Category Archives: Subscription

Autodesk’s revolting customers are evaporating

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The revolting customers themselves aren’t evaporating, of course. They remain solid and are still as irate as ever. It’s just that the appearance of outrage is gradually fading away on the Autodesk Community forums.

As mentioned before, forum moderators have been busily vacuuming up threads from all over the place and moving them to the Moving to Subscription forum. Some time in the last week or so, that forum became less visible. It’s no longer listed among the bold links on the right pane under Subscription Management, but for now can still be found (if you look hard) in the list of 96 forums. Or at least you can get to the page above that forum, from where you can click on another link.

As it’s now so hard to find, I’ll help Autodesk with its sincere desire to be transparent about its extortion scheme, er, wonderful discount offer by making the link a bit easier to find. Here it is:

Autodesk Moving to Subscription forum

Don’t mention it, Autodesk!

Oh, and the first time I tried to get in as a signed-in user, I got kicked out to the top forum list level. Don’t give up, try again and it should work.

From the beginning, I’ve had no doubt that the main idea behind the forum is to keep customer dissent neat and tidy in one easily-hidden place. It will almost certainly lose its final link in due course, then it will be made read-only and merged into semi-oblivion, just like the last one. When I dared to suggest such an outrageous thing, an Autodesk moderator accused me of being a conspiracy theorist.

Well, melt my steel beams with jet fuel, look what’s happening! Who would have thought it?

I’ll be sure to let you know when each of the final evaporation stages occurs. If you happen to notice before I do, please let me know and I’ll pass the information on to my readers.

Hot tip for Autodesk

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Hey Autodesk high-ups, I’m sorry you’ve been having so much trouble persuading your customers to throw away their perpetual licenses and throw themselves on your perpetual mercy. It’s clearly difficult to persuade technical types to do dumb things like rent your software at enormous and ever-increasing prices. I feel for you. But there’s an answer.

Find dumber customers.

Lots of them. And fast, before the stock market notices that you’re no Adobe and we’re not buying it. Sorry, I mean not renting it.

Look no further! Simply buy this company, discard the product when you’re bored with it (you’re very familiar with that process) and get hold of the customer list.

Sell subscription software to those people. They’ll have no idea what they’re renting or why, but that doesn’t matter. They’ll buy anything that’s pretty, hip, now, connected, and preferably organic. They will commit to perpetually shelling out large sums just to keep using it, no matter how poorly it performs. They’re rich and dumber than rocks. All of this makes them ideal customers for you.

If you’re a bit strapped for cash at the moment, just have a word with the investors (including Google) who pumped $120M into an Internet-enabled $700 (sorry, now $400) machine that squeezes expensive pre-squeezed juice out of DRM-protected short-lifespan bags, and manages to do it slower and noisier than you can do it with your bare hands. They’re even dumber than the customers, so squeezing money out of them will be easier than squeezing juice out of a bag when the Wi-Fi’s down.

This is a perfect fit for you, Autodesk. It has everything you need to ensure mission-friendly proactive synergistic compatibility on a going-forward basis. It’s disruptive. It looks good. It’s an overpriced, poorly functioning product. It has on-point (but pointless) compulsory connectivity. It ties users into paying whatever you ask, for ever. And best of all, it connects you to a collection of completely clueless cashed-up customers.

Thanks to @internetofshit on Twitter for making me aware of this and other hilarious Internet of Things (IoT) idiocy. Examples:

Enjoy!

Dissecting Dieter’s perpetual points

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I like Dieter Schlaepfer, we’ve been arguing for years.

Dieter and I have never met in person, but online we go back to the CIS:ACAD CompuServe days of the early 1990s. Dieter’s a good guy who has done a splendid job with AutoCAD documentation content for decades. He is genuinely interested in improving the product and customer experience, and has done a great deal to do so over the years.

Dieter’s responsible for the most-commented post on this blog, AutoCAD 2013 – An Autodesk Help writer responds with 164 comments and was a heavy contributor to the 95 comments on the recent AutoCAD 2018 – why did the DWG format change? post.

If you read the comments here, you’ll know that Dieter is the only Autodesk person brave enough to put his head above the parapet and enter into discussions here in recent times, even though he’s not doing so in any official capacity. Autodesk’s PR people give me a wide berth and the Autodesk view would be completely unrepresented here if not for Dieter. He’s prepared to put his hand up and say, “But what about this?” when it’s an unpopular viewpoint and nobody else is prepared to say it. Props to Dieter for that.

Among Dieter’s many recent comments, he outlined 12 considerations in the rental v perpetual argument. Myself and others have been having fun eviscerating his tortured pub analogy, but his more serious arguments deserve a more considered response than can be comfortably provided in a comment, hence this post.

Let’s take Dieter’s considerations one by one. Bear in mind I’m approaching this from a long-term Autodesk customer point of view. You may look at things differently, and that’s fine.

1. Cost – if a rental, lease, or membership were low enough in price, almost everyone would do so (at a dollar a month, heck, I’d lease my shoes)

Fantasy argument. If Lear would hire me a private jet for $1 a month, sure, sign me up. The reality is that rental costs more, except in the short term. That’s why companies rent things out: to make money. That’s why Autodesk is doing it; it’s an attempt, however hamfisted, to make more money. On cost, rental loses.

2. Business model, terms and conditions, and their consequences

Vague. But given the terms and conditions attached to Autodesk rental (standalone users must use a terrible licensing system) and the consequences (software stops working the instant you stop paying), rental loses big-time here.

3. Quality of fulfillment – this is to your point

Not sure what Dieter means here. ???

4. Tax consequences

This varies from place to place. I can get a 100% write-off whether buying a perpetual license, maintaining it or renting it. I may want to get a bigger write-off sooner, or not. Neutral.

5. Opportunity cost – by tying up a lot of cash, what potential opportunities do you lose?

Depending on a business’s cashflow and other circumstances, this is a possible valid argument. However, only in the short term. Because rental costs more in the long term, it costs you more in potential opportunity in the long term. Overall, rental loses.

6. Financial accounting – rental, lease, or membership costs can easily be assigned to each project and billed to each customer

If I don’t have the need to do that, it’s irrelevant. But even if that’s the way you need or prefer to do things, it’s still only partially true that rental can be a benefit. Let’s say you have won a project that is planned to take 9 months and rent Autodesk software for a year: it costs you $3000 and you pay up front (because you’re not insane enough to pay Autodesk’s monthly rental prices). You finish the project in 10 months. You use that software for other smaller projects that crop up during that 10 month period, and after it’s over. Quick, how much of that $3000 do you apportion to each project? See, it’s not as simple as it appears.

It’s really not difficult to have perpetual license software costs handled in the same way as overheads and other long-term costs that can’t be directly attributed to a project. You’re not going to be able to sack your accountant thanks to software rental. Neutral.

7. Flexibility – you can easily increase or decrease the number and types of licenses for several (not just one) products

Ah, flexibility. Let’s say I’m convinced by Dieter’s other arguments and convert my perpetual license to rental under the current so-called “discount” offer. In doing so, I throw away my flexibility. I can’t ever stop paying or my software stops working. Down the track I may not need that license for a while, but even then I can’t hop off the rental train because if I do that and then hop back on, my software costs will treble (roughly – it varies).

As for the several products thing, Autodesk has been pushing customers into suites and collections where a high price is paid for a block of products. Can you drop back from a collection to a product or two for a while, then back to other products or up to a collection again? Sure, Autodesk is very flexible. Just forego your “discount” and pay an astronomical increase, no problem.

Autodesk has been progressively removing its customers’ flexibility for decades and will undoubtedly continue to do so as long as it thinks that will make more money that way.

So please don’t come the rental=flexibility argument with me. On flexibility too, Autodesk’s rental loses.

8. A truly perpetual software license requires you to maintain obsolete hardware and old operating systems, and discourages the adoption of new technologies

No it doesn’t. A non-upgradable license might do that, whether perpetual or otherwise. That doesn’t apply to perpetual licenses under maintenance. It didn’t even used to apply to perpetual licenses not under maintenance. Whose fault is it that perpetual licenses not under maintenance are no longer upgradable? Autodesk’s. False argument.

9. Perpetual licenses put most of the financial burden on new customers rather than spreading it more fairly between all users

Actually, with perpetual licenses the financial burden is much more fairly spread. What costs more, developing a product from scratch or maintaining it? Perpetual license purchasers pay a higher amount for the initial purchase, just as the developer pays a higher amount for the initial development. The developer is fairly rewarded for providing the product for the customer to use. Following that, the developer is fairly rewarded for maintaining and improving it.

But I really hope you’re not trying to convince people that Autodesk is price-forcing customers onto rental in order to be fairer to them, because I think incredulity would be the appropriate reaction. False argument.

