Missing features - get it done - increase the price to € $ 199.- - raise money from already owners

[more2021]

Ahoi Team!

Over the last years dozens of people have purchased your products, AD and AP by name, due to my recommendation: "The same or even better than PS or AI. The little what´s missing will come fast, trust me."

But i´m stuck with you. Quite embarrassing right, well, now?

Announcements and promises over YEARS and YEARS, i don´t know where to start. So many missing and often asked features (snoop around your own and other forums [fora, to be correct]): What is the value of an alternative to PS and AI, when i am regularly forced to go back for common simple tasks?

Guys, take € $ 50.- or 100.- or 150.- again from me and 10.000s others and get this thing working. OK? And do it fast.

Thx, KW

p.s.: I´m sure, that all owners will be OK with an extra payment from time to time. Declare and just be honest: "We need more money to beat the evil forces. Things develop, so must we, what is costly". Everyone will understand. 

I had the same task with my product: Too cheap. I doubled the price and i´m selling more than before. Placement.

25.- by discount? 3kg of somewhat good bread cost more. Don´t fool yourself: A real PS and AI alternative has to be more costly. No problem. Try my advice and get funds by owners (please no novel, just the truth in simple words - two lines) and raise the price.

But you have to deliver: Make huuugggee anouncements and implement the stuff real quickly. OK?

[Pšenda]

Please stop giving advice to others, because it's a waste of energy, and you probably won't even appreciate it. Instead, start your own business, develop applications such as APh, ADe and APub (or others, your ambitions are certainly much higher), quickly implement all the necessary and cool functions into them, and sell them for 1000 or more €, which users will certainly be happy to pay. OK?

[Overdose]

@more2021: There are certainly enough Affinity users here waiting for their personally sought-after features. Me too.

But: Good software is not programmed in a short time.
You have to recognize several dependencies, work out concepts for meaningful data and file structures. You can't expand a programming team by doubling it up to do new functions in less time, because new colleagues also have a learning curve and there also block the older team members a bit because they have to show the new colleagues how things work.

Not all things can be solved with money alone.

I have been working with Affinity products since version 1.6. Updates come regularly, but not so often that it's annoying.
In other words, the updates are stable and have been tested, so they don't have to be constantly improved.

I think Affinity is on the right track with their product strategy: A more thorough and reliable development of their software makes customers happier than the provision of faster and dirtier (= faulty) solutions.

It's okay to pay for mayor releases. But to see the user as a cash cow, as Adobe is doing, is the wrong way to go. A subscription model is good if you earn money with the software. But if, like me, you only do something occasionally or work with it on a voluntary basis, then a subscription is simply too expensive. In this respect, Affinity is on the right track here too.

[Andy05]

@more2021That's probably the problem here. The fora are NOT representative to what the majority of users think or want. I've been community manager of two browser games with millions of users. More than 80% of them were happy with the product as ingame votes showed. Whereas the fora read like 90% would be just moaning.

14 hours ago, more2021 said:

Guys, take € $ 50.- or 100.- or 150.- again from me and 10.000s others and get this thing working. OK? And do it fast.

Secondly, you confuse target markets. Affinity apps are not really replacements for Adobe's apps - at least not in the professional sector of the market. The apps are for private users, artists and maybe small businesses. Even with 10,000 people paying 150 Euros - you won't be able to develop a replacement for Adobe's apps. If that would be so cheap and easy, others would have done that ages ago. Not even mentioning, that there might not be 10k users willing to pay that much. Because... well, see above, the users in the targeted market are not willing to pay that much. 

Especially not since there would be still alternatives en par with affinity apps for the similar money.

It might have worked with your app, but markets are different. Developing a suite on Adobe's level costs millions.

[Pšenda]

12 minutes ago, Andy05 said:

Developing a suite on Adobe's level costs millions.

... If it is taken into account that Adobe has bought many companies with a similar focus to gain their know-how, patents, developers and destroy the competition, then it will be "a lot" of millions 🙂

[loukash]

6 hours ago, Pšenda said:

destroy the competition

FREE FREEEEEHAAAAAAAND!!!

[pyxelles]

My sentiments exactly, I don't see the point in selling it cheap and leaving out so many basic features people desperately need and have been requesting for years. Most of us are tired of using "work-around" to complete certain tasks. I still think Affinity is a great product and appreciate the absence of the subscription pricing model. However, I'd rather have all the requested features for a higher price (as long as it remains subscription free). I'd happily pay a higher price- one off of course!😄

Affinity can only become an Adobe replacement when it includes basic tools like: live trace (even Inkscape has this), warp effect, eraser, knife tool, pattern maker tool, vectorization tool (like in Inkscape, Gravit Designer) etc. I really hope Affinity 2.0 delivers. 

