V2 Pricing for users V1

[Chills]

4 minutes ago, Twolane said:

I can't wait for the thread that complains about missing out on the "non-sale" when the price goes up. Otter be a scream to read the whining and gnashing of teeth.

That so UNFAIR!!!!!!!  (screams, shouts, stamps feets,  has a tantrum)  🙂

 

[hl24a3]

Well then it will be funny as hell when they introduce some upgrades you want and charge you all for it again, after all it is more then likely in this collapse times, I wonder how many charges ahead will you give up defending the seller

[debraspicher]

Just now, hl24a3 said:

Well then it will be funny as hell when they introduce some upgrades you want and charge you all for it again, after all it is more then likely in this collapse times, I wonder how many charges ahead will you give up defending the seller

They've already confirmed they are not doing annual upgrades. Why would they change this stance? Sure, anything is possible at any time.

I can only go by what I experienced with V1. We received several years of free updates. So... as an early adopter, I've felt blessed to watch the company and apps grow. Obviously, if they changed pricing/update practices to something indefensible, it would be the end of any business in the competitive times as you say... though I would not be surprised if they can pick up the pace from V1, we see upgrades more often, say 3-4 years... 6-7 was more like an extended testing/promotional introductory period, imo. Has always felt that way, anyway...

The other reason they may not do it more often, as I just thought about it, not sure they want to repeat the upgrade pricing fiasco all over again anytime soon... at least until they find a new system or can get Apple to provide a better solution to upgrade pricing... all speculative, of course.

[Chills]

8 minutes ago, hl24a3 said:

Well then it will be funny as hell when they introduce some upgrades you want and charge you all for it again, after all it is more then likely in this collapse times, I wonder how many charges ahead will you give up defending the seller

This is the first chargeable new version in  7(?) years.
If the next one is only 5 years time I will have no problem with that.
 

[hl24a3]

10 minutes ago, debraspicher said:

They've already confirmed they are not doing annual upgrades. Why would they change this stance? Sure, anything is possible at any time.

I can only go by what I experienced with V1. We received several years of free updates. So... as an early adopter, I've felt blessed to watch the company and apps grow. Obviously, if they changed pricing/update practices to something indefensible, it would be the end of any business in the competitive times as you say... though I would not be surprised if they can pick up the pace from V1, we see upgrades more often, say 3-4 years... 6-7 was more like an extended testing/promotional introductory period, imo. Has always felt that way, anyway...

The other reason they may not do it more often, as I just thought about it, not sure they want to repeat the upgrade pricing fiasco all over again anytime soon... at least until they find a new system or can get Apple to provide a better solution to upgrade pricing... all speculative, of course.

I know, unsignificant bull.. updates

[hl24a3]

8 minutes ago, Chills said:

This is the first chargeable new version in  7(?) years.
If the next one is only 5 years time I will have no problem with that.
 

I said I don't mind paying but we v1 should have been treated a bit better

[Brian_J]

23 minutes ago, ChopperNova said:

Serif could literally price their products anywhere from free to $infinity, and then offer whatever "generous" discount they wanted. They could also offer free versions.

There are differences between traditional manufacturing companies and software companies, but I think there are some basic models, constraints, economic considerations — whatever they may be called — that apply to pricing strategy in most consumer product industries. Setting a product's price intentionally high, then offering a discount, may be common for products sold in TV commercials and retail stores, but I don't think it would be an effective approach for a software company.

31 minutes ago, ChopperNova said:

Saying it's impossible to correlate users with V1 purchases is dishonest.

I haven't seen Serif claim it's impossible. This is what Ash, Serif Managing Director wrote in his post:

Quote

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. 

 

[Archaeologist]

1 hour ago, Brian_J said:

 

I think of it in terms of the value I’m receiving. I think 40% of an already reasonably priced product is great.

They doubled the price before offering the 40% discount. Add on the wasted money already paid a few months ago for V1 and it's not even close to 'reasonably priced'.
 

[R C-R]

Just now, Archaeologist said:

They doubled the price before offering the 40% discount.

No, they did not double the price. V1 pricing went up months ago because it is keyed to Apple's pricing matrix, so when that changed V1 prices were adjusted accordingly.

This has been explained in several different topics, beginning over a year ago.

