Canva

[IthinkthereforeIam]

All this about the future of Affinity is just a conjuncture. The only reality is that Serif will soon no longer exist... even if I had left the adventure long before v2, it's pretty depressing. They had innovated with certain features in their apps and that was associated/linked to them... now it's another company.

I don't know Canva (and I don't give a damn), but if this company's objective is to compete with Adobe and attract some of its customers, it makes sense to buy such a software suite if there's an objective to complete/enrich the apps. Perhaps the real competition will come now, with price offers adjusted for designers/creatives... or not... Time will tell.

 

[IthinkthereforeIam]

2 minutes ago, BofG said:

It's objective is to go to an IPO with the highest possible share price and get the best return for the VCs behind it.

For me that's the sad part, Serif was a software house, their objective was to create competitive software*.

* or maybe they were positioning themselves for a buy out all this time and I was hoodwinked.

maybe, but I've always had the impression that they/Serif were proud of what they were building and of their company...

[PaulEC]

45 minutes ago, Skeletor said:

I probably won't be spending any more money on plugins and the like in the near future.

Yes, I agree. I've not only invested in both versions of the Affinity suite, but I've also purchased a fair amount of Affinity specific brushes and other content. I'm not happy about spending any more without cast iron guarantees about the future of Affinity. (Something that Serif, and Ash, can't give, now that Serif is owned by another company!)

[IthinkthereforeIam]

3 minutes ago, PaulEC said:

Yes, I agree. I've not only invested in both versions of the Affinity suite, but I've also purchased a fair amount of Affinity specific brushes and other content. I'm not happy about spending any more without cast iron guarantees about the future of Affinity. (Something that Serif, and Ash, can't give, now that Serif is owned by another company!)

Do they still need you/us as customers anyway 🙃?

[PaulEC]

19 minutes ago, IthinkthereforeIam said:

Do they still need you/us as customers anyway 🙃?

I doubt if they lose me, (or a few of "us") as customers it will make any difference whatsoever! However, it's a marketing truism that it's easier and cheaper to retain old customers than to find new ones! We'll have to wait and see how Affinity develops over the next few months. Only time will tell how many customers stick with them!

FWIW: I have no intention of moving away from Affinity at the moment, I still really like the software, but I have no intention of spending any more on it in the future, until we see how things develop. Will we actually get any worthwhile improvements to v2 before v3 comes along, and, when it does, will there be a perpetual licence option, with a guarantee that there will be no future problems with activation?

[Chills]

23 minutes ago, IthinkthereforeIam said:

Do they still need you/us as customers anyway 🙃?

No.   When they push out a subscription model to the millions of Canva users, it will have two effects,

1 They will gain more Canva users than affinity users they loose. So Canva won't care about the original Affinity users.

2 Affinity/Serif will become Canva/amateur programs and move out of the pro/semi-pro market they were gaining ground in to stay firmly in the highly unprofessional market home user market.  

(and 3 Adobe will breathe a sigh of relief. )

It will be interesting to read the history of Serif /Affinity on Wikipedia in a year or two.

 

As suggested by others, I have now adopted the Angry Cat Avatar as a protest about all this.
That is why there are more angry cat avatars in this thread, I recommend others follow suite.

 

[Bartek]

16 minutes ago, IthinkthereforeIam said:

Do they still need you/us as customers anyway 🙃?

IMHO no. We are to small bite for them to care about us. So far Canva targeting a dufferent part of market (only hope for us is that maybe this will change).

[jackamus]

22 hours ago, jackamus said:

Hooray! With the extra resources now available to Serif perhaps the developers will be able to stop the nodes and handles of object disappearing when you move a guide and also develop a perspective drawing feature.

Looks like I opened a can of worms with my CANVA posting!

 

 

[Ginblue]

Three years hence. Affinity Suit = Canva Pro, yours for the bargain price of £60 a month. Going to happen

[GenewalDesign]

On March 26, should be declared as the Day of Appeal to Motive in the United Kingdom, and a plaque should be inaugurated on the server hosting the Affinity forum.

[AffinityMakesMeWonder]

10 hours ago, Matt said:

Look, it's 2024 and software on computers have been in our hands since 1990-ish.  We grew up and went professional with careers buying software to support our business, and personal endeavors.  Since 2010-ish, subscriptions appeared on common software (not highly unique software that was there all along) but everyday software in our faces on computers and then mobile devices.

It's very simple.  Companies want steady streams of money.  No one disputes this.  But subscriptions, lease ware, rent ware, call it what you like is never, NEVER good for customers.  We can't tolerate a constant stream of spending to compensate business's constant need for incoming income.  Instead, offer BOTH!

Keep the buy once and get security/feature updates, or pay a subscription and get updates (whether you think the feature changes are worth it or not).  Let the CUSTOMER choose.  Release major versions (like Affinity has since the three suite appeared) with updates made during that X.x.x lifetime, then offer an upgrade price strategy.  DO NOT LIMIT US to subscription only behavior.

Again, no one is fooling themselves thinking a business doesn't need to make money.  Just consider your ENTIRE CUSTOMER market, not just think that everyone has accepted rent ware as a way of life.  I can guarantee you this is not the case for ME...a proud Affinity customer, and to-be-determined Canva customer!

BUT, Serif Ltd Europe as a company has earn money without subscriptions…

Serif has a profit of 45 million pounds last three years (around 50m$ or 50m€) - where has that money gone?

