Questions on Canva acquiring Affinity

[JCP]

7 minutes ago, pixelstuff said:

This make sense until the software meets the needs for 99% of your users. Then what? I think the problem that Adobe had was their software had matured to the point that it contained all the features that a majority of customers wanted, so only a small percentage were paying for new updates every release. Without being able to attract customs with new features Adobe's other options were to scale down their workforce or try to force more customers to pay more.

It is a little bit anti-customer to make people pay for upgrades they don't need (also the cable TV model), but Adobe could only do that because they were the industry standard and had a virtual monopoly.

 

This is happening with a lot of software. The tools have matured and there is little they can add that existing customers will pay to upgrade. It gets more difficult for them to come up something new so lets just switch to subs to try and continue to justify their existence. Imagine if you bought a Dewalt drill and if you had to activate it annually for it to work. No one would accept that, but for software we do, or have little choice other than to try an go elsewhere. Not always an option when that software has a near monopoly on the market.

[mimolette]

This ruined my day, the Affinity suite had been a breath of fresh air in a depressing landscape. I've been a happy customer from the beginning, mainly because of Affinity not being subscription.. I have been recommending Affinity all around me, and now I feel like I've just wasted my time and credibility.. I really deeply hate most forms of SAAS and its customer hostile practices. MBAs ruining everything as usual..

If Serif needed money they could have made some more paying "large number" updates, I'm sure most of us would have been OK with that... This is just .. depressing.. 

Off I go to look for alternatives, no way I will subscribe to any software.

edit: I see the "limited radius bug" is still there in spite of bug reports since V2.0, so it seems Serif stopped caring a good while ago.

Edited March 28 by mimolette

[CM0]

12 minutes ago, mimolette said:

If Serif needed money they could have made some more paying "large number" updates, I'm sure most of us would have been OK with that... This is just .. depressing.. 

Off I go to look for alternatives, no way I will subscribe to any software.

No, it was catch-22. A lot of people here complained that v2 wasn't enough to justify paying for the upgrade. The problem is that you need to make the updates big enough to attract that extra revenue. However, you need more resources to make those bigger updates and you can't get those resources without the bigger updates. The team was already over extended for what everyone expected out of Affinity.

Also, they stated they are committed to no subscriptions. Canva is competing with Adobe for the enterprise professional designers. This is good news for the future of Affinity.

[mimolette]

On 3/26/2024 at 6:24 PM, JCP said:

I hope this doesn't end up like Bluebeam Revu did. It was a perpetual license with optional "maintenance" for annual upgrades. Then it got purchased by Nemetschek. The next version (21) was subscription only and a massive price increase.

Same for Cinema4D, I had been a paying customer for the same model as you describe, and really felt stabbed in the back. This will be the same, guaranteed, Serif was the exception.. for a wile..

[mimolette]

14 minutes ago, CM0 said:

No, it was catch-22. A lot of people here complained that v2 wasn't enough to justify paying for the upgrade. The problem is that you need to make the updates big enough to attract that extra revenue. However, you need more resources to make those bigger updates and you can't get those resources without the bigger updates. The team was already over extended for what everyone expected out of Affinity.

If people don't understand a company needs more income that 50-150€ per customer every what, 5 years? to compete with Adobe sucking in 50€ every month, well, I won't say what I think of them, but the result is that the nice thing is broken.

However from what I have seen of comments around other places nobody complained about the price, in the contrary they were ready to give more to support the cause. At most some hobbyist might want it for dirt cheap, but they barely count, Affinity was a proper tool.

I'm also angry at all the people too lazy to look around that enables Adobe. Many of them don't really absolutely need Adobe format.

14 minutes ago, CM0 said:

Also, they stated they are committed to no subscriptions. Canva is competing with Adobe for the enterprise professional designers. This is good news for the future of Affinity.

"For now".. just like they where committed to not being sold less than two years ago.. I've seen this happen too many times and it never went well..

I would prefer you where right though, of course..

[CM0]

5 minutes ago, mimolette said:

in the contrary they were ready to give more to support the cause.

Yes, I was one of those, but realistically what Affinity needed was going to be substantially more. I've always said Affinity is effectively free. 5+ years for a one time payment that you could probably get less than $100 on sale. Yes that is almost free compared to everything else. Just wasn't sustainable for long term growth.

[ljredux]

12 hours ago, CM0 said:

Also, they stated they are committed to no subscriptions. 

No they did not.  They committed to always offering a perpetual licence, which is a different committment entirely. They even envisaged the possibility of subscriptions in their damage limitation email:

Quote

"If we do offer a subscription, it will only ever be as an option alongside the perpetual model, for those who prefer it."