10. Perpetual software licenses create “a long tail” of product versions, making data sharing between users more difficult

Perpetual software licenses that are maintained do no such thing. If a vendor provides good value for that maintenance payment, then people will maintain the software. Autodesk maintenance value for money has been dreadful in recent years, leading to people dropping it. Improving Autodesk’s performance in that area would reduce the length of the tail. Making maintenance value for money even worse by racking up prices will lead to people dropping it and sticking on old releases much longer. Autodesk’s rental push is lengthening the tail, not shortening it.

Incidentally, there is a new benefit for subscription customers with multi-user (network) licenses. Guess what? Five releases are now supported rather than four. Yes, Autodesk rental is literally lengthening the tail. False argument.

11. Perpetual software licenses encourage users to use less secure software and operating systems in a time when cybercrime and espionage are mushrooming

See 10 above. False argument.

12. Providers of perpetual licenses have less incentive to support long-time customers than providers of rental, leased, and membership business models do

Absolutely wrong. This is literally the exact opposite of observed reality.

You know what model really provides an incentive for vendors to improve the product? Perpetual licenses with optional paid upgrades. With the perpetual/upgrade model, if there’s no improvement, there’s no ongoing income. But that model was too much like hard work. Easier to just remove our options over the years to manipulate customers into paying more and getting less. Autodesk priced that model out of the market and then killed it off because it wanted to get people paying for just using the software rather than as a reward for improving it.

It’s proven by history. The closer Autodesk got to the all-rental model, the worse the rate of improvement became. As an improvement incentive, rental loses.

There you go, Dieter. Rental loses on five considerations and wins on none. And I’m being generous by considering points 10 and 11 as neutral.

Feel free to add your own observations on perpetual v rental. If you want to have a go at Dieter’s arguments or mine, go for it. I just ask that you play the ball, not the man.

Simplifying CAD Management the Autodesk way

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According to Autodesk, one of the benefits of subscription (rental) is simplified administration. To prove it, Autodesk has provided a simple guide for CAD Managers called The Software Administrator’s Guide to Autodesk Subscriptions – How to Set Up, Install, and Manage Your Software and Users.

It’s 18.7 MB and 78 pages long.

Don’t worry though, this simple guide helpfully includes a simple guide on how to read it.

Among other things, this eBook provides handy hints on how subscription’s simplified administration regime for standalone licenses requires you to pre-emptively name all your users, set them all up with Autodesk accounts and define what software each is allowed to use. There’s a note to say that your Internet connection needs to be working at the time of installation (obviously) and also every 30 days (less obvious) or you won’t be able to use the software.

The guide describes how you can simply go online to Autodesk Accounts (assuming it’s up), and switch those permissions around when Bert is away on site and Ernie needs to hop on his PC at 6 PM to make a quick change before a drawing goes out. It mentions how Ernie will be sent an email with a link to follow so they can sign up before using the product. The CAD Manager is encouraged to check with Ernie to make sure it all worked, and check online to ensure Ernie’s sign-in went according to plan.

Make sure you get in early tomorrow morning before Bert’s shift starts so you can switch the user permissions back again. What? You planned to have the day off? Don’t you understand that your job has been redefined by Autodesk? I dub thee “not a team player”.

Don’t complain, because the new procedure is clearly much more simple than the old-fashioned perpetual license method. You know, the one which involved the far more complex procedure of Ernie logging on to Bert’s PC and using the software, then Bert logging on and using it the next day. How did we ever cope before Autodesk’s magnificent management enhancement?

If the huge job efficiency boost provided by this simplified new method doesn’t have CAD Managers throwing their perpetual licenses at Autodesk in a subscription-hungry frenzy, I don’t know what will.

Simplifying CAD Management is alive at Autodesk.

Autodesk customers are still revolting

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I described before how customers are outraged by Autodesk’s attempt to price-force them onto subscription (rental). That’s still happening. The Autodesk Community forum moderators are still vacuuming up threads and Ideas submissions and moving them to the Moving to Subscription forum, which despite its obscurity is still active with some threads now having hundreds of posts.

Other discussions in various non-Autodesk locations are extending over many pages of comments. Almost all comments are highly critical of Autodesk. A large portion of these customers say they are abandoning Autodesk. Many are discussing the specific competitors’ software they are moving to.

In addition to the Autodesk forum staff confining commentary to a quiet corner, another way of keeping the public noise down is by directing people to talk to their resellers. Yesterday, I did just that. The rep who came to see me is a good guy from a great reseller and I was not unkind.

Autodesk obviously knows it’s hard to sell such a bad deal and is pushing its resellers hard to get with the program. They are being briefed and provided with PowerPoint presentations to help sell the deal. My reseller says he’s had to deal with “many angry customers” and feels like the meat in the sandwich. He did his very best to present the deal in its best light, but the poor guy is too honest to make it sound good. He has my sympathy.

There were some differences between the numbers he provided and what I’ve described based on Autodesk information. The major pieces of new information I gleaned (assuming my reseller is right) were:

  • For people who surrender their licenses and switch to subscription, the cost that’s locked in for the first three years is 5% more than maintenance, not the same price.
  • After the three-year lock-in, the year four subscription price rise will be about 15%.
  • After that, nobody knows.

The net effect is slightly worse for subscription than it looked before the meeting, but not hugely so. It’s not worth redoing my graphs.

Switching to subscription is still just a really bad deal that’s being presented as a good deal by comparing it with another deal (maintenance) that’s being artificially worsened. Sorry, but I’m not just comparing it with Autodesk’s other deal. I’m also comparing it with the deals provided by Autodesk’s competitors. According to that comparison, both Autodesk’s deals are shockingly poor. The same happens if I compare Autodesk’s subscription deal with rental success-story Adobe’s pricing.

I explained to my reseller the problem with surrendering perpetual licenses. Autodesk is requiring a decision to be made with permanent, irrevocable consequences, based only on short-term information. He said the message from Autodesk is that further information isn’t going to be forthcoming because, “No other company is going to let you know its prices five years in advance.” My reply was that no other company is expecting me to give away what has already been paid for.

Last week, I had a telephone conversation about an Autodesk rep about this issue. Among other things, I told him:

You’re asking me to give you my balls in a bag in the hope that you won’t squeeze too hard.

 
It ain’t happening.

New Autodesk subscription idea – any interest?

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Let’s say Autodesk came up with a new offer for customers currently under maintenance. Let’s say you could switch to subscription (rental) with the same price as maintenance, locked in with no increases for three years. In addition, you get to retain, but not upgrade, your perpetual license.

Let’s say you’re on maintenance which is up for renewal later this year. You currently have a perpetual license of AutoCAD 2018. If you accept this offer, you will always retain that AutoCAD 2018 license. You switch to subscription and pay the maintenance amount for one to three years. Your subscription fee is guaranteed to rise by no more than 20% total by year five.

As long as you continue to pay subscription, you get access to new releases (2019, 2020, etc). If you decide to no longer renew your subscription at any point, you can no longer use the new releases, but you can still fall back on using your perpetual license, which remains as AutoCAD 2018. The use of the software would be subject to the usual fair use restrictions, e.g. during the subscription period you can’t use AutoCAD 2018 on one PC while using AutoCAD 2019 on a different one.

Would you be interested in such an offer?

I’ve added a poll, so please vote and feel free to comment on why you would or would not be prepared to switch under those circumstances.

Would you be interested in switching to Autodesk subscription if you could keep your old (non-upgraded) perpetual license?

  • Yes (24%, 32 Votes)
  • Maybe (25%, 33 Votes)
  • No (51%, 67 Votes)

Total Voters: 132

Loading ... Loading ...

Please note that this offer is entirely hypothetical. It arose from a recent telephone conversation with a non-Autodesk person. I have no inside information that suggests Autodesk is considering such an offer.

New Autodesk subscription offer to perpetual license holders

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Don’t get too excited. Autodesk’s recent attempt to price-force perpetual license maintenance customers onto subscription (rental) remains in place, unchanged and just as unappealing as before. If you’re one of those customers, there’s nothing new here of interest to you.

This new offer, at 30% off the normal but extremely high subscription price, is at first sight even less appealing than the approximately 60% saving that the above offer provides. But it’s aimed at different customers, and there’s the remote possibility that such customers might find it worthwhile.

The new offer is called FY18 Q1 Autodesk – Global Field Promotion and is aimed at bringing into the rental fold those customers who hold old perpetual licenses that are not on maintenance. If you have an old AutoCAD Release 14 lying around that has never been upgraded, or an AutoCAD 2007 license where you allowed the maintenance (then called Subscription) to lapse, you can trade it in for the 30% discount on a wide range of subscription products. You need to surrender the perpetual license, and you need to pay up front for three years of subscription. Read the FAQ for details.

