Debs2203

Actually I do not agree with the author of this topic.
I used to be surprised that such a wonderful and complex software like Affinity Photo could cost $50 for a program. It's too cheap.
The same Photoshop, when it was not a subscription, cost several hundred dollars.
Therefore, when the cost was increased a little, it became more relevant to the features and functions that Affinity provides.
Remember also that Serif is a business, not a charity. The company has its own rising costs. Also consider what is going on in the world.
The dollar, pound and euro have depreciated heavily over the past year. Inflation is about 10%.
So if all this is put together in a place, then the price offer of Affinti products is very generous and worthy.
P.S. For example, only one program Capture One (RAW converter) costs $300. And it has much narrower functionality.

Well it does sting a bit, since i bought v1 just 2 months back but from my point event with the universal license there is major value for money, now if you get an ipad or mac later in the future you can use it in the future and the number of computer you can install the software is also a huge plus point. If they were greedy they could have just split the mac, iPad and windows and provided less discount. Any many of the photo editing software provide perpetual license for just one year.  
I would like to thank serif for their stellar affinity suite. 

You title your post, "Disgusting Pricing", state that I clearly "can't read" and then refer to my obviously tongue-in-cheek reply (re: Adobe and greed) as "toxic".
Priceless.
Most here want to engage in positive, productive dialog—not bash others through a childish, entitlement attitude. Affinity offers solid, though not perfect, software at very reasonable prices. If you want to contribute to the non-Adobe movement, a more humble approach would help.

Hi @luki1412,
Welcome to Affinity Forums
Please check this thread which addresses some of your concerns and explains why V1 owners didn't get a bigger discount over new users (and what we are doing to fix it).
Thanks.

Kudos. A very gracious reply to a very non-gracious post. Well done.

Maybe you haven't noticed, but there is a global recession. And even Serif is not immune to high energy costs and the staff also want to pay for housing and food.
And no one is forcing you to continue using version 1 programmes. It's just that these versions will remain at the tech level they are at now.
So if you have problems with pricing, I recommend you switch to Adobe or Corel. Oh no, they also charge inflated prices, according to your speech. Then go for Paint.NET, Krita and Co.

🥱Been posted and addressed over and over.
Clearly, you should just buy (sorry, rent) the Adobe suite.
They aren't greedy and you'll save a ton of money.

No, Boston, you are wrong seeing a bad willing from my side. I decided to buy the new release in first moment I sow it. As I said, software development costs.... The biggest point is selling something that does not work correctly. I believe that if you buy a dishwasher that chops your dishes, you were not happy. My company manages electronic payments. If we loose your money, are you going to simply forgive us?
The other point is that many of us hoped that the new update could bring features that we were expecting since years. "Hundredths of improvements". A Publisher V2 not able to simply cross-reference pages as it should? Even free packages do that. You must admit that it is a bit disappointing, isn't it?
In my absolutely personal opinion that I hope does not offend you or others, it is a mistake, more than a trick, to use the trust of the customers to sell something that was not adequately tested. I should have been more prudent before buying, you are absolutely right. And obviously I will try to be not so dumb in the future.

While expecting lifetime free updates? 
So use V1? Or request a refund? But that would undermine your position that Serif is “unreasonable.” 
I would hardly consider charging a small fee for V2 a trick. Btw Serif brought us years of free updates. 
A trick would be creating a monopoly by buying up startups, push proprietary formats, then force a perpetual LIFETIME SUBSCRIPTION FEE for access. 
That, my friend, is a trick. Anything else is simply business.