Which ultimately means, the perpetual and subscription versions of the product will be competing with each other.  The most likely outcome is that the subscription version will evolve faster than the perpetual version, and the lack of features in the perpetual version will be used as bait to encourage users to subscribe.

[CM0]

35 minutes ago, ljredux said:

No they did not.  They committed to always offering a perpetual licence, which is a different committment entirely. They even envisaged the possibility of subscriptions in their damage limitation email:

Which ultimately means, the perpetual and subscription versions of the product will be competing with each other.  The most likely outcome is that the subscription version will evolve faster than the perpetual version, and the lack of features in the perpetual version will be used as bait to encourage users to subscribe.

Perpetual license means you don't have to subscribe. CorelDraw offers both perpetual and subscription for the same product so there is precedent. Nonetheless, it is irrational to not think the business model will need some form of amendment. We are where we are because the current model failed to deliver what users expect from the product and the features Affinity ultimately hoped to deliver.

[phrank]

I have a deja vú. What happened again to Freehand after acquired from Adobe and iView Media from Phase One. Not to mention the big shit storm Capture One received after moved more or less to subscription model… For a reason I have switched from Adobe…

[RobWu]

I feel the same reservations like many of you.

Any time somebody in the company says ' the future will be OK', I cannot help myself going back to the day Autodesk bought my favorite 3D application from Avid.
Despite all the assurances from the AD/Softimage staff (The future is bright), Softimage XSI was killed shortly after.
Most users I knew moved over to Houdini and/or Blender, not Maya and/or 3DStudio Max. So that plan kinda failed there.

But let's see what happens with all the promises.
There will be an influx of new users when they are introduced to the Affinity apps via Canva. That's a good thing for us users.
But regarding licensing..... Adobe killed my (multiple) perfectly bought and paid for Creative Suite bundles a while ago, 'just because'.
So I'm very curious what's going to happen here.

[mopperle]

2 hours ago, RobWu said:

(The future is bright)

so you got blinded by the light 😄

[chirpy]

6 hours ago, RobWu said:

There will be an influx of new users when they are introduced to the Affinity apps via Canva. That's a good thing for us users.

I disagree. Canva is "easy" for people who know nothing about prepress, slicing and exporting for web formats, cmyk vs rgb, using a pen tool, masking, etc. Those people would need to learn all that stuff to use Affinity apps, as they are not easy to use. People aren't going to spend the time needed to do that. If they are included as part of the Canva subscription, they may download them just to see what they're about, but will most likely never open them again after that. The whole point of Canva is that it can do things relatively quickly even if someone doesn't really know what they're doing.

[OriolFM]

On 3/28/2024 at 1:20 PM, ljredux said:

No they did not.  They committed to always offering a perpetual licence, which is a different committment entirely. They even envisaged the possibility of subscriptions in their damage limitation email:

Which ultimately means, the perpetual and subscription versions of the product will be competing with each other.  The most likely outcome is that the subscription version will evolve faster than the perpetual version, and the lack of features in the perpetual version will be used as bait to encourage users to subscribe.

That's more or less what Clip Studio Paint does. Subscription version is being constantly updated and patched. One-time payment gets patched but not updated until the next major version (maybe 1-2 updates per year, at most). The new features from the subscription version are added little by little, and some may not arrive until the next big update (that requires another purchase).

That said, they're gracious enough to have their products on sale about 2-3 times per year (that you can buy at a very reasonable price), and they offer discount for updates/upgrades all year round on top of that.

As a hobbyist user of CSP, I think that is not entirely unreasonable: it's cheaper than purchasing a videogame, and gives me many more hours of fun than any videogame, so it's a no brainer.

More or less goes for Affinity: I mostly use their products for my personal projects, and the current pricing model works for me. If they help me realise my ideas at a reasonable cost, I'll keep using them. The moment it becomes too expensive, I'm out.

[OriolFM]

On 3/29/2024 at 4:03 AM, phrank said:

I have a deja vú. What happened again to Freehand after acquired from Adobe and iView Media from Phase One. Not to mention the big shit storm Capture One received after moved more or less to subscription model… For a reason I have switched from Adobe…

Well, Adobe are the Borg of design software. They assimilate, nothing is left afterwards.

Anyone could have seen that coming. Same thing happened when they absorbed Macromedia.

[OriolFM]

On 4/2/2024 at 10:44 PM, chirpy said:

I disagree. Canva is "easy" for people who know nothing about prepress, slicing and exporting for web formats, cmyk vs rgb, using a pen tool, masking, etc. Those people would need to learn all that stuff to use Affinity apps, as they are not easy to use. People aren't going to spend the time needed to do that. If they are included as part of the Canva subscription, they may download them just to see what they're about, but will most likely never open them again after that. The whole point of Canva is that it can do things relatively quickly even if someone doesn't really know what they're doing.