Three years of subscription at only 30% off is actually really expensive. Depending on what product you go for, it could work out about the same as a perpetual license cost back when Autodesk used to sell software. Despite that substantial investment, you’ll be left with nothing whatsoever at the end of the three years. You will then be expected to wear a huge increase in rental costs when the 30% discount wears off. It works out to a price jump of about 43%, plus whatever price rises there may have been in the meantime.

Excited by this offer? No? Gee, you people are hard to please!

Don’t dismiss it out of hand, though. If you meet all of the following conditions, you should still consider this offer:

  • You have an old non-upgraded eligible license lying around.
  • You’re never going to want to use that license ever again.
  • You have an absolute need to rent one of the Autodesk products on offer, and would otherwise be paying 100% rather than 70% of the huge subscription fees.
  • You can afford to pay those high fees in advance for three years.
  • You’re definitely going to need that rented software for more than two years (otherwise it works out cheaper to rent at 100% for 2/3 of the time).
  • You can budget for a huge price increase at the end of the three year period, assuming you’re going to use the software long-term.
  • You don’t think Autodesk is going to come up with a more attractive offer later.

Maybe the Autodesk execs think this is going to be perceived as an attractive offer, but if they do there’s a fair bit of self-delusion going on. I fully expect this campaign to fail to live up to Autodesk’s expectations, and much better offers to follow later, in order to try to tempt the remaining hold-outs. No guarantees, obviously; it’s your money and your gamble.

Having had a good look at what Autodesk execs have been telling the stock market, I’ve been expecting this move. Old perpetual license holders have been identified as a target market. However, I was expecting the move to come later than this, and I was expecting the terms of the offer to be much more attractive. Are perpetual license converts thinner on the ground than Autodesk expected? Is Autodesk getting desperate for cash to make this quarter’s numbers look better than they otherwise would? Wouldn’t surprise me.

Ask Teresa from Autodesk your maintenance and subscription questions

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As a follow-up to the Pixel Fondue video I posted earlier, Greg reports:

Since then Teresa Anania (Teresa from the letter) has contacted me and has agreed to do a pixelfondue livestream and answer some questions people may have. So…if you want to ask Teresa something directly post your question here and I will send it to her. I obviously can’t guarantee that I will ask (or she will answer) all questions. Teresa is (to her credit) reaching out to customers in a more personal way here – and maybe we can help her understand our feelings about AD’s move to subscription, especially how it pertains to current license holders.

Teresa Anania is Autodesk’s Senior Director, Subscription Success. It is indeed commendable that Teresa is prepared to step out of the Autodesk PR safe zone and field questions and comments from real people in an environment outside her control.

If you want to ask Teresa a question, hop over Autodesk forum and reply to Greg’s post. I’ll let Greg know about this post here too, so if you reply here he should see it.

ADSK v ADBE – a tale of two graphs

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I’m no financial analyst, so I’ll just leave these graphs here for your own interpretation. They show the profit/loss numbers for two software companies beginning with A that have abandoned perpetual license sales and gone all-subscription (rental).

Among other significant differences, one company went with very low rental prices while the other has extremely high rental prices. How have these differing strategies played out for Adobe and Autodesk? Green shows profit; red shows loss.

Adobe moved to the all-rental model earlier than Autodesk. The Autodesk graph therefore covers a shorter period than the Adobe one. Feel free to slide the Autodesk one along to the point you think best matches the equivalent point in the Adobe timeline.

The black lines are trend lines. The thick one is linear, the thin one is a 4-quarter moving average. The linear trend lines are not directly comparable because of the different timeframes covered (the Adobe one includes the revenue recovery stage which Autodesk has yet to enter).

Neither of these graphs reflect deferred revenue (money that is received but not counted immediately). Full details of Autodesk’s financials are available here. Make your own financial decisions based on your own interpretations and/or using the advice of parties better qualified than myself. For now at least, the stock market loves what Autodesk is doing, even if Autodesk customers don’t. I just found the comparison interesting.

Autodesk license costs options – summary 2

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This is a revised version of the Autodesk license costs options – summary post, where I examined various payment options for CAD software and compared them with the cost of staying on your Autodesk maintenance contract long-term. This version is based on limited new information from Autodesk. While this post can be read alone, to better understand the context you may wish to check out that summary and the preceding posts in the series:

1. Autodesk license costs options 1 & 2 – stay on maintenance, subscription now
2. Autodesk license costs options 3, 4 & 5 – bait and switch
3. Autodesk license costs options 6 to 10 – abandon maintenance or Autodesk
4. Autodesk license costs options – summary

In this post, I will examine the validity of the various assumptions I have made; lay out all the data with best/worst options lists; provide combined graphs; and sum up. All of these sections have been revised based on new information.

Assumptions

Because Autodesk still isn’t telling customers all they need to know in order to make a rational choice, I’ve had to make some assumptions in order to work out the relative viabilities of the various options. Here, I’ll lay those assumptions out and explain why I made them. Some of them are very soundly based, others less so.

  1. Autodesk will continue to make maintenance available long-term. This has been repeated by Autodesk people at all levels and is currently pledged in writing on Autodesk’s web site. On the other hand, Autodesk has said one thing and done the other on multiple occasions, so who knows? Autodesk is also making noises about how terrible it is for the poor thing to have to go on operating in the same way that has made it billions for decades. I certainly can’t promise that Autodesk’s promise is worth the pixels it’s written on. It’s safe to assume that Autodesk will do all sorts of nasty things to maintenance customers over the next few years, but I’m relying on our fortitude in standing up to that.
  2. The maintenance price increases of 5%, 10% and 20% are cumulative, resulting in actual price increases of 5%, 15.5% and 38.6%. This has been confirmed by Autodesk here.
  3. Following that set of increases, the following year (2020) will see an increase of between 0% and 20% and the year after that (2021) will see a 0% increase. This is based on the figures shown in Autodesk’s example here. I’ve provided option 1c that assumes the best-case scenario (0% + 0%) and option 1d that assumes the worst-case scenario (20% + 0%).
  4. Following that set of increases, from 2022 the cost of maintenance will increase by another cumulative 10% per year. I have adjusted this downwards from 20% on the basis that Autodesk’s example shows a total maximum increase of 20% from 2020 to 2022. In reality, anything could happen, and Autodesk isn’t telling us.
  5. The dollar figures shown in Autodesk’s examples are accurate. There are some minor discrepancies between Autodesk’s quoted percentages and dollar amounts. Where dollar amounts are available, I have used those.
  6. Subscription (rental) prices will be frozen until after 2019. I’ve assumed this because Autodesk will want to keep subscription looking good in comparison to maintenance while it tries to persuade people to come on board.
  7. Subscription prices will increase 10% per year from 2020. Another guess. I’m pretty sure the price will keep going up, and it may be worse than this if Autodesk gets a sizeable portion of existing users tied in by then. Autodesk will rack up prices as high as it thinks it will get away with. My 10% assumption, if it’s low, will make subscription look better than it really is in my comparisons.
  8. The offered 60%/55%/50% discount on subscription will be maintained for three years from the point of changeover, not three years from now. That appears to be implied in Autodesk’s statements, and a three-year lock-in appears to be a standard Autodesk marketing technique.
  9. Following the three-year lock-in, the subscription cost will then change to 16% more than maintenance. This has been adjusted down from the 60% that was based on an apparent transcription error in an Autodesk earnings call transcript. A corrected version is available here: Autodesk (ADSK) Q4 2017 Results – Earnings Call Transcript. Incidentally, the statement that was initially attributed to Amal Hanspal is now reported to be from Andrew Anagnost.
  10. This special subscription cost of 16% over maintenance will be based on the original pre-increase maintenance price. This has been stated by Autodesk and roughly corresponds to Autodesk’s example figures. This differs from my original assumption that the increase would be based on higher and ever-increasing costs.
  11. The 16% premium subscription price will remain in place permanently, subject to normal percentage increases. This is heavily implied by Autodesk’s promise that customers who convert to subscription in 2017/8/9 will “keep this discounted pricing, which will be lower than maintenance plan renewal pricing and far below the cost of a new subscription”. This is described as a “guarantee”, but it’s rubbery. Don’t expect to see it written into a binding contract with figures.
  12. The 16% premium subscription price will increase at 10% per year. This is a guess and Autodesk can increase it by 100% a year if it feels like it. However, I’ve used 10% a year for everything else, so I’m keeping this assumption consistent with the others.
  13. For option 8, Autodesk will offer maintenance customers who switch over in 2022 a 50% discount on subscription, locked in for 3 years. Autodesk has made very similar offers over the last year or so. I’m assuming such offers will continue to arise from time to time, but there are no guarantees.
  14. For option 8a, Autodesk will offer maintenance customers who switch over in 2022 a permanent 50% discount on subscription. If Autodesk gets as desperate in 2022 as it is now to convert people to subscription, such an offer could be made. Or not. In case it is, I’ve included the numbers.
  15. Bricsys will continue to provide perpetual license and maintenance options. I’m highly confident in this one. Autodesk’s rental-only move is manna from heaven to Bricsys, and the availability of perpetual licenses is a big drawcard for disaffected Autodesk customers. Bricsys won’t throw away that competitive advantage.
  16. For options 9 and 10, BricsCAD purchase and maintenance costs will rise by 10% a year (compound). Another guess. Based on the Bricsys price history to date, 10% may be on the high side. However, because Bricsys prices are so much lower than Autodesk ones, an error in this assumption will have a much smaller effect than errors in the Autodesk price assumptions.