Hi All,
Well, it’s been a pretty crazy week since the launch of V2!
This has been a real labour of love for us over the last year or so, and I can’t even begin to describe how hard the development team have worked on it. Not only getting the V2 apps launched, but also of course finally bringing Publisher to iPad. 
With this being our first paid-for upgrade there has understandably been a lot of feedback / questions around future updates and our pricing policies. I thought it was worth addressing / clarifying our position on some of these personally...
Updates to V2 moving forward
Buying V2 not only gets you all the new features you have seen, but we have various updates planned – including many more new features and improvements – which you will get for free. This will continue until such a time that V3 is released. We’re not sure exactly when V3 will be, but I can confirm we are not going to move to anything as regular as an annual upgrade cycle as has been speculated.
It’s worth saying too that V2 does include many under-the-hood changes to our underlying technology, and we have also been investing in several new areas of research recently. Some of these haven’t manifested themselves into new features yet, but overall V2 does give us a better platform to develop on moving forward and I’m sure you will be pleased with the updates V2 will receive.
Updates to V1 moving forward
While we did say on the FAQ that V1 would no longer receive any updates, I want to clarify that was about new feature updates. We will be updating V1 to fix any critical problems caused by operating system updates in the future. So if the next version of macOS breaks V1 we will endeavour to fix it. There will be a point in time when continuing to maintain V1 in this way will not be tenable, but certainly for the foreseeable future we will continue to patch. In fact, we have an update to V1 queued up for release very shortly with some fixes for Ventura and issues caused by a recent Windows security / quality update. 
We will update our FAQ shortly to make that clearer for everyone.
Offer period
In case you didn’t see, I’m pleased to confirm we have decided to run this initial launch offer until 14th December to give everyone the best chance possible to get it if they wish / have a decent amount of time to trial it. 
Upgrade pricing
It’s been really hard to see some of the comments about us not looking after our existing customers – we’re pretty devasted that anyone feels like that to be honest. But the fact is we felt our hands were tied somewhat with being able to offer upgrade pricing in a fair way. The main reason for this was App Store customers (which make up around 35% of our userbase). The problems with that are two-fold: firstly, we didn’t have a way from within V1 to validate an App Store purchase receipt to reliably ensure customers who were entitled to an upgrade could get one; and secondly, we could not find a good way for people to get that discount via the App Store. Us pushing upgrade customers to go exclusively via our own site (including customers who were previously acquired via the app stores) may also have put us in violation of App Store Ts & Cs which we were obviously concerned about.
I’m not saying that these issues were completely insurmountable, but any solutions we came up with would be messy, and most importantly could have resulted in some bona fide V1 customers struggling to get validated and claim their discount. We certainly don’t have the support resource here if we ended up needing to manually validate tens of thousands of receipts for example.
The only option we felt was safe to move forward with was a general launch offer, which would guarantee that every V1 customer could get the discount, whether they purchased directly through us or the App Stores. We knew a side effect of that would mean some new customers would end up receiving that same discount – but we felt that was a better option than V1 customers missing out. It’s also worth saying that while there has been some good press about V2, all our main marketing has been via email and through social media to our followers. In other words, we felt ok about it because we knew the vast majority of people who would find out about it or take advantage of the offer would be existing customers. I would be surprised if over the offer period customers upgrading from V1 didn’t make up more than 90% of our sales.
Overall I do believe us giving a 40% discount, along with the addition of the new Universal Licence of course, is offering fantastic value for money for those who want to upgrade. 
However, taking on board some of the feedback there is something extra we can do – we will offer a new free bundle of content exclusively for V1 customers upgrading to V2 as an extra thank you for your support. I’ve seen this suggested by a number of customers and it’s a great idea as it does remove the App Store conflict entirely. 
We’ll need a little time to put something together, but all customers who previously registered or purchased V1 and have since upgraded to V2 will receive a voucher code for this via email as soon as we can.
A comment on no subscription
I do want to say that some of the points above are exactly the reason why software companies move to subscription. Whatever you do with upgrade pricing, you still have the issue of customers who bought the previous version 3 months ago vs. those who have had it 2+ years. Offering perpetual licences also gives the additional overhead of needing to maintain the previous version longer than you would if everyone was on subscription / generally always on the latest version.
We are a small team so some of these complications are not ideal — all we really want to do is focus on developing our latest codebase, push out regular updates and continue with our mission to make great creative software accessible to everyone. 
But it does need to be funded somehow. We know you love our no-subscription model, but there also needs to be a level of appreciation that the alternative is having paid-for upgrades from time to time. That unfortunately comes with its own problems.
All of that said, I have to say we have been blown away with the response to V2 - around 3 times as many people have upgraded in the last week than we expected - and we really can't thank you enough for the support you have shown. More than anything the success of this upgrade puts us in a great place to continue investing heavily in development which is ultimately what it's all about, and we’re super excited to crack on with some great updates coming next year!
All the best,
Ash
This is a duplicate post of a thread that is now locked and moved to the questions forum