[hl24a3]

11 minutes ago, Brian_J said:

There are differences between traditional manufacturing companies and software companies, but I think there are some basic models, constraints, economic considerations — whatever they may be called — that apply to pricing strategy in most consumer product industries. Setting a product's price intentionally high, then offering a discount, may be common for products sold in TV commercials and retail stores, but I don't think it would be an effective approach for a software company.

I haven't seen Serif claim it's impossible. This is what Ash, Serif Managing Director wrote in his post:

 

I call it a bullshit that they don't know who bought v1 on App Store, absolutely ridiculous in todays times when everything is in database. Were there's a will there's a way.

[R C-R]

1 minute ago, hl24a3 said:

I call it a bullshit that they don't know who bought v1 on App Store, absolutely ridiculous in todays times when everything is in database.

It's in Apple's database but as has been mentioned dozens of times over the years not just in these forums but all over the web, Apple does not share that database with companies selling their apps through the MAS for security & privacy reasons.

[debraspicher]

47 minutes ago, hl24a3 said:

Well then it will be funny as hell when they introduce some upgrades you want and charge you all for it again, after all it is more then likely in this collapse times, I wonder how many charges ahead will you give up defending the seller

 

29 minutes ago, hl24a3 said:

I know, unsignificant bull.. updates

 

29 minutes ago, hl24a3 said:

I said I don't mind paying but we v1 should have been treated a bit better

These statements are all very inconsistent with one another. Clearly doesn't read posts or relevant information. Earned my block. Poster is a troll.

[Dan C]

10 minutes ago, hl24a3 said:

I call it a bullshit that they don't know who bought v1 on App Store, absolutely ridiculous in todays times when everything is in database

Please see the below post where I covered this previously, with a link to Apples Developer policy:

[ChopperNova]

2 minutes ago, Brian_J said:

There are differences between traditional manufacturing companies and software companies, but I think there are some basic models, constraints, economic considerations — whatever they may be called — that apply to pricing strategy in most consumer product industries. Setting a product's price intentionally high, then offering a discount, may be common for products sold in TV commercials and retail stores, but I don't think it would be an effective approach for a software company.

I haven't seen Serif claim it's impossible. This is what Ash, Serif Managing Director wrote in his post:

 

With software, you can't set the product's price intentionally high because there's no baseline, but obviously there's a vast number of considerations. Corel frequently offers sales on Painter, which retails for over $429. Now, for a limited time only, you can get it for $299, plus $200 in Free Stuff.

Serif could have slapped together 100 brushes and said, $500 in exclusive, all-new content!!! It's a farce.

When I said Serif claimed it was impossible, I was paraphrasing. But if they wanted to make it happen, they could -- doesn't Apple Store supply any sort of digital receipt? And It's funny how they're managing to slap together create a bundle of exclusive, all-new content, just for users going from V1 to V2, though.

But if you want to believe their marketing tripe, you're welcome too it.

[Dan C]

5 minutes ago, ChopperNova said:

But if they wanted to make it happen, they could -- doesn't Apple Store supply any sort of digital receipt?

The following in Ash's post covers this:

On 11/21/2022 at 8:50 PM, Ash said:

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.

 

5 minutes ago, ChopperNova said:

It's funny how they're managing to slap together create a bundle of exclusive, all-new content, just for users going from V1 to V2, though.

Ash also commented on this here:

[Brian_J]

21 minutes ago, ChopperNova said:

When I said Serif claimed it was impossible, I was paraphrasing. But if they wanted to make it happen, they could

But what you said was...

Quote

Saying it's impossible to correlate users with V1 purchases is dishonest.

With all due respect, that's not paraphrasing — it's incorrect information that you used to support the statement that Serif is "dishonest." Serif provided their reasoning for not going the route of identifying customers who purchased on platforms other than the Serif Store.

I'm not trying to be argumentative, and frankly, I don't like contributing to the back-and-forth between users in these forums. But I think it's important we get our facts straight so everyone has the ability to reach their own conclusions based on facts.

[ChopperNova]

5 minutes ago, Brian_J said:

But what you said was...

With all due respect, that not paraphrasing — it's incorrect information that you used to support the statement that Serif is "dishonest." Serif provided their reasoning for not going the route of identifying customers who purchased on platforms other than the Serif Store.