Some or all of the above assumptions could be wrong. Autodesk has been invited to replace this necessary speculation with information and is welcome to do so. As with all content on my blog, I actively encourage being corrected on any factual inaccuracies.

Data

If you want to examine the full set of data and/or make adjustments to the values, assumptions or calculations, here is the updated Excel spreadsheet I used, AutoCADSubscriptionCostComparison2017-03-17.xlsx. I suggest you discard any earlier versions of the spreadsheet, including AutoCADSubscriptionCostComparison2017-03-16-1.xlsx that was incorrectly linked in this post for the first few hours of its life. Note that in this version of the spreadsheet, I have used bold to indicate the figures that are known to be correct.

The following tables show the cost winners and losers after the first three, five and ten years based on one North American AutoCAD license with a 2016 maintenance cost of $545 and (late) 2016 subscription cost of $1470. All values are in US dollars.

Three years
Average Annual Cost Option
0 Option 0 – drop maintenance, keep using AutoCAD
0 Option 6 – abandon maintenance, subscription in 2020
0 Option 7 – abandon maintenance, subscription in 2022
0 Option 8 – abandon maintenance, subscription in 2022 (3-year 50% discount)
0 Option 8a – abandon maintenance, subscription in 2022 (permanent 50% discount)
0 Option 10 – BricsCAD Pro with maintenance in 2020
474 Option 9 – BricsCAD Pro with maintenance
570 Option 3 – subscription in 2017
631 Option 4 – subscription in 2018
643 Option 5 – subscription in 2019
648 Option 1c – stay on maintenance (0% increase 2020/2021)
648 Option 1d – stay on maintenance (20% increase 2020, 0% 2021)
1470 Option 2 – subscription now
Five years
Average Annual Cost Option
0 Option 0 – drop maintenance, keep using AutoCAD
0 Option 7 – abandon maintenance, subscription in 2022
0 Option 8 – abandon maintenance, subscription in 2022 (3-year 50% discount)
0 Option 8a – abandon maintenance, subscription in 2022 (permanent 50% discount)
303 Option 10 – BricsCAD Pro with maintenance in 2020
416 Option 9 – BricsCAD Pro with maintenance
607 Option 3 – subscription in 2017
650 Option 4 – subscription in 2018
679 Option 6 – abandon maintenance, subscription in 2020
680 Option 5 – subscription in 2019
689 Option 1c – stay on maintenance (0% increase 2020/2021)
749 Option 1d – stay on maintenance (20% increase 2020, 0% 2021)
1561 Option 2 – subscription now
Ten years
Average Annual Cost Option
0 Option 0 – drop maintenance, keep using AutoCAD
383 Option 10 – BricsCAD Pro with maintenance in 2020
439 Option 9 – BricsCAD Pro with maintenance
597 Option 8a – abandon maintenance, subscription in 2022 (permanent 50% discount)
769 Option 3 – subscription in 2017
790 Option 4 – subscription in 2018
805 Option 5 – subscription in 2019
848 Option 1c – stay on maintenance (0% increase 2020/2021)
871 Option 8 – abandon maintenance, subscription in 2022 (3-year 50% discount)
979 Option 1d – stay on maintenance (20% increase 2020, 0% 2021)
1195 Option 7 – abandon maintenance, subscription in 2022
1534 Option 6 – abandon maintenance, subscription in 2020
1975 Option 2 – subscription now

Graphs

These graphs show all 13 options together.

Annual Costs

Cumulative costs:

Average annual costs over time


Feel free to mess with the spreadsheet to produce the graphs that interest you. If you hide rows, those options won’t show up in the graphs.

Summary

Based on this revised set of figures and assumptions, the following conclusions can be drawn:

  1. The cheapest thing to do, with zero direct cost, is drop maintenance and keep using your perpetual license as long as it still does what you need.
  2. The next cheapest thing to do is switch to using BricsCAD. You’re well ahead of anything that involves sticking with Autodesk by a very significant margin. As a bonus, even if you stop paying anything to anyone you will end up with perpetual license of both AutoCAD and BricsCAD, and that’s two more than Autodesk wants you to have.
  3. Delaying a switch to BricsCAD won’t save you a lot of money.
  4. The financial implications of abandoning maintenance for a few years and then signing up for subscription are uncertain. It will depend on what Autodesk decides to do in the future in terms of offers to encourage people to sign up. If an offer similar to the current one arrives in five years, you’ll be well ahead. If not, you’re well behind.
  5. Abandoning maintenance for a few years and then signing up for subscription will cost least if you stay off subscription as long as possible.
  6. If you switch from maintenance to subscription with the special offer, it works out slightly cheaper the earlier you do it, contrary to my previous calculations.
  7. Switching from maintenance to subscription with the offer works out slightly cheaper than staying on maintenance, again contrary to my previous calculations. However, Autodesk’s perception of this as “huge incentives for loyalty that we’re giving to maintenance customers” is delusional. The pricing of these options is grouped closely enough to be considered about the same into the longer term, within a reasonable margin for error and with allowance made for Autodesk mind-changes. Any saving that might eventuate will undoubtedly be significantly less than the money you have invested in the perpetual license you would be giving up.
  8. Switching from maintenance to subscription without the offer costs a fortune and would be an utterly ridiculous proposition.

It’s worth noting that the special offer will lapse if at any stage you drop subscription for a while, or if you want to switch to a different subscription product. If you switch to subscription and take advantage of the supposed flexibility of the rental model by dropping a license for a while due to a recession, you’re back at full price. When that happens, see point 8 above.

You won’t have your perpetual license to tide you over, either; you gave that away. Signing up for this offer will permanently financially lock you into Autodesk subscription, whatever future price increases Autodesk decides its shareholders would like to see you pay. You’re also signing up for a lifetime of whatever conditions Autodesk decides to impose at each subscription renewal, however unreasonable you consider those conditions to be.

That’s why, despite Autodesk’s revised figures making the current deal less obviously terrible than before, the essential point from my first summary still holds true:

DO NOT switch from maintenance to subscription.

The savings from switching are relatively minor, can easily disappear with a wave of Autodesk’s magic wand, and don’t remotely justify giving up your valuable perpetual license. Remember, that license represents your safety net. It allows you to keep using your software for years without paying Autodesk, while you work out your escape route. Autodesk desperately wants that license because it gives you a tiny bit of control. Autodesk wants all of that control.

Don’t fall for it. Keep your perpetual license.

Video nicely captures Autodesk customer sentiment

3 Replies

In this video starting at 42:21, Greg from Pixel Fondue had a few words to say about Autodesk’s attempt to price-force perpetual license owners onto subscription (rental). I think he captures the current Autodesk customer mood quite nicely.

Here are some of the highlights from Greg and others:

44:36 – If you’re gonna eff me, know my name.

45:20 – The only thing they forgot to attach to this was the head of a horse.

46:54 – If they didn’t think it was a tough sell, they wouldn’t have written a 2000 word essay…

49:14 – This is a trade-in, and they’re looking to take this [Entertainment Creation Suite]. So I give you this, this $12,000 investment … I give it back to you, plus like another $1,000 … and you give me the exact same thing. Except I no longer own it.

51:02 – Hi! Give us your thing you bought from us, we’ll rent it back to you… dumbass!

58:49 – It’s OK to be pissed, and Autodesk needs to know that people are pissed. So, Teresa, people are pissed. That’s a bullshit letter. Be honest with us.

Autodesk starts answering subscription questions, but many remain

1 Reply

Getting worthwhile non-rubbery information out of Autodesk on the maintenance to subscription push has been like pulling teeth. Well, one tooth has popped out now. There are a rotten mouthful still to go, but some progress is being made.

Here is the latest Autodesk communication on this subject. While it gives the impression of providing transparency, there’s still not enough there to provide enough certainty to convince any but the most naive customers to throw away their perpetual licenses. If you try pumping Autodesk’s numbers into my costing spreadsheet, you can get so far and then you’re back to guesswork again. If you guess low, it’s merely a bad deal. If you guess high, it’s an atrocious deal. For you, not for Autodesk; I’m sure Autodesk will be happy with whatever deal it decides to inflict.

There are huge holes in what has been stated that allow Autodesk to charge pretty much whatever they like in the future. I have about a dozen questions about those holes. If they get answered, I’ll let you know.