NEW TO IPAD VERSIONS
While the iPad versions of all the apps will see nearly all the new feature additions mentioned above, they will also see their own special enhancements to the UI, including:
Command Controller This new radial menu gives quick access to common modifiers in all tools.
 
  Quick Menu Gain instant access to clipboard options and nine customisable shortcut operations with a simple three-finger swipe.

  Compact Mode New mode available for the layers and brush panel allows you to keep these panels open while maximising document real estate.
 
  iPadOS 16 Ready All iPad apps are now optimised to take advantage of the increased memory limits available since iPadOS 15. Customers of iPadOS 16 will also get the added benefit of the new virtual memory swap – dramatically increasing performance on very large documents.

NEW FEATURES in Affinity Publisher 2
These are some of the most important new features in Affinity Publisher 2
 
Books Combine separate Publisher documents as chapters to create one long publication, automatically syncing page numbers, table of contents, indexes and styles throughout—an especially useful feature for collaboration, as contributors can work on their own sections individually before bringing it all together. Available in desktop version only.
 
  Footnotes, endnotes and sidenotes Easily add academic style notes or references to sections of text.
 
  Place Auto-flow Create a single layout that automatically repeats across your document until all desired images are accommodated. Plus, with the ability to choose a repeat count for images, you can set up advanced templates so that in the future you can instantly produce multiple variants in only a few clicks.
 
  Linked File Layer Visibility Override Turn any layers on or off from within placed files, including PSD, PDF, DWG, DXF and other Affinity documents without losing the integrity of the link. Even if the source file is changed, your layer visibility settings will be maintained.
 
  DWG/DXF Place Place DXF or DWG files into your Affinity Publisher publications.
Style Picker Tool Pick style of any object or text on your page and drop it onto any other objects or passages of text easily (desktop only).
Performance The handling of memory for large documents, particularly with lots of large placed files and images, has been reengineered, resulting in significant performance improvements.

NEW FEATURES in Affinity Photo 2
These are some of the most important new features in Affinity Photo V2   Non-destructive RAW Develop You can now develop RAW files non-destructively, which means you can go back to change your develop settings at anytime, even after adding additional layers or adjustments to your file. Choose to embed into a document file or link externally to reduce file size.
 
  Compound Masks Easily combine multiple mask layers together non-destructively using add, intersect, subtract and XOR operations. This means separate masks you have created can be maintained non-destructively while creating new masks based on those component parts.
 
  Live Mesh Warp Want an image or file to be distorted to match the surface of an underlying template? Now you can apply a non-destructive warp to make that happen, and go back to edit whenever you like. It is highly effective for mock-up work, where you might place document files and composite them onto surfaces such as book or magazine pages.
 
  Normals Adjustment Adjust lighting information baked into existing normal maps. Great as a standalone feature for texture artists, but also allows the editing of lighting layers generated from 3D render software.
 
  Live Masks Build lots of powerful, non-destructive workflows with new Live Masks which update automatically based on the properties of the underlying image.
Hue Range Create a mask based on a specific colour in your image, allowing you to apply adjustments, effects or just paint on the automatically generated mask for your chosen hue.
 
  Band-Pass Band-Pass creates a mask focused around edges within an image. This has wide uses for retouchers who work on different frequency layers, but also enables the creation of artistic effects.
 
  Luminosity Mask specific luminosity ranges, for example, specific ranges of highlights or shadows (or anything in between) to apply controlled adjustments to those areas.
 
