000

I am NOT a professional. I never "studied" design. I am an amateur and learned a few things on my own. I use Affinity to do what I like. Some self publishing with Publisher. Some minor graphics work with Designer. Some photo touch-ups with Photo. I bought into the Affinity Suite, and would continue to buy into the suite based on 1 thing.... NO Subscriptions. The company was providing me the user wonderful tools to do what I enjoy doing.
 
This news is the worst thing I could have heard today. I am such a fan of Affinity. I loved the feel of the company. I loved the independence of the company. Now this is all gone. I have moved all of my projects (minor in comparison to some) into this suite of tools, based on the promise of "No Subscriptions". I have convinced others to purchase these tools, so that we could work together. And today, with this AWFUL news, the run with Affinity ends. Version 2 will still be available in perpetuity (until your computer doesn't work and v2 no longer works with the new operating systems). But version 3 will be subscription, and then we the users will pay for a garbage service with minor updates and very little push forward. "Oh look at what we've done in this month's update.... we finally fixed the kerning of the letters in the Edit menu that didn't look quite right." I've seen it with Adobe, I've seen it with Sibelius, and now I am seeing it with Affinity. What a shame. I feel I have been duped. I feel I have been betrayed. And I feel like I will be on the hunt for another Publisher type app, another Designer type app, and another Photo type app.
 
I just went to look at the Canva website. I felt even more disappointed and betrayed seeing their website, and even more worried about the developers at Affinity. The first thing it asks for without doing anything is to sign up for their subscription. Words cannot express how sad and frustrated I feel about this terrible decision.

Herzlichen Glückwunsch zu diesem traurigen Schritt. Ich habe es schon länger befürchtet das dies irgendwann auf den Benutzer zukommen wird. All die schönen Worte lieber Ash wird keinen der Affinity User überzeugen oder beruhigen, zu viele von uns haben sehr viel Erfahrung auf diesem Level. Wie schon mehrfach hier erwähnt wissen wir sehr genau wohin der Weg letztendlich führen wird.. vermutlich in ein teures Abo wie Adobe oder völlig neue Umstellung der Softwarepolitik, schlimmstenfalls wird Affinity Suite genauso untergehen wie davor geniale Softwareschmieden wie Macromedia FreeHand, Director), Magix, Xara usw.. Nun bereue ich ehrlich gesagt den Umstieg von Adobe, da hatte ich ein wahnsinnig gutes Monats Abo für 36 Euro seit Jahren. Zu groß war mein Vertrauen in Affinity es besser zu machen als Adobe und Affinity WAR auf einem sehr sehr guten Weg. 

Jetzt heißt es für viele von uns hier zittern und bangen was die nahe Zukunft bringen wird... und ich hab ehrlich gesagt gar kein gutes Gefühl dabei mit Canva... und ich hasse diese Gefühle in mir weil sie meist eintreffen! Wenn das Abo-Modell eintreffen sollte bin ich weg denn ganz klar, es geht um die Geldpolitik und was das bedeutet weis wohl jeder. Schade um eine so ausgezeichnete Software.

Ich vermute Affinity/Canva wird in naher Zukunft sehr viele User verlieren... schade. Die Hoffnung stirbt zuletzt, ich lass mich dennoch gern überraschen...

Such a shame. This will cost Affinity a lot of customers as almost 80-90% of their customers are people who left subscription-based companies as Adobe. I hope they will rethink this dumb decision before its too late. 

The way you word it in this post gives us a very bad feeling. "no changes to our current pricing model planned at this time". It gives me the feeling Affinity Serif lost its spark and turned to the darkside of the subscriptions. Becoming the very thing we tried to escape from. By getting acuired by Canva, you've broken the trust of your customers. I won't bother even trusting you again as money seems to be the only priority. You lost a customer by doing this. 

Rest In Peace Affinity. You will be remembered.

