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It's a smart approach imo. They had to get a subscription somehow to support AI features which they need to compete (just usage cost wise you can't do that on a

It's a smart approach imo. They had to get a subscription somehow to support AI features which they need to compete (just usage cost wise you can't do that on a one time fee license). But since they promised not to go subscription when they got acquired by Canva, making it free with AI as the subscription is a clever solution to not break their promise while still introducing a subscription model. I think their bet is enough people will want the AI, which I think is correct. As a long time Affinity user, first reaction was: "see, there is the subscription", but on second thought, fair enough, well played. I'll probably get the AI subscription as well. I do wonder if over time more features will go into that premium plan, but we'll see. Edit: It seems like some of the AI stuff runs on device, they are not very clear about what does or doesn't. That makes me change my opinion a bit, as that's just straight up a freemium subscription model.

tensor 11mo ago
I think there are a lot of people like me who use it occasionally and won't bother with AI nor a subscription. To me this is a bad sign, as free is unsustainable. It's only a matter of time before they look at their metrics and realize "oh look, we have all these casual users who only use the free stuff, that's a new source of revenue!" at which point either the subscription now covers the app, or worse, they steal your shit for "AI training." Hell, has anyone looked at the EULA for this "free" product? Maybe it's already doing that.
- sbarre 11mo ago
  > Free is unsustainable This is not necessarily true when the free product is a sales funnel. Canva's business model is not "desktop design application" but giving away these tools creates goodwill in the design community and gives them exposure and a lower-friction conversion funnel towards their actual paid products. Since they're desktop apps, there's very little cost to them for the free users who never convert (unlike Figma or other cloud-based products that have operational/bandwidth costs for all users).
  - WorldMaker 11mo ago
    I think a lot of the frustration seen here is that while Canva's business model is not "desktop design application" that Serif's (the previous company) business model was. Serif was something of the last one standing selling "desktop design applications" with that aligned to the incentives of "selling desktop design applications". With Serif bought by Canva and moving to a subscription model like all the other remaining tools, there is no one left with "selling desktop design applications" as a business model. That seems long-term unsustainable if your interest is "desktop design applications" that do their jobs well with few upsells to long-term subscriptions. The unsustainability that leads to upsells and subscription paywalls only generally ever get worse over time, because users of the free part aren't the desired customer.
    - bigbuppo 11mo ago
      On the plus side, when they layoff every single person that worked on Affinity in order to better align with something something market strategy, those people will be able to get together and start a new non-subscription desktop design applications company... with blackjack... and hookers.
    - ndiddy 11mo ago
      I think you can still get Paint Shop Pro and CorelDraw as a one-time purchase from Corel. I'm not sure how good the current versions are, but I regularly use Paint Shop Pro 8 from 2003 and enjoy using it. Of course, it's definitely a rug pull if your workflow is Affinity focused and you have a ton of Affinity format files around.
      - WorldMaker 11mo ago
        Today's Corel seems very much a "use at your own security/bug risk" license-selling factory. They still sell support contracts (because those are lucrative) and sometimes patch the software for big security issues, but they seem to do that on a staff that is far more salespeople and lawyers (to wrangle ancient B2B legal contracts and new "minimal effort" security support contracts) than software developers. Their business model doesn't seem to be as much "selling desktop software" as it seems to be "fulfilling old support contracts for the zombies of classic desktop software". That said, yes, maybe PSP and CorelDraw will solve some uses of parts of Affinity's stack for people looking for an alternative and don't mind paying close to full price for code that is mostly frozen in time from the late 90s and early 00s.
- crazygringo 11mo ago
  Free is not unsustainable if there is a paid tier. For people like you who only use it occasionally, you're not the kind of person who's going to pay in the first place. It's sustainable if the professionals people who use it daily/weekly find it's worth it to pay for the AI tools. And if you're a professional, you'll likely be needing those AI tools to keep up.