  Saved Layer States A powerful feature that allows you to save different visibility states of your layer stack to quickly review different design options or versions of your work.
Either create a manual layer state to save your layer visibility as it currently is or smart layer states which let you specify whether you want to turn layers on or off based on one or more of the following filter criteria: layer colour tag, layer type, layer name and lock status.
 
  JPEG XL Import/Export Affinity Photo has been a leader in editing wide colour gamut and HDR images, with full support for full HDR displays. JPEG XL support now allows you to export to a format which is being more and more supported—particularly by web browsers—meaning what you see in Affinity Photo can now be consumed by others.
 

NEW FEATURES in Affinity Designer 2
These are some of the most important new features in Affinity Designer V2   Vector Warp This hugely powerful and highly requested addition allows you to apply a non-destructive warp over any vector artwork or text. Choose between a fully customisable mesh, or use presets including arcs, perspective, fisheye and twists. Editing a warp gives a super-fast live preview, even on complex illustrations, and gives a true vector end result.
   
  Shape Builder Tool Add and subtract shapes and segments in a much easier, more interactive way. Quickly create complex shapes by simply dragging between segments to combine or holding a modifier to subtract.
 
  Knife Tool Slice any shape, curve or text into component parts faster than ever. A stabiliser provides even greater precision and scissor functionality allows you to click on any node or segment of a curve and split it.
 
  Measure Tool and Area Tool Easily measure line lengths, segments, distances and areas of any objects to scale. The Measure Tool allows you to measure the distance between two points/objects, while the Area Tool allows you to determine the area, perimeter and any segment length of a closed shape.
 
  DWG/DXF Import Import and edit AutoCAD and DXF files quickly and accurately, maintaining the layer structure and scale of the original file.
With functions like Multi Layer Import, Colour Override and Auto-scale, import quality is second to none.
   
  X-Ray View A new view mode shows the makeup of your work, which is particularly useful for selecting a specific curve or object within a complex artwork.
 

This post is also available as a press release in: English Français Deutsch Italiano Español 中文 Português 日本語 Brand new products launched today, Affinity V2 Universal Licence ownership tier announced, and Affinity Publisher comes to iPad
 

Serif has today unveiled the long-awaited Version 2 of its award-winning Affinity creative suite. Available to buy now with generous launch discounts, Affinity V2 comprises reimagined versions of the three products which have taken the creative software world by storm, loaded with spectacular new features and a stunning new look.
               Affinity Photo 2 – ultra-powerful photo editing and raster painting Affinity Designer 2 – intuitive, imaginative vector graphic design and illustration Affinity Publisher 2 – nimble, no-nonsense page layout software boasting StudioLink, a unique way of using the editing tools from the two other Affinity products Designed and built to empower creatives and bring out the very best in their work, Affinity V2 integrates photo editing, graphic design, illustration and layout into a super-sleek workflow – delivering a holistic experience unlike that of any other creative suite.

Version 2 of all Affinity apps launches today
Ashley Hewson, Managing Director of Serif, says: 
“Setting new standards for creative software, Affinity V2 is by far the biggest, most exciting launch in the history of Serif. For the very first time we’re bringing the very latest, highest performing versions of all our products to the market at the same time, with some simply stunning features.
“At Serif, we know that we don’t work for ourselves – we work for the photo editors, the artists, the illustrators, the designers, all those people who rely on Affinity software as the engine to power their day.
“We have worked tirelessly to not only include many of the new features our customers have been asking for, but a whole host of usability and workflow improvements to make the apps more productive than ever. We think Affinity users both old and new are going to love it.”
Alongside the launch of Affinity V2 comes the eagerly awaited release of Affinity Publisher 2 for iPad, completing the core suite of apps available on macOS, Windows and iPadOS. Feature packed, intuitive and touch-friendly, it is the first time a truly professional, desktop-grade layout and page design app has made its way to the platform.