Well, I am a hobbyist user, and I don't know much about printing save for cropping margins, RGB/CMYK modes and a few other things that carry from my illustration background, but I found Affinity Publisher/designer easy to use and with an intuitive UI, except for when it came to adding cross-references/links on Publisher, not long ago we still had to use wonky workarounds for something that should have been easy -for the user- to do.

I also remember checking Canva back in the day, I also looked for an app that had an Android version. Canva did, but from what I saw, it was widely inadequate for my purposes, and didn't really offer enough control save for choosing a template and filling it. It may have evolved, but I didn't find much of a documentation about its features to get me interested in their product. Affinity did (having a forum with plenty of nice, helpful people also helps... when in doubt, I always choose the software with the best community).

[chirpy]

14 hours ago, OriolFM said:

Well, I am a hobbyist user, and I don't know much about printing save for cropping margins, RGB/CMYK modes and a few other things that carry from my illustration background, but I found Affinity Publisher/designer easy to use and with an intuitive UI, except for when it came to adding cross-references/links on Publisher, not long ago we still had to use wonky workarounds for something that should have been easy -for the user- to do.

I also remember checking Canva back in the day, I also looked for an app that had an Android version. Canva did, but from what I saw, it was widely inadequate for my purposes, and didn't really offer enough control save for choosing a template and filling it. It may have evolved, but I didn't find much of a documentation about its features to get me interested in their product. Affinity did (having a forum with plenty of nice, helpful people also helps... when in doubt, I always choose the software with the best community).

I think you might be in the minority of Canva users, though. Most people don't want to even do research about the software they use. They tend to go for things that are "hyped up" that they've heard about.

[OriolFM]

11 hours ago, chirpy said:

I think you might be in the minority of Canva users, though. Most people don't want to even do research about the software they use. They tend to go for things that are "hyped up" that they've heard about.

That might be the case. I started drawing, and seriously trying to improve for about 3 decades. First I learnt Photoshop, then Gimp, I tried Krita, Autodesk Sketchbook, and other programs. I settled for Clip Studio Paint.

For desktop publishing, I tried Page maker back in the day, I tried Quark Xpress for a very brief period (when I was a student), then mostly did any small things I needed with Microsoft Publisher, until it wasn't enough anymore. I tried Scribus, but the UI was hellish. I started looking for alternatives, I checked Canva first, but it did look pretty basic and didn't seem to offer much control about the output, save for some pre-made templates I could fill up. I found Affinity Publisher, and I went for it.

For vector, I tried Coreldraw, Illustrator, then Inkscape, then I didn't do anything for years. When I needed it again, since I was already using Affinity Publisher, I tried Designer, and that's where I am.

Each of these steps took time to learn. I do that for everything: For 3D, I started with Real3D and Lightwave in Amiga, went to PC and 3d Studio, 3D Studio Max, and finally Blender. For programming, I've had to learn multiple programming and scripting languages. I may not be the best at any of them, but I can do what I need, mostly.

Sadly, there's a lot of people out there (the ones that cheer in excitement for any of the AI generative stuff that seems to be all the rage despite their blatant disregard for copyright) that consider spending time and effort in learning a new skill like something undesirable, and they feel accomplished if they manage to write a 1-paragraph prompt that produces a half-arsed result, and they write strong statements considering themselves "artists" in social media and telling everyone how much "effort" took for them to get that result.

Probably, the target for pre-made templates, no-fuss desktop publisher programs is this type of user, that does not have or want to invest any time and/or effort to get something done, and are OK with a stereotypical and/or mediocre result as long as it approximates what they were looking for.

For the guys who know EXACTLY what they want, that is never enough, because a generic app will never allow enough customization, and therefore, it will never produce the right result.

[tperhai]

Well the Serif/Canva announcement was like hitting a brick wall in a vehicle going at race car speed. A complete wreck.