In the meantime, I suggest you still assume it’s a trap to leave you open to future massive price gouging without the safety net and escape route that a perpetual license provides.

Autodesk license costs options – summary

19 Replies

Note: an updated version of this post is available, using new costing information from Autodesk that was unavailable when this original summary was written.

In this series of posts, I have examined various payment options for CAD software and compared them with the cost of staying on your Autodesk maintenance contract long-term.

In this fourth and final post, I will examine the validity of the various assumptions I have made; lay out all the data with best/worst options lists; provide combined graphs; and sum up.

However, that means this is a very long post. I want to ensure one essential point doesn’t get lost, so I’ll state it right up front. I will fully justify it later with objective evidence, but for now, here it is:

DO NOT switch from maintenance to subscription.

Just don’t do it. It makes no sense to do it on any level. You would throw away your valuable perpetual license, of course, but that’s not all. Despite what Autodesk is implying in its sleight-of-hand marketing, subscription will cost you more money.

Assumptions

Because Autodesk isn’t telling customers all they need to know in order to make a rational choice, I’ve had to make some assumptions in order to work out the relative viabilities of the various options. Here, I’ll lay those assumptions out and explain why I made them. Some of them are very soundly based, others less so.

  1. Autodesk will continue to make maintenance available long-term. This has been repeated by Autodesk people at all levels and is currently pledged in writing on Autodesk’s web site. On the other hand, Autodesk has said one thing and done the other on multiple occasions, so who knows? Autodesk is also making noises about how terrible it is for the poor thing to have to go on operating in the same way that has made it billions for decades. I certainly can’t promise that Autodesk’s promise is worth the pixels it’s written on. It’s safe to assume that Autodesk will do all sorts of nasty things to maintenance customers over the next few years, but I’m relying on our fortitude in standing up to that.
  2. The maintenance price increases of 5%, 10% and 20% are cumulative, resulting in actual price increases of 5%, 15.5% and 38.6%. This has been confirmed by Autodesk here.
  3. Following that set of increases, the cost of maintenance will increase by another cumulative 20% per year. This is a total guess. I can’t imagine Autodesk reverting to 0% a year, but it’s always possible the increases could be worse than this. The increases could be more stepped than this assumed smooth progression (e.g. 50% one year, 0% the next). Anything could happen, and Autodesk isn’t telling us. I’ve chosen what appears to be a likely middle ground.
  4. Subscription (rental) prices will be frozen until after 2019. I’ve assumed this because Autodesk will want to keep subscription looking good in comparison to maintenance while it tries to persuade people to come on board.
  5. Subscription prices will increase 10% per year from 2020. Another guess. I’m pretty sure the price will keep going up, and it may be worse than this if Autodesk gets a sizeable portion of existing users tied in by then. Autodesk will rack up prices as high as it thinks it will get away with. My 10% assumption, if it’s low, will make subscription look better than it really is in my comparisons.
  6. The offered 60%/55%/50% discount on subscription will be maintained for three years from the point of changeover, not three years from now. That appears to be implied in Autodesk’s statements, and a three-year lock-in appears to be a standard Autodesk marketing technique.
  7. Following the three-year lock-in, the subscription cost will then change to 60% more than maintenance. This is being kept secret from customers but has been stated to stock market analysts by Amar Hanspal.*
  8. This 60% premium will be based on the maintenance price at the time, not the original pre-increase price. I can’t imagine Autodesk choosing the lower-cost version of a 60% premium, can you?
  9. The maintenance plus 60% price will be capped to always remain below the subscription price at the time. This is based on Autodesk’s promise that customers who convert to subscription in 2017/8/9 will always receive some non-quantified discount.
  10. The amount the maintenance plus 60% price remains below the subscription price will be minimal. I’ve assumed $1 below the subscription price. Maybe that’s harsh, but because Autodesk is refusing to quantify this discount amount, I think it’s fair to assume we won’t like the size of it.
  11. For option 8, Autodesk will offer maintenance customers who switch over in 2022 a 50% discount on subscription, locked in for 3 years. Autodesk has made very similar offers over the last year or so. I’m assuming such offers will continue to arise from time to time, but there are no guarantees.
  12. Bricsys will continue to provide perpetual license and maintenance options. I’m highly confident in this one. Autodesk’s rental-only move is manna from heaven to Bricsys, and the availability of perpetual licenses is a big drawcard for disaffected Autodesk customers. Bricsys won’t throw away that competitive advantage.
  13. For options 9 and 10, BricsCAD purchase and maintenance costs will rise by 10% a year (compound). Another guess. Based on the Bricsys price history to date, 10% may be on the high side. However, because Bricsys prices are so much lower than Autodesk ones, an error in this assumption will have a much smaller effect than errors in the Autodesk price assumptions.

Like all assumptions, those above could be wrong. On multiple occasions I have offered Autodesk the chance to correct these assumptions and replace necessary speculation with information. Indeed, when I re-started my blog in April last year I made a point of emailing Autodesk PR to inform them that I would be covering the subject of rental in a critical way and inviting their participation. No response.

As with all content on my blog, I actively encourage being corrected on any factual inaccuracies. I will happily correct errors that are pointed out to me by anybody, and have done so on several occasions. If at some point in the future, Autodesk decides to become transparent with the long-term cost implications of switching to maintenance and decides to open up to me in particular or customers in general, I’ll dedicate a new post to that information and link to it from this post.

Data

If you want to examine the full set of data and/or make adjustments to the values, assumptions or calculations, here is the Excel spreadsheet I used.

The following tables show the cost winners and losers after the first three, five and ten years based on one AutoCAD license with a 2016 maintenance cost of $545 and 2016 subscription cost of $1680.** All values are in US dollars.

Three years
Average Annual Cost Option
0 Option 0 – drop maintenance, keep using AutoCAD
0 Option 6 – abandon maintenance, subscription in 2020
0 Option 7 – abandon maintenance, subscription in 2022
0 Option 8 – abandon maintenance, subscription in 2022 (3-year 50% discount)
0 Option 10 – BricsCAD Pro with maintenance in 2020
474 Option 9 – BricsCAD Pro with maintenance
652 Option 1 – stay on maintenance
672 Option 3 – subscription in 2017
681 Option 5 – subscription in 2019
695 Option 4 – subscription in 2018
1680 Option 2 – subscription now
Five years
Average Annual Cost Option
0 Option 0 – drop maintenance, keep using AutoCAD
0 Option 7 – abandon maintenance, subscription in 2022
0 Option 8 – abandon maintenance, subscription in 2022 (3-year 50% discount)
303 Option 10 – BricsCAD Pro with maintenance in 2020
416 Option 9 – BricsCAD Pro with maintenance
776 Option 6 – abandon maintenance, subscription in 2020
790 Option 1 – stay on maintenance
796 Option 5 – subscription in 2019
895 Option 4 – subscription in 2018
1041 Option 3 – subscription in 2017
1784 Option 2 – subscription now
Ten years
Average Annual Cost Option
0 Option 0 – drop maintenance, keep using AutoCAD
383 Option 10 – BricsCAD Pro with maintenance in 2020
439 Option 9 – BricsCAD Pro with maintenance
995 Option 8 – abandon maintenance, subscription in 2022 (3-year 50% discount)
1365 Option 7 – abandon maintenance, subscription in 2022
1366 Option 1 – stay on maintenance
1748 Option 5 – subscription in 2019
1753 Option 6 – abandon maintenance, subscription in 2020
1798 Option 4 – subscription in 2018
1871 Option 3 – subscription in 2017
2257 Option 2 – subscription now

Graphs

These graphs show all ten options together.

Annual Costs

Cumulative costs:

Average annual costs over time

I’m not sure how useful the combined graphs are; with ten options things can get a bit muddled. Feel free to mess with the spreadsheet to produce the graphs that interest you. If you hide rows, those options won’t show up in the graphs.

Summary

You may feel it’s pointless trying to work out the best thing to do up to ten years into the future. I disagree. We are forced to do so. Many customers have been paying Autodesk for decades, and without this disruption would probably have continued to do so for decades to come. Now Autodesk is asking us to make a decision that will have effects that go way beyond ten years into the future.

Ten years isn’t really that long in AutoCAD terms, particularly given the recent glacial level of progress. Remember the _XREF_XREF_XREF debacle as if it were yesterday? Still occasionally opening drawings with that problem? That bug was unleashed on the public ten years ago this month.

Autodesk is asking us to make a permanent, irreversible, long-term decision based on very limited short-term information. After that? We are expected to trust in Autodesk and hope for the best. Sorry, but if you’re prepared to meekly go along with that, you haven’t been paying attention. You might as well just give Autodesk your Internet banking login information and say, “Help yourself to whatever you like.”