I'm not trying to be argumentative, and frankly, I don't like contributing to the back-and-forth between users in these forums. But I think it's important we get our facts straight so everyone has the ability to reach their own conclusions based on facts.

When I said "Saying it's impossible to correlate users with V1 purchases is dishonest." I wasn't referring to some literal, absolute, universal, fast-than-light, physical impossibility, nor was I quoting anyone. I was referring to multiple statements made in this forum, which generate the cumulative impression of impossibility. So I was summarizing/ characterizing/paraphrasing, and if taken in context with my previous paragraph, it should be clear I was referring to those who bought V1 very shortly before V2. These people are being positively vilified here, when they're simply loyal customers expecting Serif to act in good faith. But it's Serif's giant finger, they can give it to anyone they want. We already know where both their thumbs are.

And it's kind of pedantic to take issue with my use of impossible and paraphrasing, while ignoring the actual point I was making, but whateves.

[ChopperNova]

2 hours ago, Dan C said:

The following in Ash's post covers this:

 

Ash also commented on this here:

My post was referring to people who bought V1 shortly before V2, which I'd imagine is not tens of thousands of receipts. Software houses typically act of good faith in instances like this, but we got it, your customers aren't worth the effort.

It's not sufficient to simply not BE Adobe, et al. You also have to not BEHAVE like them. Like I said it's your giant finger, you can give it to anyone you want. The MSIX fisaco amply demonstrates where both your thumbs are.

[debraspicher]

When the option given by others for disagreeing is "go ahead and believe marketing", etc (a very common practice here), I can't see a constructive discussion beyond that point. It's either this or that. You're on my side or "that" side. There's no room for a difference in perspectives, or more importantly... experiences. So I don't tend to feel these conversations get very far beyond repetitive knee-jerk reactions. People get so caught up in those debates and I can't understand why. There's no reason to self-justify or to "debunk" the other person. Sometimes I think it's just two (or more) people trying to maneuver around a narrative. Which is childish.

That said, if someone's experience is one of X and another's is Y. I tend to take it at their word, yes this person's experience is X. This other person's is Y. It does not mean it is my experience or that I have to agree with it. I'd like to know why they feel that way, but it doesn't necessarily impact my view or how I approach things.

However...

Occasionally tall claims are made, of which can be only be substantiated with facts, not conjecture. I find that the claims vary accordingly with what someone's experience with a company has been like directly more than it varies by the facts. There's certainly value to that experience and it doesn't necessarily prove/disprove the points being made or that we're all "hoodwinked". It's been discussed in other threads how silence from a company can play out long-term to its detriment. And of course, there's still the occasional madman who visits from the Adobe plantation (or some other plantation) to have fights endlessly over the product's lacking functionality, but I find that that user is markedly rare and predictable.

I think it's more likely that people get wrapped up in whatever it is is their thinking that they don't necessarily see that experiences can vary quite widely, which is why some see blood when they're being disagreed with by a big group. I'm maybe more than tolerant as I just had to throw down cash with little notice. Surely I could claim economic hardship. Was it planned? No. Was it worth it? I think so, but time will ultimately tell. Today I don't regret my purchase and I look forward to what the future brings. However, if we're back to V1 slow updates and very little communication regarding this, I might very well be singing a different tune, but I guess it just depends on how I feel it impacts my usage. I don't see it being likely, but that's my point. My expectations and my reaction are almost solely tied to how I feel treated as a customer. It is completely divorced how other people feel, "marketing schemes", etc... I've had my own set of expectations from day 1 and I'm sure others have theirs. I didn't buy based on promises of unicorns, but I did buy based on what it would do for me personally (and creatively).

The posts that make me most enthusiastic are the ones that are most critically constructive. I think this can be done without grand claims, without making major assumptions and I think even speculations can be had without accusing others of outright lying. There's many motivators when it comes to business. None of the side arguments about marketing or corrupt MS though factor all that much to me, though flogging MS is entertaining. It's seeing when issues are getting addressed by staff and those impacts being felt via progress in the suite. In other words, I judge a company by its reaction to me, my concerns and its reaction to other customers that are most like me... not based on lack of enthusiasm or an overabundance of it. There's a million reasons to want to reject software, good and bad, that have little to do with marketing or other schemes.