Affinity Publisher comes to iPad for the first time
“Our work to put full desktop-quality creative software onto iPad has led the world and set new industry standards for what users should expect from iPad apps. And now we’re the first to bring all the features you’d associate with desktop publishing to the iPad as well.
“There’s genuinely never been anything like this before. The power and portability of Affinity Publisher 2 for iPad allows you to take page design and layout out of the confines of the office and into whatever space brings you most inspiration.”
Affinity V2 Universal Licence has also been announced today giving customers an option to buy a package containing Affinity Photo 2, Affinity Designer 2 and Affinity Publisher 2 for use on Mac, PC and iPad – all for a single all-inclusive amount.

The Universal Licence will normally be available for £144.99 – a £155.92 saving on buying all the apps on all operating systems individually. However, Serif is currently offering a huge 40% launch discount making the whole V2 suite available for a remarkable £89.99 one-off cost with no subscription.
Ashley Hewson concludes: 
“The ability to buy for a one-off payment is something that makes Affinity the only viable option for many of the brilliant and inspiring creative people around the world, who would otherwise not have access to the highest-quality tools. There has been a lot of speculation about us moving to subscription recently, so I’m pleased to confirm that isn’t the case!
“For our existing customers we have also been very conscious that, considering many of our sales are generated via app stores, it’s not possible to provide upgrade pricing. That’s the main reason we have decided to offer such a large launch discount – to give users a chance to upgrade at an incredible price.”
Users who don’t require the full package will still be able to buy Affinity Photo 2, Affinity Designer 2 or Affinity Publisher 2 individually for Mac, PC or iPad with the same 40% launch discount. All apps, including the V2 Universal Licence, are also available as a 30-day free trial.

Yes, we will be providing MSI installers to customers who require them. This FAQ will be updated with links to MSI downloads when they become available.
Yes. These are now available
 

I bought Affinity Suite 2 immediately and was very happy to see this story continue.
But now, I will continue in my projects with V1 in the near future and observe further developments.

Good:

There are really some basic improvements and enhancements that will be very useful in future work. And I'm sure there will also be new developments in V2, which I'm looking forward to.

Bad:

This hype, overstaged by Serif, has not done the reputation of the software any good. Professional users were left completely in uncertainty for months as to whether this software would be further developed, discontinued or completely changed. No roadmap, no info, no beta phase.

Now these unfortunate problems with the app installation, which has irritated many users who now have to realise the workflow with other programmes in workarounds.

Also bad is the online activation requirement, which affects everyone who does not connect their computer to the internet for security reasons. But this will also lead to problems in the future, as we know them from Adobe. Activation servers can no longer be reached after a few years, the purchased software can no longer be used on new hardware.

Conclusion:

It was exactly these advantages of version 1 (no online activation requirement, user-friendly installation, easy integration into existing workflows) that made Affinity programmes attractive to many professional users. In V2 these features are reduced step by step and I think this is not a good way. My enjoyment of new features is very limited as a result.

Wishes:

- Standard installer version

- Backwards compatibility from V2 to V1 (saving under V1 version even with the loss of features)

- IDML export


 
Sorry, my English is bad. Translated with DeepL

I would also much prefer to have a possibility to install Affinity applications to custom folders, like I have always been doing with all major software on my personal computers.
The way V2 is installed, it's not just about inability to maintain a certain structure of storage or the moment of confusion for the ones who install it for the first time.
Even such basic things as configuring image viewers or scanning utilities require a cumbersome workaround.

Seems to be a major point for large companies. They should offer exe installers if they want to boost sales.

This shows that it is better to buy directly from the manufacturer's site (here). And it avoids the Microsoft commission!

Hi @matt,
Many thanks for your feedback
For Affinity V2 we're already added a 'shared' location for installed Brushes, Styles, Assets etc - such that they only need to be downloaded/installed once and are then available in any compatible Affinity app you have installed.
We're continuing to look for and make improvements in this area as we appreciate how valuable disk real-estate space can be for our users!