If you run the numbers based on the assumptions above, it’s easy to see the best and worst things you can do from a cost point of view, particularly beyond the short term. The high-cost options all involve switching to subscription. The further ahead you look, the worse a deal subscription becomes.

Forget Autodesk’s talk of vanishing discounts, saving money by moving earlier, etc. The opposite is true. Doing what Autodesk wants will result in you paying much more; maybe three or four times the amount you need to. Because that’s the whole point of Autodesk’s rental scheme.

Here’s the bottom line.

Switching from maintenance to subscription will cost you more money.

As a bonus, you get to throw away a perfectly good permanent license. Burn your boats and enjoy a costly cruise to Empty Wallet Land on board SS Subscription? You’d have to be completely crazy.

Posts in this series:
1. Autodesk license costs options 1 & 2 – stay on maintenance, subscription now
2. Autodesk license costs options 3, 4 & 5 – bait and switch
3. Autodesk license costs options 6 to 10 – abandon maintenance or Autodesk
4. Autodesk license costs options – summary
5. Autodesk license costs options – summary 2

Edit:
* It appears Amar may have been misquoted in the transcript I read and the number is actually 16% rather than 60%. An updated transcript with the former number can be found here.
** I am informed that the price was reduced from $1680 to $1470 in August.

It’s worth noting that even with the above adjustments entered into the spreadsheet, the conclusions made above still appear to hold true. Here’s the resultant average cost graph:

I’ll run another post later with more detail when I’ve collated as much information as I can. I have yet again invited Autodesk to provide information with which to replace the assumptions.

One invitation to Autodesk and another to Autodesk’s competitors

1 Reply

Dear Autodesk PR person, you are undoubtedly aware that I have published a series of posts that detail exactly why switching from maintenance to subscription is a bad deal. If you believe anything I have written to be in error, feel free to contact me with what you believe to be the correct information. I intend to publish an extensive detailed summary on Monday 13 March, with or without your input. You know where to find me, over to you.

Dear Autodesk-competitor PR person, if you are providing any kind of special offer to entice disgruntled Autodesk customers over to your fold under these special circumstances, let me know about it. I will pass the information on to my readers in another post, as-is, and not as any kind of recommendation. You can comment here in public or email me.

Autodesk license costs options 6 to 10 – abandon maintenance or Autodesk

6 Replies

Note: due to new information from Autodesk, an updated summary has been posted.

In this series of posts, I’ll examine various payment options for CAD software and compare them with the cost of staying on your Autodesk maintenance contract long-term.

In this third post, I examine what happens if you do something out of the box. Something Autodesk didn’t plan on you doing, and something it won’t like. What if you don’t renew your maintenance and then maybe hop on the subscription gravy train later? What if you don’t renew your maintenance and switch to a non-Autodesk product?

As stated in my first post, staying on maintenance is the baseline with which I’m comparing these options:

Option 1 – stay on maintenance
Assumptions: maintenance cost 20% compound rise annually from 2020
Pros: keep your perpetual license, keep it up to date, retain previous version & home use rights
Cons: increasing costs, expect more unpleasant “persuasive” surprises from Autodesk

3 year cost $1957 (average $652)
5 year cost $3951 (average $790)
10 year cost $13665 (average $1366)

Let’s say your maintenance renewal turns up this year and you ignore it. Keep using your AutoCAD 2018 perpetual license. Do the same in 2018 and 2019. In 2020, you assess the situation and decide if you really need to keep up to date. Let’s say you are convinced of the need to keep current by all the brilliant improvements Autodesk made to AutoCAD in the meantime. At that stage, become a new renter by signing up for subscription. You still retain your AutoCAD 2018 license and can revert to using it if Autodesk really screws up AutoCAD 2021. Best of all, Autodesk doesn’t get a cent from you for three years.

Option 6 – abandon maintenance, subscription in 2020
Assumptions: subscription cost 10% compound rise annually from 2020
Pros: permanently retain your perpetual license, zero cost in the short term
Cons: lose previous version & home use rights for 3 years, expensive from 2020

3 year cost $0 (average $0)
5 year cost $3881 (average $776)
10 year cost $17532 (average $1753)

Or you could leave it another couple of years, in which case it looks like this:

Option 7 – abandon maintenance, subscription in 2022
Assumptions: subscription cost 10% compound rise annually from 2020
Pros: permanently retain your perpetual license, zero cost in the short/medium term
Cons: lose previous version & home use rights for five years, expensive from 2022

3 year cost $0 (average $0)
5 year cost $0 (average $0)
10 year cost $13651 (average $1365)

It’s very possible that in 2022 or thereabouts, Autodesk will try to invite recalcitrant customers like you to the rental party with special offers (such as we have seen over the last year or so). For example, trade in your perpetual license and get 50% off subscription if you sign up for 3 years.

Choose the next option at this stage and you’re pretty much tossing a coin hoping that the offer will be made, but you can sit happily in zero-cost land, waiting for the opportune moment and that improves your chances of getting what you want. If that happens, the numbers pan out like this:

Option 8 – abandon maintenance, subscription in 2022 (3-year 50% discount)
Assumptions: subscription cost 10% compound rise annually from 2020, 3-year 50% discount
Pros: retain your perpetual license until 2022, zero cost in the medium term, long-term average costs not too bad
Cons: lose previous version & home use rights for five years, lose your perpetual license eventually, expensive from 2025

3 year cost $0 (average $0)
5 year cost $0 (average $0)
10 year cost $9951 (average $995)

Not too terrible an option, then. Plus you have lots of options depending on how things pan out in the next five years. Here’s a graph that shows how the average annual costs compare over time for these three options:

Here’s how the annual costs look:

What if you’re determined to never rent, never pay Autodesk another cent and never give up your perpetual license, but you still want to keep up to date? Then you need to look to Autodesk’s competition. I’m aware that there are a lot of non-AutoCAD users now reading this blog, so you’re going to have to forgive me while I get AutoCAD-specific. You’ll have to research your own Autodesk product replacements and run your own numbers.

For the purpose of the exercise, I’m going to use BricsCAD Pro as the AutoCAD replacement. You should also consider others such as DraftSight, ZWCAD, progeCAD, etc.

I’ve chosen BricsCAD because I know from personal experience it is a capable product with a very high level of AutoCAD compatibility including commands, CUIs, LISP, etc, AutoCAD-beating performance and a long-standing trustworthy parent company committed to the perpetual license model. It’s so close to AutoCAD that training requirements will be close to zero and you can run the applications in parallel using a common set of custom files, even in a very complex custom environment.

It’s also ridiculously cheap compared with AutoCAD: US$880 including maintenance ($680 without), with both ongoing maintenance ($235/year) and upgrades ($265 V16 to V17) available.* Putting those numbers into the equation gives us this:

Option 9 – BricsCAD Pro with maintenance
Assumptions: BricsCAD maintenance cost 10% compound rise annually
Pros: permanently retain your AutoCAD perpetual license, gain an BricsCAD perpetual license, very low cost
Cons: lose AutoCAD previous version & home use rights, possible future compatibility issues if Autodesk throws a spanner in the DWG works

3 year cost $1423 (average $474)
5 year cost $2080 (average $416)
10 year cost $4390 (average $439)

Or you could combine options 6 and 9: do nothing for three years and then buy into BricsCAD when you’re sure that’s the right thing to do.

Option 10 – BricsCAD Pro with maintenance in 2020
Assumptions: BricsCAD purchase and maintenance costs 10% compound rise annually
Pros: permanently retain your AutoCAD perpetual license, eventually gain an BricsCAD perpetual license, zero cost in short term, very low cost overall
Cons: lose AutoCAD previous version & home use rights, possible future compatibility issues if Autodesk throws a spanner in the DWG works

3 year cost $0 (average $0)
5 year cost $1515 (average $303)
10 year cost $3826 (average $383)

Obviously, switching to BricsCAD is a way, way cheaper option than any method of keeping current with Autodesk, even allowing for the BricsCAD initial purchase price. Let’s see how those options look for average annual costs:

Nice low, flat lines there for the BricsCAD options. It doesn’t make a great deal of difference whether you hop in right away or wait a few years. Here are the annual costs so you can see where the cash requirements get lumpy:

It’s worth mentioning that in some markets, Bricsys offers an annual rental option at 40% of the perpetual-with-maintenance price. It’s not offered in the USA, and given the low cost of purchase I don’t think there would be much demand for it anyway. I wouldn’t bother with it; it’s not as if you want to encourage that sort of thing among CAD companies, is it?

That concludes the options I intend examining at this stage. Next, the summary.

Posts in this series:
1. Autodesk license costs options 1 & 2 – stay on maintenance, subscription now
2. Autodesk license costs options 3, 4 & 5 – bait and switch
3. Autodesk license costs options 6 to 10 – abandon maintenance or Autodesk
4. Autodesk license costs options – summary
5. Autodesk license costs options – summary 2

* Thanks to Malcolm Davies of Techevate for providing the Bricsys US price list. Yes, that  Malcolm Davies, former Autodesk 2IC.

