, or $20/month for 12 months only, then you own this major version"? I'm aware of Adobe's approach where if you cancel the monthly plan they'll surprisingly charge you the rest of the payments to make up 12 months, but you don't own anything after.
- omnimus 3y ago
  Sketch still has 120usd desktop version. Their solution was to add server/collaboration element that is subscription based. > This would put them under immense pressure to come up with new features (useful or not) to get people to upgrade. At some point for certain users, the current version is going to cover 90% of what they need and they won't see the point in upgrading. Isn't this backwards? If you don't have anything to add to the software why should you charge for it? The thing with Adobe there is no shortage of enhancements/features people wanted. It's not lack of imagination. Adobe just realized they don't need to do much so why would you pay programmers if you have no competition and very little churn? Especially since what everyone wanted was stability, bugfixes, performance and hard stuff like versioning systems. How are you going to market that your software crashes 20% less? Also if anything software/hardware compatibility is always going to be reason for upgrading.
  - seanwilson 3y ago
    Ah, didn't see that for Sketch, thanks. > If you don't have anything to add to the software why should you charge for it? That's fair, but then ~$150 is too cheap for a lifetime license for a major version of software if you're using that professionally for 5 years to generate $10,000s. Asking someone to pay a higher amount upfront is difficult though. > Also if anything software/hardware compatibility is always going to be reason for upgrading. This is also one of the reasons that developers don't want to offer lifetime licenses as you need to keep software updated for security and compatibility as APIs, OSs, drivers, browsers etc. evolve over the years and to provide ongoing support to existing users. By the way, I'm not saying I like subscriptions or paying a lot upfront, but the alternatives have downsides to the software makers as well. I really don't know what a good compromise is.
    - omnimus 3y ago
      I agree that 150usd might be too cheap for pro market but like i mentioned maybe they found out they need to first go for amateurs. Who knows maybe they will make it more expensive in future or offer some kind of pro option. I also have to mention maybe your expectations are a bit skewed? Software dev got cheaper and not everything has to be breakneck hype venture capital squeeze. There is type design software Glyphs (https://glyphsapp.com/ https://glyphsapp.com/) used by basically every typedesigner now. It costs 300usd and it is very complex. But they seem to be doing OK. Its so niche compared to Affinity that there is maybe 5% of potential customers? Both Affinity and Glyphs are small private companies from europe where devs cost less. Maybe they are fine with smaller teams, slower pace and just OK profits.