am2008

I think we have received all the feedback we need for PagePlus import. I will end this thread by saying that if we did produce an importer we would wait until Affinity Publisher supports enough features that the importer would be better than our current PDF import. Sorry but that's best we can say at this time.
 

I have to say, that I am astonished at not having any way to Import PagePlus files. I got an invite by email to download the Beta as I am a Serif Customer, the main product I use is PagePlus. I have been using it for years, first with a company I worked for, then bought it myself. I have loads of files that I update regularly.
I understand new software, designed from scratch, not on the old platform, but I don't understand that there is no way to import PagePlus files. Surely there must be a way for you to do this for your existing customers, whether a stand alone app, a plug in or integrated into Affinity, I really think this is an essential. 
I use OpenOffice, if someone sends my a Microsoft Word file, I can open it with Open Office. Though it is completely different software, not built on the same code base, Open Office realise that they need to open MS Word files, as their users will need this facility. It doesn't always work perfectly because of the differences in the software features, but it does import them. I find it really hard to understand that Serif don't realise how important it is for customers to import files from their own old software. I don't expect PP to be able to open Affinity files, but I really did expect the new software to open the old files. 
The first thing I did when I opened the beta programme was to try and open an existing PagePlus file, well that didn't go well, then I looked on the forum to find out how to do it and found this thread. :(
In business it is a know fact that it is easier and cheaper to sell to existing customers that to acquire new customers. I guess a percentage of your existing customers will look elsewhere now. If they have to start from scratch anyway, they will look for a company that will support them and all their work long term. Where you could have made easy and cheap sales to existing customers, you will loose a bunch of those and have to market to new customers instead.
Me? I will continue to use PagePlus and when I need to update in the future, I will look at what is available. Maybe I will turn to Affinity, maybe not. But, where this was an opportunity for an easy sale to an existing customer, it has backfired I think.

In the past 15 years my organisation has built up a huge archive of Pageplus templates, both centrally and across 100's of branches and 300+ individual users. We would be very reluctant to either abandon these or devote the resources to reproduce them in Publisher, as we were forced to when we made the painful transition from Adobe Pagemaker to PagePlus.
Most likely we will struggle along with PagePlus for the next few years, before eventually examining all the available alternatives. It's a shame, because we've been generally impressed with what we've seen in the beta. If Publisher was able to import PagePlus files we would probably be looking to buy several hundred copies over the next year.
(And before anyone says it, yes I know Publisher does an OK job of importing pdfs - as does PagePlus - but that's not a convenient way to work when your cribbing bits of artwork off several previous jobs, especially for our less experienced infrequent users.)
As others have said, you're chasing a large group of Indesign users who could be persuaded to switch, but seem to be telling loyal Pageplus users that we're not worth the effort of supporting. 

Another pageplus user here that regularly uses the mailmerge feature. It's a must have for me, and many others in my organisation (which has about 300 ppX8/X9 users)

In the past 15 years my organisation has built up a huge archive of Pageplus templates, both centrally and across 100's of branches and 300+ individual users. We would be very reluctant to either abandon these or devote the resources to reproduce them in Publisher, as we were forced to when we made the painful transition from Adobe Pagemaker to PagePlus.
Most likely we will struggle along with PagePlus for the next few years, before eventually examining all the available alternatives. It's a shame, because we've been generally impressed with what we've seen in the beta. If Publisher was able to import PagePlus files we would probably be looking to buy several hundred copies over the next year.
(And before anyone says it, yes I know Publisher does an OK job of importing pdfs - as does PagePlus - but that's not a convenient way to work when your cribbing bits of artwork off several previous jobs, especially for our less experienced infrequent users.)
As others have said, you're chasing a large group of Indesign users who could be persuaded to switch, but seem to be telling loyal Pageplus users that we're not worth the effort of supporting. 

PagePlus is an underrated GEM, that's why many people never heard of it. I use PagePlus for more than 10 years and will continue for another 10 years.