Autodesk license costs options 3, 4 & 5 – bait and switch

5 Replies

Note: due to new information from Autodesk, an updated summary has been posted.

In this series of posts, I’ll examine various payment options for CAD software and compare them with the cost of staying on your Autodesk maintenance contract long-term.

In this second post, I examine what happens if you switch from maintenance to subscription (rental) once the recently-announced offers kick in from June 2017. As stated in my first post, staying on maintenance is the baseline with which I’m comparing these options:

Option 1 – stay on maintenance
Assumptions: maintenance cost 20% compound rise annually from 2020
Pros: keep your perpetual license, keep it up to date, retain previous version & home use rights
Cons: increasing costs, expect more unpleasant “persuasive” surprises from Autodesk

3 year cost $1957 (average $652)
5 year cost $3951 (average $790)
10 year cost $13665 (average $1366)

If you switch from maintenance to subscription in late 2017, the cost of subscription is discounted by 60%, and that discount is locked in for three years. Autodesk isn’t telling customers exactly what happens after that, other than a discount will apply thereafter. Let’s assume Autodesk is going to maintain that 60% discount permanently. How do the resultant costs compare?

Option 3f – subscription in 2017 (60%)
Assumptions: 60% discount is maintained permanently, subscription cost 10% compound rise annually from 2020
Pros: keep it up to date, retain previous version & home use rights
Cons: lose your perpetual license

3 year cost $2016 (average $672)
5 year cost $3568 (average $714)
10 year cost $9029 (average $903)

I’ll explain why it’s option 3f and not just option 3 in due course. If you switch over in 2018, the numbers differ slightly because Autodesk reduces the discount to 55% and the subscription covers a different period:

Option 4f – subscription in 2018 (55%)
Assumptions: 55% discount is maintained permanently, subscription cost 10% compound rise annually from 2020
Pros: keep it up to date, retain previous version & home use rights
Cons: lose your perpetual license

3 year cost $2084 (average $695)
5 year cost $3831 (average $766)
10 year cost $9974 (average $997)

If you switch over in 2019, the discount falls to 50% and the numbers differ again:

Option 5f – subscription in 2019 (50%)
Assumptions: 50% discount is maintained permanently, subscription cost 10% compound rise annually from 2020
Pros: keep it up to date, retain previous version & home use rights
Cons: lose your perpetual license

3 year cost $2042 (average $681)
5 year cost $3982 (average $796)
10 year cost $10808 (average $1081)

These options are unattractive because you’re throwing away your perpetual license and still paying more for the first few years, after which things are less certain. That’s assuming Autodesk permanently maintains the same discount. But Autodesk won’t.

I’m sure Autodesk would like you to assume that the same discount will continue. But that’s a fantasy, which is why these options are suffixed with f. It’s f for fantasy, and f for forget it (that’s the polite version). It won’t happen.

Autodesk is setting you up for a bait and switch.

We know this because current temporary co-CEO Amar Hanspal has said so. Autodesk doesn’t want to tell its customers how much they will pay, but is happy to tell the stock market. Thanks to Ralph Grabowski for pointing out what Amar said:

So there’s a different price for each year, when that three-year lock in expires that customer immediately goes up to the terminal loyalty price a little over – roughly 60% more in their maintenance price, and then they’re kind of subject to ongoing price increases that will affect with our long-term pricing strategy.

OK, let’s factor in a price of 60% more than the current-at-the-time maintenance cost after the 3-year discount period is over. I’ll assume that this price will never be allowed to exceed the subscription cost. I’ll even assume that some kind of discount applies permanently – I’ve allowed a dollar. Maybe I’m being generous there.

Now how does it look?

Option 3 – subscription in 2017
Assumptions: 60% discount is maintained for three years before changing to 60% more than maintenance, subscription cost 10% compound rise annually from 2020, maintenance cost 20% compound rise annually from 2020, cost always at least $1 below standard subscription price
Pros: keep it up to date, retain previous version & home use rights
Cons: lose your perpetual license, very high cost in long term

3 year cost $2016 (average $672)
5 year cost $5207 (average $1041)
10 year cost $18707 (average $1871)

Option 4 – subscription in 2018
Assumptions: 55% discount is maintained for three years before changing to 60% more than maintenance, subscription cost 10% compound rise annually from 2020, maintenance cost 20% compound rise annually from 2020, cost always at least $1 below standard subscription price
Pros: keep it up to date, retain previous version & home use rights
Cons: lose your perpetual license, very high cost in long term

3 year cost $2084 (average $695)
5 year cost $4656 (average $931)
10 year cost $18156 (average $1816)

Option 5 – subscription in 2019
Assumptions: 50% discount is maintained for three years before changing to 60% more than maintenance, subscription cost 10% compound rise annually from 2020, maintenance cost 20% compound rise annually from 2020, cost always at least $1 below standard subscription price
Pros: keep it up to date, retain previous version & home use rights
Cons: lose your perpetual license, very high cost in long term

3 year cost $2042 (average $681)
5 year cost $3982 (average $796)
10 year cost $17482 (average $1748)

Strangely, the later you switch, the less you pay overall. Even if you’re feeling tempted (why would you be?), holding off as long as possible looks the best option. I’m not sure that was the effect Autodesk was looking for, but it is what it is.

Here’s a graph that shows how the average annual costs compare over time.

You can see that after the 3-year lock-in expires, the average costs take a huge leap up towards where Autodesk wants them: up there in the stratosphere with the full-price subscription option. The step-up is even more obvious if we examine the individual annual costs, rather than the averages over time. Imagine the shock you’ll get when your 3-year lock-in period ends!

So no matter when you move from maintenance to subscription, you simply throw away your perpetual license and pay way more for the privilege. Attractive proposition!

As a bait and switch scheme, this is pretty terrible. The bait is unpalatable and the switch is diabolical.

Autodesk is aiming to prosper by finding dumber customers who like paying a lot more. If you’re smart enough to read this blog, you’re way too smart to be one of those customers.

It seems whatever you do, if you want to keep up to date with your CAD software, you’re going to have to continue paying Autodesk huge and ever-increasing amounts of money. Or are you? In the next post, I’ll examine some ideas from outside the box. In the fourth and final post in the series, I’ll sum up, examine the validity of the assumptions I’ve made and lay out all the data.

Posts in this series:
1. Autodesk license costs options 1 & 2 – stay on maintenance, subscription now
2. Autodesk license costs options 3, 4 & 5 – bait and switch
3. Autodesk license costs options 6 to 10 – abandon maintenance or Autodesk
4. Autodesk license costs options – summary
5. Autodesk license costs options – summary 2

Autodesk customers are revolting

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I don’t know what kind of reception Autodesk thought it was going to get to its less-than-fully-frank announcement that it was hiking up the price of maintenance to push perpetual license owners onto subscription (rental).

I suppose some negative feedback was expected, but I’m not sure the marketing mavens would have anticipated such a degree of near-universal outright hostility. I suspect they may have overestimated their ability to pull the wool over the eyes of a community that is generally technically smart and, thanks to Autodesk’s history in recent years, somewhat lacking in trust.

The Autodesk Community forum moderators are busily vacuuming up threads from all over the place and moving them to the near-invisible new Moving to Subscription forum, which in due course will no doubt be made read-only and merged into semi-oblivion, just like the last one.

Despite the obscurity and the futility of it all, people are still finding that forum and posting on it (over 300 in a few days) and they’re not happy. Many other complaints can be found on CG Press, CG Talk, NewTek, with countless smaller moan sessions popping up all over the place, such as Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, 3DVF (French), C4D Cafe, etc.

Then there’s the most powerful but least easily measured marketing communication medium of all; word of mouth. Out in the real world, Autodesk’s name is mud. Talk of abandoning the maintenance/subscription revenue stream altogether is common, as is switching from Autodesk to competitors’ products.

Why get so worked up? I mean, it’s only 5%, right? At first glance. Actually, the price will rise 38.6% by 2019, with worse undoubtedly to come. But for many complainers, while the excess cost and the nonsense used to justify it are condemned, those are not the main issues.

What is the main issue? Loyal Autodesk customers, people who have paid good money for perpetual licenses and kept them current with ongoing maintenance for many years, really don’t want to give them up. They resent being strong-armed into doing so and feel betrayed and deceived by Autodesk. “You can pry my perpetual license from my cold dead fingers. Screw you, Autodesk!” is a paraphrase of the views expressed. Generally it’s more polite than that, but sometimes less.

It has been quite educational for me to read the comments from customers of other Autodesk products who have experienced the same kind of product neglect familiar to AutoCAD customers. They feel they’ve been taken for a ride by a company that is happy to take their money but not that interested in spending it on improving the product they use. Attempting to gouge such customers to the extreme that has just been announced was never going to end well.