This isn't what has happened. We have sent emails to everyone we could determine had bought in the past few weeks and given them the equivalent V2 for free. Those complaining have normally owned for more than a few months but less than a year

A "concerted attack" feels very unlikely. If I were some company employee who wanted to undermine a competitor's product, I wouldn't bother complaining about a missing feature, or installation restrictions. I'd want to complain about something much more broad, that would cause potential new purchasers to think twice.
And what would motivate this coordinated attack? If it's a competitor, who might it be? I'm not seeing a lot of love for Adobe voiced in these complaints...and justifiably so!
It's totally unsurprising that people create new accounts to complain. It's also totally unsurprising that some complainers had been dormant for an extended period. And any major new release of any product is liable to unleash a flood of new critics.
The question is, which complaints are valid, and which are not. Examples of invalid complaints are falsely alleging that Affinity is now on a subscription model, or that v1 should be supported (with bug fixes) for life.
But it is equally indisputable that Serif messed up big-time in a few ways. People who purchased v1 within the last few months have every right to be upset if they get no price break on v2 whatsoever. People who had problem-free Windows installations on v1 have every right to fume if the v2 installation method doesn't fit their needs. 
My overarching concerns are that Serif didn't anticipate these foreseeable problems, and that they have so far not reacted well to the complaints. It's possible that the root cause is an excessive need for secrecy within Serif (both prior to release, and since then). Yes, it's early days, and maybe (hopefully) we will hear something next week, such as firm policy announcements about what they will or won't do with respect to these valid concerns.
I am feverishly hoping that Serif comes through, because I'm a huge fan of v1, and want to support their business model. The character of a company is revealed in how it responds to, and learns from, its mistakes.

I have been using Affinity Photo pretty much since its inception, but only in the last couple years have I used it for more complex, layers compositions, so that I've gradually gotten to understand more of what it can do, and I love it.  I now use it nearly every day, so I have switched to V2, not because V1 didn't work very well for me, but because I don't want to miss out on future upgrades.  I will probably keep V1 just in case there are problems. I do understand that V2 documents won't open in V1, but if I were to create future documents in V1, I could work on them later in V2. It seems like a pretty good compromise. 
I don't yet know how much better V2 will be  than V1, for my purposes, but after using it for only a day or two,   since V2 JUST came out,  it would be difficult for me  to complain.  I do know that major upgrades sometimes change the appearance of things, which can be a bit disconcerting,  and that's something you have to get used to.Some  things do look different in V2 --- they are placed a bit differently, the icons are different, etc .A little  patience is required, and if you are really a dedicated user, you can figure it out. Or ask a question on the forum, or watch one of the many tutorials.  And real glitches do get fixed.
I have been using Affinity long enough (I don't consider myself an expert -- I'm somewhere in the "intermediate" category of user probably)  to be aware of how much better it has gotten over the years. So I am really looking forwarding to marching onwards with V2. 

It seemed obvious to me that there was a concerted attack, albeit at the margin, especially since one of these new accounts was talking about Affinity subscription before changing its text a little later. Too bad I didn’t have the presence of mind to fix the image.
Another mistake some of these new suspicious accounts make is to support each other in various very negative and unrelated messages. It should also be noted that none of the complainants provided any screenshots of purchases to support their claims.
Let’s remind here the new prices for desktop applications:
Scribus = €0, but who really wants to use Scribus? QuarkXPress = €259 per year. Adobe Illustrator + Adobe Photoshop + Adobe Indesign = €71.97 per month, or €863.31 per year. Affinity Designer, Affinity Photo, or Affinity Publisher = €84.99 for life. A combination of two programs = €169.98 for life. All Affinity software = 326,94 € €199.99 for all platforms (Window, MacOs, iPad) for life. There is an introductory discount of 40% for everyone, old and new users alike. New customers are obviously not concerned because they do not yet have the product, but if they were already thinking of buying (a priori by word of mouth?), they can also benefit from the promotional offer.
So, for a limited time: One Affinity Software only €48.99, two software only €97.98 €, all software only €119.99. all platforms, for life. That said, no one is forcing you to upgrade! Version 1 still works. For life. The same goes for the iPad version, starting at €14.99 instead of €24.99.
I therefore do not understand those who explain that they should pay even less.