I'm a user from the states (Florida). I bought a couple of Serif Affinity products in 2016 from the Apple Store: Designer and Publisher. Back then, neither seemed a reason for me to use them much. I began with Corel Draw back in 1992 (v.4). I started using Adobe Illustrator in 2017 in the All Apps Creative Cloud subscription. Both Corel and Adobe have rather hefty pricing. I wasn't happy with Corel's plans; Adobe CC was affordable at first but I canceled after the New Year. The suite increased over $25/month over the seven years I paid monthly. I wanted to get away from subscribing every month. When Affinity v2 came out, I thought Great, I will move to these apps and I won't need to pay monthly anymore. Getting that Serif/Canva email last week was quite a shock. I had barely started using Affinity as my primary creation suite. I'd gotten enthusiastic about Serif the last couple years and I liked the products despite some software bugs. How do I feel with the Canva sale? I feel betrayed. I've watched Serif grow to what was becoming a big player in creative software and the one that didn't have a subscription plan. I think this sale has ruined any reputation and goodwill Serif so carefully built.

Almost all the creative software I began using in the infancy of computer graphics technology are now taken over by large corporations that suck the soul out of everything they acquire. That includes all the arts (music, video, drawing, etc.). Some present companies are better than others in how they relate to users -- a few. But they are all too big to have personal relations with the users of the products they own. Competition gets stifled with too few business players. The announcement was an insulting slap in the-face-message. But I'm tired. These business acquisition people have done this much too often. I don't know if I'll stay with Affinity. But where would I go? I hope I'm wrong about all this because there's not many budget friendly options out there. -- Tom

[Alfred]

1 hour ago, tperhai said:

Well the Serif/Canva announcement was like hitting a brick wall in a vehicle going at race car speed. A complete wreck.

Welcome to the Serif Affinity Forums, @tperhai.

1 hour ago, tperhai said:

I bought a couple of Serif Affinity products in 2016 from the Apple Store: Designer and Publisher.

I think you must mean Designer and Photo! Affinity Publisher was launched in 2019.

1 hour ago, tperhai said:

I feel betrayed. I've watched Serif grow to what was becoming a big player in creative software and the one that didn't have a subscription plan. I think this sale has ruined any reputation and goodwill Serif so carefully built.

Serif have pledged their commitment to the perpetual licence model. I don’t think it would be fair to assume that they’re going to renege on that commitment.

[tperhai]

Thank you for the welcome. Yes, I bought Designer and Photo on the Apple Store. Later I bought Publisher direct from Serif. These were Mac apps, as the Apple Store reveals. I bought the three together for Windows from Serif online. I currently have a Universal license.

On 4/12/2024 at 3:11 AM, Alfred said:

Welcome to the Serif Affinity Forums, @tperhai.

I think you must mean Designer and Photo! Affinity Publisher was launched in 2019.

Serif have pledged their commitment to the perpetual licence model. I don’t think it would be fair to assume that they’re going to renege on that commitment.

I would like to have faith in that promise, but the history of acquisitions of most of the software over the past 35 years hasn't had the best track record of autonomy. I'll try to avoid cynicism. The announcement strategy wasn't set up well. Perhaps Serif should've had a "roundtable" thread, to let us know what was likely to happen. Up to the day of the reveal, we were rather proud that Serif seemed committed to staying independent. It's difficult to do that. Wikipedia is a rare example and I wish I could contribute more to help run the site. I was hopeful with Serif; maybe it wasn't realistic to hold on to that dream. I think the first few posts on Twitter at the first news in late March explain the degree of shock that ran though this community. When I said that the company lost most (if not all) of our trust and loyalty, I'm not kidding. It's going to take a lot of damage control to show that Affinity will stay Affinity and not end up going the way most acquired software does.

I appreciate the pledges. Please show that in the months ahead and I guarantee I and others will remain loyal.

Thanks -- Tom

[CM0]

9 minutes ago, tperhai said:

degree of shock that ran though this community. When I said that the company lost most (if not all) of our trust and loyalty, I'm not kidding.

That is mostly the view on these forums. Outside of here it is not seen so much as a bad thing. It is actually seen as hopeful for a better future.

[Catshill]

2 hours ago, tperhai said:

Perhaps Serif should've had a "roundtable" thread, to let us know what was likely to happen.

I’ve never, ever come across that in world of corporate takeovers.

[CM0]

8 hours ago, Catshill said:

I’ve never, ever come across that in world of corporate takeovers.

Not only that, even the employees generally don't know until after the fact.

[chirpy]

20 hours ago, CM0 said:

That is mostly the view on these forums. Outside of here it is not seen so much as a bad thing. It is actually seen as hopeful for a better future.

I guess you haven’t been on Twitter? Or Reddit? Or YouTube? After the announcement. 

[tperhai]

17 hours ago, Catshill said:

I’ve never, ever come across that in world of corporate takeovers.

9 hours ago, CM0 said:

Not only that, even the employees generally don't know until after the fact.

I'm not naive. I was looking for the right words and that was the best I could think of. That was the weakest part of my comment.

I'm waiting to see what happens in the next few months.