I say an Adobe replacement because whether we like it or not, Adobe is still established as the "industry standard" in the creative industry hence, in order for Affinity to compete to the point of being recognised as an "industry standard" alternative, it needs to match the missing highly requested and essential features found in Adobe. There are professionals who complain about having to still return to Adobe to complete certain tasks! Nobody is asking them to change their pricing model or ethics. I can still be an Affinity fan and offer constructive criticism- nothing wrong with that. 

[Pšenda]

3 hours ago, pyxelles said:

Affinity can only claim to be an Adobe replacement

Does she claim it Affinity/Serif somewhere? Can you give any evidence for your claim?

[Wosven]

Before Covid, I wouldn't have commented.

But with it, and seeing friends loosing their job, having hard times, etc., I'm happy to use apps from a company with ethics and trying to help offering discount on their products, or video, articles.

I'm not the last one to complain about bugs, but I wouldn't ask to modify their business model since they're not a "pigeon de l’année", and certainly know what they are doing.

[loukash]

And CATS!

[Designer1234]

Perhaps Corel Standard Price would be fair and competitive with more tools added... but I'd say that 100€ will be better if they still want to attract many amatours (that's good for marketing) and some pro begginers.

[pyxelles]

On 5/19/2021 at 9:54 PM, Pšenda said:

Does she claim it Affinity/Serif somewhere? Can you give any evidence for your claim?

I'd appreciate it if you don't misquote me because I never said " Affinity Designer can only claim to be an Adobe replacement". You don't have to claim to be something to acquire a label, do you? First of all Serif don't have to "claim" to being an Adobe replacement for it to be valid- the creative community has done it for them because most of them were Adobe users who wanted a cheaper alternative that was comparable, hence the label of being an "Adobe replacement" even Serif never intended it to be. 
 

Secondly unless you're not in the creative industry you must know that Adobe is seen as the industry standard and was the software most professional creatives used. However, they were quite expensive and made things worse by switching to a subscription model which became unaffordable for a lot of people and newbies. Although other software existed, nothing matched Adobe's standards in terms of UI & UX, until Serif developed AD & AP. 

[Dan C]

10 hours ago, pyxelles said:

I'd appreciate it if you don't misquote me because I never said " Affinity Designer can only claim to be an Adobe replacement".

Please note, I am not 'pointing any fingers' or accusing any users here, but I can see the original message that Psenda quoted was edited, and could have had this comment removed. Unfortunately our forums do not 'hold' the edit information for long enough to confirm or deny this - hence I am not making any accusations:

It's certainly possible that the comment Psenda quoted was publicly visible at the time, and no longer is. It's also possible that Psenda edited the quote in their post - as I'm aware this is technically feasible on the forums - but I do not believe this technicality is one that needs to be hashed out and hopefully we can all agree (perhaps agree to disagree!) and move on from this without escalating further.

Again, there's no blame being placed or inferred in this post - I'm simply looking to ensure this thread does not derail into arguments

[Pšenda]

6 hours ago, Dan C said:

but I can see the original message that Psenda quoted was edited, and could have had this comment removed

Thank you for the information - I also got the impression that the original post I quoted was edited, even though the user did not set the "Edit" flag.

6 hours ago, Dan C said:

It's certainly possible that the comment Psenda quoted was publicly visible at the time, and no longer is.

Yes, that's right - it was a quote using "Quote selection". I had no reason to edit the text in any way.

[pyxelles]

6 hours ago, Dan C said:

Please note, I am not 'pointing any fingers' or accusing any users here, but I can see the original message that Psenda quoted was edited, and could have had this comment removed. Unfortunately our forums do not 'hold' the edit information for long enough to confirm or deny this - hence I am not making any accusations:

It's certainly possible that the comment Psenda quoted was publicly visible at the time, and no longer is. It's also possible that Psenda edited the quote in their post - as I'm aware this is technically feasible on the forums - but I do not believe this technicality is one that needs to be hashed out and hopefully we can all agree (perhaps agree to disagree!) and move on from this without escalating further.

Again, there's no blame being placed or inferred in this post - I'm simply looking to ensure this thread does not derail into arguments.

Honestly there isn't any argument or issues, just wanted to clarify what I meant. It's possible I had edited "Adobe can only claim to be...." to "Adobe can only be..." as I realised that Serif have never claimed to be an Adobe replacement and they needn't as it's an excellent app on its own. However, the label has been imposed on Affinity products, that's all.
As much as I love Affinity-I own all three apps, doesn't mean there isn't room for improvement or those who offer criticism should get verbally attacked with patronising or sarcastic comments. That user's frustration is genuine to them and for someone to just come along and dismissively ask them to create their own app is frankly rude and unhelpful. 

I think if users' issues were at least acknowledged that would be better - letting people know if its a consideration or not, where in the road map etc rather than just ignoring them. People are just frustrated by the absence of features they consider to be basic necessities which make their workflow more tedious and have been requesting for years. No arguments here just people voicing their opinions. Nice to see a moderator btw 🤓