No April Fools Day Joke: Autodesk to Triple Upgrade Pricing

Already the wealthiest CAD company in the universe, Autodesk looks to increase its revenues even more by charging 3x higher upgrade fees a year from now. In the PDF file provided at its Simplified Upgrade Pricing Web page, Autodesk states:

After March 16, 2010, upgrade and cross-grade prices and retroactive Subscription fees from the three previous software releases will be priced at 50 percent of a full license, no matter which release you are using today.

The reason is to make it painful for you to stay off subscription, or ever dream of getting off subscription in these recessionary times. However, once most customers are on subscription, Autodek will start increasing subscription fees as well. It is inevitable as Red River flooding. 

Autodesk calls the new pricing plan "simple;" I'd call it "penalizing customers while they are down."

High pricing, however, creates opportunity. For instance, airlines are now charging over $200 to bring along pets in the cargo hold. This has allowed Pet Air to offer flights for pets at $150. Competitors of Autodesk are probably popping champagne corks at this early hour, gleefully planning their new marketing themes.

Comments

[Jouleman]

I read this in the "ads by google" banner at the end of your post.

"CAD Alternative Software"

That makes me laugh, and of course I click it.

Best Regards

[Scott]

Seems like a good time to tell everyone that we are having a sale on progeCAD and progeCAD competitive upgrades over at iCADsales.com.

Kick the expensive software habit and use essentially the same product for 1/10th the price.

We'll be over at iCADsales.com waiting to greet you with a FREE full 30 day trial download so you can compare and see how easy it is to lose the money grubbing big corporation!

[R. Paul Waddington]

I'm going to put my cynical hat on here and simply respond that this will be another occasion for Autodesk's customers to sigh and say "what else can we do but pay!", to invite Autodesk in for tea an cakes whilst asking Autodesk what else would it like to do to hurt them and accept that too.

Autodesk customers have proven, beyond doubt, to a man and woman, they are useless at controlling a controllable tool supplier because they won't work together and stand up as they should.

Autodesk say in the announcement brochure, "Each new release of our software is designed to help you work smarter and faster. That’s why we always encourage our customers to upgrade."

They may design the software to do that but as designers they are dismal failures and CANNOT prove this statement or its intentions can be achieved. Their productivy claims have, for many years, been deceptive, and when asked to validate their claims they have never been able to do so!

As for "encouragement"; what encouragement? Increased cost to customers with reduced return is not encouragment. A critical look, by a competent accountant will show beyond doubt upgrading Autodesk software DOES NOT SAVE MONEY NOR INCREASE A USERS RETURN, and has not done so for a long time - for MOST customers.

Autodesk have been surfing a wave of customer complacency and if the market, and its customers, accept this move without a significant reduction in the new 'licence' price - to less than a quarter of the current pricing - then they deserve what they get; and I will be first in line to say so!

Talking about Autodesk's actions are useless without ACTION; for everybodys' sake STAND UP FOR YOURSELVES AUTODESK CUSTOMER(s).

[Len]

This will hopefully encourage more users to do what we did years ago - keep one official copy of AutoCAD and buy copies of Bricscad for everybody.

Bricscad works well and it has saved us lots of money.

[DF]

High pricing, however, creates opportunity. For instance, airlines are now charging over $200 to bring along pets in the cargo hold. This has allowed Pet Air to offer flights for pets at $150. Competitors of Autodesk are probably popping champagne corks at this early hour, gleefully planning their new marketing themes.

This presumes, of course, that there's no cartel in operation to keep prices artificially high (which is where government watchdogs become needed). It also leaves out the effects of deliberate vendor lock-in - hello the "RealDWG" campaign...

[DF]

This presumes, of course, that there's no cartel in operation to keep prices artificially high

i need to clarify here that I mean a cartel by the more *cough* serious competitors to Autodesk...

[Jack Morgan]

It's time to consider SolidWorks

[Chris]

It's interesting that nobody commenting this article noticed that it will be cheaper to upgrade from a 3 versions older application with the new simplified pricing. I you want to upgrade every year you just buy subscription.

[Ronald A. Montesano]

This is good news for Autodesk's competitors ... and just may energize the Linux CAD market.

[Max a million]

Autodesk first buys up all the competition, then hikes prices...hmmm, never saw this coming did we?