Given that Autodesk thinks very highly of its own image and spends literally a billion dollars every year on marketing and sales, I wonder how much this publicity is worth as a negative asset? Enough for me to retire on in ex-CEO-style comfort, I bet. As for the free marketing that Autodesk is providing for its competitors, I’m sure that is very much appreciated.

None of this will cause a change of path at Autodesk, of course. A few thousand dissatisfied customers with pitchforks and torches will not be considered noteworthy at board level. They might not even notice, and if they do they certainly won’t care.

Autodesk only listens to our dollars. We have them, Autodesk wants them. Only voting with our wallets will get the message across. Do it.

Autodesk license costs options 1 & 2 – stay on maintenance, subscription now

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Note: due to new information from Autodesk, an updated summary has been posted.

In this series of posts, I’ll examine various payment options for CAD software and compare them with the cost of staying on your Autodesk maintenance contract long-term. Once I’ve gone through all the options, I’ll do a summary post that compares everything, but there are so many variables that a single post that covers all the options in adequate detail would be very long and complex.

First, I need to describe what I’m using as the basis of my comparison. Prior to Autodesk’s recent announcement, the annual maintenence cost to keep one copy of AutoCAD up to date was US$540 and the equivalent subscription (rental) cost was US$1680. I’ll call this the 2016 cost.

Autodesk has announced that maintenance costs will rise by 5% in 2017, 10% in 2018 and 20% in 2019. The rises are compound, so the actual rises from the 2016 cost are 5%, 15.5% and 38.6%.

No announcements have been made regarding the cost of maintenance from 2020 onwards, but it’s safe to say that Autodesk won’t be making life easy for its maintenance customers. In order to compare costs beyond the short term, an assumption must be made about future maintenance price rises. I’ve made the assumption that these will be 20% a year, compound. That may be generous to Autodesk, but time will tell.

It would be remiss of me to mention an even lower baseline that could be used:

Option 0 – drop maintenance, keep using AutoCAD
Pros: zero costs, keep your perpetual license
Cons: don’t keep up to date, previous version & home use rights, reduced support

3 year cost $0 (average $0)
5 year cost $0 (average $0)
10 year cost $0 (average $0)

For some of you, that option will seem suddenly quite attractive. If it works for you, go ahead and you may as well stop reading now.

Others will want or need to keep their software up to date. Option 1 below is what I am using as my baseline for comparison. Assuming you’re a perpetual license holder who has been paying annual maintenance, just keep doing what you have been doing, as long as you can.

Option 1 – stay on maintenance
Assumptions: maintenance cost 20% compound rise annually from 2020
Pros: keep your perpetual license, keep it up to date, retain previous version & home use rights
Cons: increasing costs, expect more unpleasant “persuasive” surprises from Autodesk

3 year cost $1957 (average $652)
5 year cost $3951 (average $790)
10 year cost $13665 (average $1366)

There’s always the possibility that Autodesk could get really nasty and bump up maintenance costs even more, say 30% a year from 2020. That looks like this:

Option 1a – stay on maintenance (30%)
Assumptions: 30% compound rise annually from 2020
Pros: keep your perpetual license, keep it up to date, retain previous version & home use rights
Cons: increasing costs, expect more unpleasant “persuasive” surprises from Autodesk

3 year cost $1957 (average $652)
5 year cost $4216 (average $843)
10 year cost $19223 (average $1922)

A curious aspect of Autodesk’s announcement is that the offer associated with switching from maintenance to subscription doesn’t kick in until June. If your renewal date falls between now and then, and assuming no other special offers apply, the cost is huge. I’ve had to make assumptions here too. Again, being generous to Autodesk, I’ve assumed there will be no subscription price rises until 2020, at which point Autodesk will start bumping things up 10% a year. Here’s how that pans out.

Option 2 – subscription now
Assumptions: 10% compound rise annually from 2020
Pros: keep it up to date, retain previous version & home use rights
Cons: lose your perpetual license, ridiculously high costs

3 year cost $5040 (average $1680)
5 year cost $8921 (average $1784)
10 year cost $22572 (average $2257)

At this stage, it’s easy to dismiss option 2. You would need rocks in your head to switch to subscription right now before the special offer kicks in. The options that will be available from June will be examined in the next post.

There are a number of ways these options can be compared graphically. For example, here’s a bar chart showing the cost incurred in each year:

Here’s a line graph showing the same thing. I think this is clearer.

Although this graph is useful in showing what budget you would need each year in each scenario, it’s not ideal when comparing the total expenditure. Here’s a line graph of the cumulative total expenditure for each of the options:

However, the graph type I find most useful in comparing options shows the average annual cost for each option, and how that average cost varies over time.

With this format, you can do a direct comparison between options at any point in time. You can say, “Option A has the lowest cost per year for the first 6 years, then option B gets cheaper. If we’re going to be using the software for 6 years or longer, we should choose option B.” I’m going to be using this graph format from now on.

Posts in this series:
1. Autodesk license costs options 1 & 2 – stay on maintenance, subscription now
2. Autodesk license costs options 3, 4 & 5 – bait and switch
3. Autodesk license costs options 6 to 10 – abandon maintenance or Autodesk
4. Autodesk license costs options – summary
5. Autodesk license costs options – summary 2

Welcome to the new bosses…

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…same as the old Bass.

If you’re hoping the change at the top of Autodesk is going to result in a change to the all-rental business model, abandon that hope now. In this nodding-heavy video, temporary co-CEOs Amar Hanspal (product guy) and Andrew “Baked Beans” Anagnost (marketing guy) confirm it’s full steam ahead. Not unexpected, really.

If either of these guys is selected as CEO (my money’s on Amar), the rental push will continue. Don’t expect to be saved by an incoming CEO, either. The Autodesk board won’t appoint a non-believer.

If you won’t abandon your perpetual licenses, you’ll need to abandon Autodesk.

Bullshit Returns – Autodesk maintenance price hike part 2

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In this post I continue skewering the welcome post to Autodesk’s Moving to Subscription forum. See here for part 1.

Access to new industry collections – Available only through subscription, you’ll realize significant savings when you need two or more Autodesk software products.

Bullshit. Industry collections are just rental-only engorged suites. Suites are those things with many more than two products; things that Autodesk has been pushing hard for years, before dropping them from the price list. If you already have a suite that contains the products you need (remember, Autodesk’s statements are aimed at existing perpetual license holders), switching to an industry collection will cost you vastly more. That’s the opposite of significant savings.

New and improved support – Enjoy faster response times and the option to receive help by scheduling a call with Autodesk technical support specialists.

It’s just possible this isn’t bullshit. Autodesk support can certainly be sub-optimal and it’s just possible that some of the massive slab of funds Autodesk expects to collect will be diverted to improving support for those who pay the most. Maybe. But I bet Autodesk’s very best high-cost efforts still look very weak compared with the free support provided by Bricsys.

Simplified administration – Access tools that streamline deployment and software management when you standardize all of your Autodesk products on subscription.

Bullshit. The user-based internet-reliant subscription licensing method is a CAD Manager’s nightmare. The device-based standalone licensing system for perpetual license products, while not perfect, is vastly superior from an administration viewpoint. And don’t get me started on the CF that is Autodesk desktop app.

Because managing two business models (subscription and maintenance plans) is costly, in order to continue supporting maintenance plans, beginning May 7, 2017, maintenance plan renewal prices will increase by 5% in 2017, 10% in 2018, and 20% in 2019.

Bullshit. The price is increasing to push customers into expensive rental arrangements and remove the Autodesk payment escape route provided by perpetual licenses, not to recoup costs. Even if there were substantial costs involved in managing an additional business model (rental), there is more than enough margin in the massive rental costs to cover that. And Autodesk, if the costs are substantial, then you’re doing it wrong. If your management is not competent enough to arrange its affairs efficiently and cost-effectively then I have no sympathy. Don’t come to me with your hand out, crying poor.

But I don’t believe for a second that any such costs really are significant enough to justify those increases. I have searched in vain in Autodesk’s financial reports for such a cost blowout. Maybe I’m missing something, but it would appear that Autodesk’s cost of non-subscription revenue actually fell 9% from 208.5m in FY2015 to 190.6m in FY2017.

Can we long-term customers have some of that saving, please? If not, how about a small slice of the billion dollars a year that Autodesk spends on marketing and sales? Cut the generation of bullshit by a fraction, reward your most loyal customers instead of screwing them over, and everybody will be happy.

Having disposed of the bovine ordure associated with Autodesk’s price hikes, we can next move on to the substance of them. How do the costs work out? Are you better off switching to rental, staying on maintenance or switching to a competing product from a less greedy, more trustworthy company? Look forward to an objective analysis. With no bullshit.