It is just a small company with less then 100 employees - so, everything is just a thing for Ashley and his friend in the border to cash out maximum with cash and then leave the company…

The best thing for me is that I now have open up my eyes and discovered that there’s a lot of other softwares that can replace my Affinity Suite…

[nezumi]

4 hours ago, Greengestalt said:

IF these guys do mess with us by going subscription we could pitch in and MAKE OUR OWN.

How?

India.

That is officially the most absurd post I have read this week. And its barely Wednesday. But no way I will read something more ludicrous this week or month even

4 hours ago, Greengestalt said:

We'd run the company as a kooky mass Democracy with a few (LIMITED %) major stakeholders having slight edge to tie break, maybe a CEO with 1 person (share % minimum but not too minimum) one vote?  $ for advertising, improvement, what features?

Wait. I know! Lets buy a small island and we make our own country with "kooky mass Democracy" while we are at it. 

How?

India of course.

4 hours ago, Greengestalt said:

I'm FOR AI

Considering your own ideas... yeah that seems to be safer choice. Even with hallucinations.

[Chills]

1 minute ago, Canva eats Affinity said:

He is not entirely wrong, but basically, he is quoting what is the success of Canva. India

Do we want Canva quality software?
 

[animositysomina]

Just now, Chills said:

Do we want Canva quality software?
 

For sure not

[animositysomina]

1 minute ago, BofG said:

I wonder what will become of this forum, if Affinity does carry on in it's current manner.

Will people still be happy to give their time away for free with the knowledge that it's saving a few quid on support staff for the incredibly wealthy owners?

It depends on how they will handle their software in the future, I guess. I for sure won't spend any time with all this if the Affinity Suite becomes Canva-quality-grade. 
 

[Chills]

7 minutes ago, Canva eats Affinity said:

Based on our reactions around the globe and all forums: NOBODY except Canva and Affinity as companies want it.

That's what I thought!!!

 

Adopt the Angry Cat Avatar to protest the Canva take over. 🙂

[jackamus]

29 minutes ago, Canva eats Affinity said:

Check: VectorStyler.
A software superior to Illustrator and Designer and imagine … a company of ONE. One person, a teacher from Finland. Can you imagine?

I have supported him since the beta days. Now there is a promo for 1.5 and one time payment. 

I have had a quick look at VectorStyler and I think you may be right. I will check it out further.

[Banksy]

This is very sad indeed. Hoping that Affinity will come out with some strong reassurances soon. If we are to see subscriptions then I want the prices now so I can make my mind up. I also do not care for Canva in the slightest. I'm prepping my brain for a return to Adobe already, so hurry up with those reassurances please Affinity!

[boorowaboy]

Will Affinity go like Freehand which was bought by Adobe and killed off?

Or will it finish up like other Adobe products which have so many icons and smart keys they don't fit on the screen. To make paying for the product you have to keep adding features until it becomes unworkable.

[boorowaboy]

I just tried to see what Canva does and here is the first reason to stop looking. I couldn't see anything unless I signed in. Why?

I didn't bother.

[bures]

This is a pretty brutal discussion. And the company is silent. This is quite telling.

[Greengestalt]

5 hours ago, pixelstuff said:

 

If you are going to donate money to hire programmers you might as well have them work on existing open source projects (or forks) like GIMP, Inkscape, and Scribus to get a leg up on the development. Otherwise you are probably looking at a 10 year project to get things anywhere close to feature parity with existing Adobe and Affinity apps.

Considering programming courses often tell people how to make graphics programs nowadays and plenty of open sourced code I bet a good base could be hired even from Fiverr.  Also the backlash if kept up and the prospect of a crowdfunded project to literally replace them would keep them on the Affinity track at least.

 

Thanks for at least not a hurtful, trollish remark.

I'm pretty miffed nobody seemed to remember AutoTrace which was a ripoff of VectorTrace from Macromedia Flash.

Mentioning it also highlights they ripped off Adobe and Macromedia (then seperate) to try a hodge podge of stuff others wanted without spending a few thousand for some behemoth "Suite" that punished real users and was pirated openly to double make you feel like a fool for paying for it.

ANYONE been a user since they were Serif not Affinity?

[Insider]

Unfortunately, I have no confidence that Affinity Suite will not move to a subscription model. Why should I? At some point the validation servers for V2 are going to disappear. That's why I'm going to switch my workflow to the subscription-free professional VectorStyler, QuarkXpress and the innovative Pixelmator Pro. Much cheaper than Adobe without a subscription in the long run and much more professional than Affinity apps although a good value aimed to hobbyists until now.

 

[PhatMonkey]

I bet the people at Adobe were saying few months ago "hmm maybe we should consider offering perpetual licenses again as Affinity is taking a large chunk of our customer base" Then after this CANVA announcement Adobe said while laughing their socks off "AH scrap that idea lets keep the subscription model going, Affinity just sunk their own flagship"
🤣

[nezumi]

Is this some sort of mass panic attack?  😆

"Video isn't good enough, everybody lies, tomorrow servers can be off, lets make our own software in India, you're a spineless sheep if you are not looking for replacement NOOOW!"

Bloody hell man...

Repeat after me: goosfraba.

GOOS..FRABAAA.

Good.

13 minutes ago, bures said:

This is a pretty brutal discussion. And the company is silent. This is quite telling.

What do you want them to say? Whatever they say they will be accused of lying immediately. It turned into a madhouse here.

Luckily we have a solution.

India.

🤣