- exasperaited 11mo ago
  Is Da Vinci Resolve's free version unsustainable? No. Because it's part of the cost for Black Magic Design that if they want to have their own hardware and not have the industry's monopolists (Adobe and Apple) make it difficult to maximise their sales, they need to control their own app. This is what Canva think about their asset marketplace and AI tools, I guess. They need their own app to make sure Adobe can never so much as tug at the corner of the rug.
- seemaze 11mo ago
  It looks like it is an offline application (after license verification) in he FAQ >You will need to be online to download and activate your license with your free Canva account. From then on, there is no requirement to be online, even with extended offline periods. As a long time Adobe "user" (read: hater) I'm curious if this decision targets Adobe or Microsoft options more..? Maybe both.
  - reaperducer 11mo ago
    >You will need to be online to download and activate your license with your free Canva account. From then on, there is no requirement to be online, even with extended offline periods. Until you get a 2am e-mail stating that they've updated their terms of service, and by reading the e-mail, you have agreed to the updated terms because the chances of you challenging this in court are precisely zero, no matter what the internet IANALs say.
- alwillis 11mo ago
  > free is unsustainable Canva makes $3+ billion (up from $1.5 in 2023) per year; they have 21 million paying customers out of 240 million users. "Only" 8.75% are paying customers. They don't need huge uptake in AI subscriptions from Affinity. So yeah, free is sustainable for the foreseeable future.
  - Gigachad 11mo ago
    Would they continue to invest in Affinity development if it isn’t converting in to paying users?
    - nocturnes 11mo ago
      My experience: clients want to use Canva for everything; designers don't. This has a reasonable shot at eliminating reasons for designers to pass complex work back to Adobe's suite. If they disrupt Adobe's dominance at the professional end of the market, it puts Canva in a very comfortable position.
    - Torn 11mo ago
      I imagine enough folks will pay for the Canva account subscription to upsell - and then it's also a funnel into Canva Plus it directly attacks Adobe's moat if a solid desktop app competitor is free
    - polytely 11mo ago
      As long as Adobe is charging huge amounts of money, it seems like a free desktop app that competes with that and integrates with the existing Canva ecosystem would be worth it.
dannyw 11mo ago
Thank you (long-time Affinity user and fan, and Canva employee here :) Re. on-device AI features: these still have significant training costs; and Canva as a whole has paid hundreds of millions to date in royalties to creatives, including for AI training. Affinity is free, forever; but not open source; if that makes sense.
- candiddevmike 11mo ago
  > Affinity is free, forever; but not open source; if that makes sense. It's free until you guys stop supporting it or go out of business, then it disappears.
  - Freedom2 11mo ago
    I don't think it disappears - the copy I have will still be on my machine, and free to use as well. Unless they implemented something to remotely delete it?
    - candiddevmike 11mo ago
      Legally, you can't redistribute it
    - matwood 11mo ago
      Unless you freeze your machine in its current state, software that isn't maintained will eventually stop working.
      - Freedom2 11mo ago
        That doesn't mean it disappears though - it still exists, just in a non-working state.
        t-writescode 11mo ago
        And proton and the community do well to keep old things working. Dosbox is a testament to that.
JKCalhoun 11mo ago
> They had to get a subscription somehow to support AI features which they need to compete I assumed the jury was still out in that one.
bigbuppo 11mo ago
It's smart only if their business goal is to lose every single customer they had specifically because it wasn't subscription software and didn't have the AI junk that their customers specifically did not want.
- spiderice 11mo ago
  Yeah I'm not sure throwing away their single advantage (that's not hyperbole) over Adobe is a smart play
  - bigbuppo 11mo ago
    The DTP app actually does something that neither InDesign nor Quark handles properly, but it's something so specific I would dox myself if I mentioned it.
fortran77 11mo ago
I have a free subscription to Adobe Creative Cloud (I was a long-time, early employee and negotiated this as a perk). One reason I paid for and use Affinity is that it DOESN'T have AI. I want to be completely sure the photos I edit don't go up to a "cloud" somewhere, etc.