I am honestly not happy with this announcement. As others have said before, these kind of announcements and promises have been done before and it always ended up as a subscription service in the end and customers lost their ability to purchase perpetual licenses.
I gave Affinity Photo a chance in 2017 while looking for an alternative to Adobe Cloud. It was great and I also learned to appreciate Designer and Publisher over the years. But let's be clear, the major reason for choosing Affinity over other companies was and is the perpetual license. I am absolutely willing to pay for an application and support its developers and to be honest Affinity was always on the cheap side of things for me. I would have purchased the program for 2-3x the amount as well. But I want to own the software and decide on my own if and when I'll upgrade to a new major version and pay again.
I am giving you the benefit of the doubt and sincerely hope you will keep your promise to keep perpetual licenses.
 

Canva bought Affinity to the tune of about 1 BILLION dollars.
Affinity made 16 MILLION pounds in revenue in 2022.

Yeah, I am sure that will let you carry on and change nothing.

Considering how many “funds” Canva has “raised” in the past few years and how many venture capital campanies are involved, I have a VERY bad feeling about this.
The forced marketing speech (“joining the family”, yeah, sure) in the announcement doesn’t halp.
I guess that it’s probably a good way for all Serif employees to get a nice retirement in 3 to 5 years, but it’s a buckshot in the face for me as a happy user and supporter of an independent company that makes professional software I use every day.

Considering how many “funds” Canva has “raised” in the past few years and how many venture capital campanies are involved, I have a VERY bad feeling about this.
The forced marketing speech (“joining the family”, yeah, sure) in the announcement doesn’t halp.
I guess that it’s probably a good way for all Serif employees to get a nice retirement in 3 to 5 years, but it’s a buckshot in the face for me as a happy user and supporter of an independent company that makes professional software I use every day.

Considering how many “funds” Canva has “raised” in the past few years and how many venture capital campanies are involved, I have a VERY bad feeling about this.
The forced marketing speech (“joining the family”, yeah, sure) in the announcement doesn’t halp.
I guess that it’s probably a good way for all Serif employees to get a nice retirement in 3 to 5 years, but it’s a buckshot in the face for me as a happy user and supporter of an independent company that makes professional software I use every day.

Considering how many “funds” Canva has “raised” in the past few years and how many venture capital campanies are involved, I have a VERY bad feeling about this.
The forced marketing speech (“joining the family”, yeah, sure) in the announcement doesn’t halp.
I guess that it’s probably a good way for all Serif employees to get a nice retirement in 3 to 5 years, but it’s a buckshot in the face for me as a happy user and supporter of an independent company that makes professional software I use every day.

Considering how many “funds” Canva has “raised” in the past few years and how many venture capital campanies are involved, I have a VERY bad feeling about this.
The forced marketing speech (“joining the family”, yeah, sure) in the announcement doesn’t halp.
I guess that it’s probably a good way for all Serif employees to get a nice retirement in 3 to 5 years, but it’s a buckshot in the face for me as a happy user and supporter of an independent company that makes professional software I use every day.

Considering how many “funds” Canva has “raised” in the past few years and how many venture capital campanies are involved, I have a VERY bad feeling about this.
The forced marketing speech (“joining the family”, yeah, sure) in the announcement doesn’t halp.
I guess that it’s probably a good way for all Serif employees to get a nice retirement in 3 to 5 years, but it’s a buckshot in the face for me as a happy user and supporter of an independent company that makes professional software I use every day.

Considering how many “funds” Canva has “raised” in the past few years and how many venture capital campanies are involved, I have a VERY bad feeling about this.
The forced marketing speech (“joining the family”, yeah, sure) in the announcement doesn’t halp.
I guess that it’s probably a good way for all Serif employees to get a nice retirement in 3 to 5 years, but it’s a buckshot in the face for me as a happy user and supporter of an independent company that makes professional software I use every day.