Fortunately there are many cheap alternatives out there currently and by 2010 there will be oodles more, time to learn C4d and Modo, heck even Sketchup these days is becoming an acceptable product (if Google would just higher the poly threshold)

[Tek Lentine]

Wow. The animosity that users have toward Autodesk software is amazing!

Consider this, just 10 years ago, what was your alternative for decent solid modeling software? Pro/Engineer or perhaps Catia... both of which carried price tags that would cause those complaining about Autodesk prices to develop a nervous twitch. $30,000 was not unheard of for a single seat of software that was not as capable as today's AutoCAD Inventor 2010.

Autodesk has developed and now offers a quality solid modeling package for under $5,000. From this perspective, Autodesk has not driven prices up; they have actually driven prices down and increased the quality of technical solutions available for those businesses that realize the importance of investing in the right technology.

[Tina Jameson]

Why all the screaming? This only matters to those who upgrade from 1 or 2 year old license. Why would anyone do that? It is like buying a whole new car and selling it in 1 years just to buy a new one again! Financially very unsound..

Subscription is the modus operandi in the software industry. Stay on Subscription and you will not even notice any price increases..on the contrary, benefit from increasing conpetition and flusher Subscription offerings.

[Henrik Vallgren]

The real reason not to buy AutoCAD is not the price, it's the EULA. Read section 3.2.9 (Use Outside of Territoory) and ask yourself if Autodesk ever heard about notebooks. Basically, you're only allowed to use AutoCAD in the country that you bought it.

Is there anyone who hasn't violated the EULA?

[AutoCAD Alternative Indeed!]

I hope this isn't some knee-jerk response to their falling profits. If AutoCAD suddenly decides to cut their full version price to something more believable (like half of what it is now) then this strategy probably makes sense.

Something tells me that's not what they have in mind, which shows that they really aren't taking the market very seriously.

Or maybe they still think "they ARE the market"?

[Rick TG]

ProgeCAD, here I come

[Matt Stachoni]

The only thing this "simplified upgrade pricing" initiative will do is drive more people to abandon Subscription and go back to the old days, where you skipped two or three releases and upgraded only when you need to, for reasons of interoperability with the rest of your project design team.

This will only bifurcate the market more than it already is, causing more incompatibility between companies trying to share CAD data.

[Joe]

The program has distinct advantages if you assume Autodesk bonuses will be paid in stock options this year. Stock bonuses will be fully vested when customers decide if they will take advantage of their last chance upgrade discount. If customers hold off and upgrade at the last moment, there will be a boost in revenue just when wanted.

[Rob C.]

I do agree that Autodesk has done more than most to bring a solid industry standard product to the design industries, and that cost increases are the way of the world, but come on!! Even if new releases were solid and bug free we could not justify such an increase.

As someone who learned autocad back in 1985, I can tell you all of the days where Autodesk would update and roll out a new release every 2 to 4 years. Now, every March its the same story "you need to get on board with the latest and greatest, look, see what it can do for you...", and then in June, the service pack is released to "fix" all of the annoying "improvements" and bugs this great new version had.

I work in the Civil engineering area of design, and using Autodesk Civil 3D is still way cheaper than Bently Microstation, and since we also use Hyraflow for calculations (which Autodesk also bought out and added to Civil 3D), we are for now stuck with Civil 3D. However, we also have decided that our newest version (2009) will be our software to use, without subscription, until such time that it is no longer feasible to use. Unfortunately, with Autodesk continually changing file formats and making it ever more difficult to stay in any one version and still be competitive, I wonder just how long this strategy will work for us.

Autodesk has become, IMO, a fat greedy company that is taking advantage of its position in the industry and of its customers. It would only take just a couple of new up-starts to market viable, stable, sensibly priced software products that can be compatible with Autocad and Microstation files, and open up new choices to design companies great and small. Their time is coming, and I will be watching with great interest (and a large container of popcorn).

Cheers everyone

[rkent]

AutoCAD is good enough and has been for several releases, so get off the band wagon, stop upgrading and enjoy not having to start over every year. Sure there are improvements that I have enjoyed having but are they true game changers? Do they truly improve productivity? I doubt it. If I am still doing this in 10 years I will buy a new license then (or go with the competitor), and think of all the money and time I have saved.

[seth]

Its time to move onto blender folks.

www.blender.org