tensor 11mo ago

I think there are a lot of people like me who use it occasionally and won't bother with AI nor a subscription. To me this is a bad sign, as free is unsustainable. It's only a matter of time before they look at their metrics and realize "oh look, we have all these casual users who only use the free stuff, that's a new source of revenue!" at which point either the subscription now covers the app, or worse, they steal your shit for "AI training." Hell, has anyone looked at the EULA for this "free" product? Maybe it's already doing that.

sbarre 11mo ago
> Free is unsustainable This is not necessarily true when the free product is a sales funnel. Canva's business model is not "desktop design application" but giving away these tools creates goodwill in the design community and gives them exposure and a lower-friction conversion funnel towards their actual paid products. Since they're desktop apps, there's very little cost to them for the free users who never convert (unlike Figma or other cloud-based products that have operational/bandwidth costs for all users).
- WorldMaker 11mo ago
  I think a lot of the frustration seen here is that while Canva's business model is not "desktop design application" that Serif's (the previous company) business model was. Serif was something of the last one standing selling "desktop design applications" with that aligned to the incentives of "selling desktop design applications". With Serif bought by Canva and moving to a subscription model like all the other remaining tools, there is no one left with "selling desktop design applications" as a business model. That seems long-term unsustainable if your interest is "desktop design applications" that do their jobs well with few upsells to long-term subscriptions. The unsustainability that leads to upsells and subscription paywalls only generally ever get worse over time, because users of the free part aren't the desired customer.
  - bigbuppo 11mo ago
    On the plus side, when they layoff every single person that worked on Affinity in order to better align with something something market strategy, those people will be able to get together and start a new non-subscription desktop design applications company... with blackjack... and hookers.
  - ndiddy 11mo ago
    I think you can still get Paint Shop Pro and CorelDraw as a one-time purchase from Corel. I'm not sure how good the current versions are, but I regularly use Paint Shop Pro 8 from 2003 and enjoy using it. Of course, it's definitely a rug pull if your workflow is Affinity focused and you have a ton of Affinity format files around.
    - WorldMaker 11mo ago
      Today's Corel seems very much a "use at your own security/bug risk" license-selling factory. They still sell support contracts (because those are lucrative) and sometimes patch the software for big security issues, but they seem to do that on a staff that is far more salespeople and lawyers (to wrangle ancient B2B legal contracts and new "minimal effort" security support contracts) than software developers. Their business model doesn't seem to be as much "selling desktop software" as it seems to be "fulfilling old support contracts for the zombies of classic desktop software". That said, yes, maybe PSP and CorelDraw will solve some uses of parts of Affinity's stack for people looking for an alternative and don't mind paying close to full price for code that is mostly frozen in time from the late 90s and early 00s.
crazygringo 11mo ago
Free is not unsustainable if there is a paid tier. For people like you who only use it occasionally, you're not the kind of person who's going to pay in the first place. It's sustainable if the professionals people who use it daily/weekly find it's worth it to pay for the AI tools. And if you're a professional, you'll likely be needing those AI tools to keep up.
exasperaited 11mo ago
Is Da Vinci Resolve's free version unsustainable? No. Because it's part of the cost for Black Magic Design that if they want to have their own hardware and not have the industry's monopolists (Adobe and Apple) make it difficult to maximise their sales, they need to control their own app. This is what Canva think about their asset marketplace and AI tools, I guess. They need their own app to make sure Adobe can never so much as tug at the corner of the rug.
seemaze 11mo ago
It looks like it is an offline application (after license verification) in he FAQ >You will need to be online to download and activate your license with your free Canva account. From then on, there is no requirement to be online, even with extended offline periods. As a long time Adobe "user" (read: hater) I'm curious if this decision targets Adobe or Microsoft options more..? Maybe both.
- reaperducer 11mo ago
  >You will need to be online to download and activate your license with your free Canva account. From then on, there is no requirement to be online, even with extended offline periods. Until you get a 2am e-mail stating that they've updated their terms of service, and by reading the e-mail, you have agreed to the updated terms because the chances of you challenging this in court are precisely zero, no matter what the internet IANALs say.
alwillis 11mo ago
> free is unsustainable Canva makes $3+ billion (up from $1.5 in 2023) per year; they have 21 million paying customers out of 240 million users. "Only" 8.75% are paying customers. They don't need huge uptake in AI subscriptions from Affinity. So yeah, free is sustainable for the foreseeable future.
- Gigachad 11mo ago
  Would they continue to invest in Affinity development if it isn’t converting in to paying users?
  - nocturnes 11mo ago
    My experience: clients want to use Canva for everything; designers don't. This has a reasonable shot at eliminating reasons for designers to pass complex work back to Adobe's suite. If they disrupt Adobe's dominance at the professional end of the market, it puts Canva in a very comfortable position.
  - Torn 11mo ago
    I imagine enough folks will pay for the Canva account subscription to upsell - and then it's also a funnel into Canva Plus it directly attacks Adobe's moat if a solid desktop app competitor is free
  - polytely 11mo ago
    As long as Adobe is charging huge amounts of money, it seems like a free desktop app that competes with that and integrates with the existing Canva ecosystem would be worth it.

dannyw 11mo ago

Thank you (long-time Affinity user and fan, and Canva employee here :) Re. on-device AI features: these still have significant training costs; and Canva as a whole has paid hundreds of millions to date in royalties to creatives, including for AI training. Affinity is free, forever; but not open source; if that makes sense.

candiddevmike 11mo ago
> Affinity is free, forever; but not open source; if that makes sense. It's free until you guys stop supporting it or go out of business, then it disappears.
- Freedom2 11mo ago
  I don't think it disappears - the copy I have will still be on my machine, and free to use as well. Unless they implemented something to remotely delete it?
  - candiddevmike 11mo ago
    Legally, you can't redistribute it
  - matwood 11mo ago
    Unless you freeze your machine in its current state, software that isn't maintained will eventually stop working.
    - Freedom2 11mo ago
      That doesn't mean it disappears though - it still exists, just in a non-working state.
      - t-writescode 11mo ago
        And proton and the community do well to keep old things working. Dosbox is a testament to that.

JKCalhoun 11mo ago

> They had to get a subscription somehow to support AI features which they need to compete I assumed the jury was still out in that one.

bigbuppo 11mo ago

It's smart only if their business goal is to lose every single customer they had specifically because it wasn't subscription software and didn't have the AI junk that their customers specifically did not want.

spiderice 11mo ago
Yeah I'm not sure throwing away their single advantage (that's not hyperbole) over Adobe is a smart play
- bigbuppo 11mo ago
  The DTP app actually does something that neither InDesign nor Quark handles properly, but it's something so specific I would dox myself if I mentioned it.

fortran77 11mo ago

I have a free subscription to Adobe Creative Cloud (I was a long-time, early employee and negotiated this as a perk). One reason I paid for and use Affinity is that it DOESN'T have AI. I want to be completely sure the photos I edit don't go up to a "cloud" somewhere, etc.