As with previous takeovers, it always turns out to be for the worst.
Two things I won’t tolerate is 
1/ AI being introduced in the software suite. It’s for lazy, uncreative people 
2/ The subscription model being introduced. I specifically went away from Adobe’s suite day 1, fearing and telling everyone that adobe will only increase prices. And it will go the same way with any subscription models, whether it’s software or peripheral e.g. HP printer ink. I for one will abandon going to subscription software. The updates that adobe offers, isn’t worth paying for anymore 

Canva is a VC-funded company, so they're not going to be running Affinity with the intention of making a product people like at a reasonable price, because I guess that's just something losers do nowadays. In other words - welcome to the Enshittification spiral.
It may take a few years, but it will get there like literally every other VC-backed product. I'm sure Serif's owners got a juicy exit though.
I have been a user of Affinity Designer for almost 10 years, and it helped me make so much that would have been really hard with FOSS and the business stability that Serif had made it wonderful and reliable because I knew that it wasn't going to have multi-tier funhouse subscriptions dropped on me or other price-gauging elements. That's gone now, so I will be treating this product and this business accordingly, with a 50 foot pole, until a stable business makes an alternative.

While this announcement doesn't fill me with confidence—Serif as a company has never really filled me with confidence (Canva even less)—this announcement really does read like every other acquisition that unfortunately didn't go so well for the existing customer base.
Undoubtably with this acquisition things will change, whether that's for the better or not (and let's be honest, the current pace of development, regressions, bugs, UX/UI issues, etc with Serif isn't great) — only time will tell. I'm not optimistic, but it's day one. I'm willing to cut both Canva and Serif a little slack for the time being, and see how they both respond to all of the negative reactions, and what actions they take in the next 90 days (hell, the acquisition itself took less than 60) to demonstrate good faith on their messages and directions.
For me 'Canva' and 'professional' are words that simply do not go together well. If it really is their intention to further develop the Affinity apps into a 'professional' offering to compete directly with Adobe, then they have a very big mountain to climb.
Worst case for me is simply abandoning the Affinity apps and continuing to use the Adobe apps that I've never been able to fully shift away from after almost ten years of trying.

But are funded by Venture capitalist.

Hmm, HUGE betrayal is more like it.

I feel a caption competition coming on. First prize, a years subscription to the Canvafinity Suite, and 5000+ prizes of a Serif 'Plus' bundle.

Don't worry guys, AI will decimate the industry within five years anyway. There won't even be any point to software by then.

https://x.com/affinitybyserif/status/1570728566350020608?s=20

This is not going to end well. I just upgraded to v2 and have invested in numerus  add-ons and am now feeling regret at the money spent. All due respect but "no plans currently" doesn't mean jack. Unfortunately the marriage looks to be over and I wont be investing any more money into this software. Real shame I felt part of a community, now already feel like a customer.

@BofG Paying per release is not a dead business model. The subscription model exists only when consumers won't balk against it. It's not a consumer-oriented model. It's profit oriented. Honestly, I'm amazed Adobe got away with it. Photoshop and Illustrator were bloated and riddled with UI bugs when they went subscription-only.
Late-stage capitalism ... gotta love it.

It happens again, and again, and again, and again..
It's the start of platform decay.

We’ve all seen this type of acquisition before, and no amount of marketing copy will dissuade the well-founded fears of this community. Unless Serif has strong guarantees from Canva in writing, it’s pretty obvious that they will become a lemon for the parent company to squeeze until there’s nothing left. That’s almost always the outcome.
Canva is awful software. If I’f known Serif would be owned by Canva eventually, I never would have purchased a V2 license. This is a pretty big betrayal of our trust.

Time to look for a new home ! Open source alternatives are not where I'd want them to be (otherwise I wouldn't be using Affinity!), but they're building up in strength & versatility. Inkscape has some rough edges but is a very, very capable vector program. Krita is unequalled at painting. Gimp isn't ideal right now but they're nearing a "modern" 3.0 release, let's see how that goes. Graphite.rs is young but veeeery promising. I don't really have a Publisher alternative to offer, though.
Farewell ! it's been nice.