As for complete and totally horrendous conjecture, it would not surprise me if the timing of the release had to coincide closer to the iPad's release for the timing of the sale to work and for marketing to get the word out (and maybe for upgraders to be paying the most attention, idak...). We don't know any details of that, however. I'm not so certain that Serif would've wanted to have released V2 in its current condition with regard to at least preexisting bugs given they had to have known the reaction it'll bring. It's possible they did not expect it for the launch to go as imperfect as it did. Imperfect, but not this imperfect. Like most software. There's only so much of a discount that can purchase away software woes...

[Bman70]

Wow a non-locked thread regarding the (lack of) upgrade pricing! I just read (some of) the huge moderator War and Peace novel, and just wanted to remark on how insane this sounds:

Quote

"

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." 

Lol what? Sorry but this is just gaslighting, and I don't even want V2. They wanted to be so sure that V1 users got a discount, that they didn't give a discount to V1 users, but just the same price as everyone? OK they're putting together a "special package" now after getting a dose of reality from customers. Presumably this requires verifying a V1 license - so why not just give them a discount code for the store, applicable to V2, upon verification? (The Tolstoy mod might have covered this but I didn't read the whole novel.)  

I've personally been back with Photoshop now for a year, over the editable rubylith mask issue. But this makes me glad I got out when I did. 

p.s. Affinity supporter novelists need not write a new novel in response, I'm just commenting how strange the whole fiasco seems. Great that you like to "see other people's viewpoint." This isn't a dating situation though, it's buying software. 

[debraspicher]

15 minutes ago, Bman70 said:

Wow a non-locked thread regarding the (lack of) upgrade pricing! I just read (some of) the huge moderator War and Peace novel, and just wanted to remark on how insane this sounds:

Lol what? Sorry but this is just gaslighting, and I don't even want V2. They wanted to be so sure that V1 users got a discount, that they didn't give a discount to V1 users, but just the same price as everyone? OK they're putting together a "special package" now after getting a dose of reality from customers. Presumably this requires verifying a V1 license - so why not just give them a discount code for the store, applicable to V2, upon verification? (The Tolstoy mod might have covered this but I didn't read the whole novel.)  

I've personally been back with Photoshop now for a year, over the editable rubylith mask issue. But this makes me glad I got out when I did. 

p.s. Affinity supporter novelists need not write a new novel in response, I'm just commenting how strange the whole fiasco seems. Great that you like to "see other people's viewpoint." This isn't a dating situation though, it's buying software. 

What was the point of that last bit? Idgi. It's a discussion board. If you don't want a response, don't post. If it was a personal dig at me, I don't even know you.

As to what you said, I don't get it either how they can offer content packs without an acct. Wouldn't an acct enable them to offer an upgrade price?

[Bman70]

7 minutes ago, debraspicher said:

What was the point of that last bit? Idgi. It's a discussion board. If you don't want a response, don't post. If it was a personal dig at me, I don't even know you.

As to what you said, I don't get it either how they can offer content packs without an acct. Wouldn't an acct enable them to offer an upgrade price?

haha no it wasn't a dig at you, I wasn't even looking at usernames just scanning over posts and surprised how many people were white-knighting

[debraspicher]

8 minutes ago, Bman70 said:

haha no it wasn't a dig at you, I wasn't even looking at usernames just scanning over posts and surprised how many people were white-knighting

I'm sorry, what is white knighting in this case? I searched it and got "protecting females", being a "c***", selling out "their gender" for "brownie points", "pathetic beta male", etc. Is this some kind of Reddit lingo? Legitimately don't see how this fits in with other people's behavior.

[ChopperNova]

2 hours ago, Bman70 said:

... I wasn't even looking at usernames just scanning over posts and surprised how many people were white-knighting

It's as if people have Software Stockholm Syndrome, and act like Serif is some kind of a make-a-wish charity for kittens, rather than a for-profit company.

I was a huge fan two weeks ago, but the way Serif has responded at every turn, the non-responsive-middle-management-prick-speak, the hype, their staggering incompetence with respect to simple technical issues, the very thin list of improvements in V2 (with execrable icons), and the endless excuse making makes me feel I got played.

They're way worse than Adobe at this size on all counts, and their only real talent seem to be in undeserved self-congratulation that would shame a rapper. I've lost complete respect for them as a company and as software designers. I will actively discourage people from using their products now.

[Patrick Connor]

@ChopperNova

You know Serif staff are real people and that we're right here reading all this?