Will I get enough value when I buy or upgrade DEVONthink? If yes, then I do it.
For me it is a clear yes and I just want to chip in a supporting voice of the new pricing model after reading a lot of arguments which I have trouble understanding:
past price increases or release prices as a guide to future prices when we are coming out of a global pandemic which has increased prices dramatically in the last few years across the board and a global economic situation which is looking a bit ‘wobbly’
cheaper prices because it is “only for private use” as if this is less important to other use cases
cheaper prices because my money is tight
I try to imagine using the reasoning above when I buy my next car and tell the dealer, I am retired, I am using the car only for private and 20 years ago the car was cheaper.
Keep up the good work and lets hope there are many more years to come.
I think we’re going in circles here. Potentially wasting valuable dev time. The complainers will not be satisfied by anything. I think they just have to decide where they want to take this for themselves. The rest of us will either upgrade annually (if not for killer features, then for supporting the continued development and maintenance), or whenever a feature motivates an upgrade.
With no 64→128 bit transition in sight, and Apple Silicon hanging around for years to come, it is very reasonable to assume that an existing version will be good for several years. My arbitrary (but historically informed) guess is 4 years or more. On a 4 year cycle, the upgrade costs are negligible relative to the general costs of life. Deal with it or start a competing open-source project.
It’s not that different from subscribing to a periodical or something like that — magazine editors don’t raid my house and confiscate back issues when I lapse.
Nice try, but they don’t have to. Newspapers and magazines auto-expire, that’s the beauty of that biz. Collecting back issues is a niche.
Finally, I see all this from a different perspective: There is some software that I like to see maintained until I keel over. DT and Mathematica come to mind. I want the devs to make it work financially, so that they can keep developing, and can also feel good about developing. This might require on-boarding new people as the original devs grow older. That can increase costs. What are you going to do when Eric et al. someday announce “that’s it, folks”? Going with a more viable financial model does not protect us from this happening, but it makes it less likely. Remember Circus Ponies?
Certainly less auto-expiring and less of a niche than old software.
That’s also not really relevant to my point, which is that this model is a subscription, and claiming it isn’t is marketing doublespeak. I am on board with, if (I think understandably) not enthusiastic about, the price hike and switch to a subscription model. I understand the business realities that lead companies to this decision. What worries me is the willingness to hide behind obscuring language.
And yes, I remember Circus Ponies. And WordStar… Ecco Pro… Delicious Library… Microsoft PhotoDraw…. Many other pieces of beloved software that have kicked the bucket over the years. I’ve kept a few running well past their prime one way or another.
We’ll see how it goes with DEVONthink, but there are plenty of opportunities for problems going too long between upgrades. OmniOutliner 5 can’t open OmniOutliner 2 documents, for example, and a lot of packages that update annually can migrate from the prior year or two but not 3-4 years back. How stable will the DEVONthink database format be on the new rolling release model? How certain are we that if one waited 4 or 6 years between upgrades, they could upgrade cleanly and import their databases? I don’t think this is answerable today, but if one takes the approach of waiting many years between updates to approximate current pricing, I think it becomes an edge case that is less likely to be a well-tested scenario.
This is called “borrowing trouble”. I find it curious: You say you’ve used our products for 19 years. We have been in business ~23 years with a very solid track record and reputation. So why are these even questions for you? You’re free to opine and express what you wish, but it’s still odd to me when there’s no precedent.
I’ve been through many painful migrations, a few personally and many supporting others professionally, involving having not kept up with software updates or brought all the data along the way. You’re moving to rolling releases. It’s wariness born of experience.
To be clear, this is something I brought up only in response to the idea of going a very long time (4-6 years) between updates to match old pricing. I think the more sensible approach is to acknowledge that it’s a price hike and either accept that, or not.
sorry for my late reply…
I don’t quite understand the meaning of your question (I’m not an English speaker).
So I’ll just repeat what I said in my 1st post:
“I paid around €40 in 2019 for DVT 3 (I was a user of DVT 2).
A little over 5 years later, I’m offered a DVT 4 upgrade for 55€ (including tax) if I’ve seen correctly, but renewable annually.
It would therefore cost me 6 times more than before for the same 5-year period.”
and again I don’t understand why such a SHARP increase.
I understand the change of model, but not the height of the increase.
and to date, I haven’t received a clear answer on the subject.
Maybe it’s justified, but I’d like to understand…
With all due respect, there are 328 replies above your post that gives a lot of the background, including much from DEVONtechnologies staff.
My understanding is DEVONthink3 which you now have will continue to work without upgrade. Eventually changes in Apple operating systems may stop it working, but that time is will into the future.
Nothing, far as I can tell, compels you to change now.
Agreed, it’s a “SHARP” annual expense,
but it’s optional - we don’t have to upgrade app versions
I will be reviewing the update notes to see if the expense is justified for my use
Same here. I have used DEVONthink daily for the past 8 years – it is one of the most important tools for my business. The new model gives me an easy way to both upgrade when/if I need, as well as support the health of this very valued company.
I will admit that I have not read the hundreds of posts above, though I have read many and searched to see if this (in the 3rd paragraph) was already mentioned. If it was previously mentioned, then consider this my +1 support for something like this.
I know this isn’t a strict subscription, and I have no issues with the new license model, as DTP is an app I find highly useful. I appreciate all the time and effort the team puts into it, not only in the development but also here on the forum. I’ve often wondered if the company is generating enough revenue to support ongoing development, as DTP is an app that I don’t want to see fade away due to a lack of company revenue.
Instead of facing a one-time cost of $99 each year, I would prefer to make smaller monthly payments. This would be easier on the budget than a one-time purchase. I’m not sure if this was discussed earlier, but I would be in favor.
This issue could be solved by creating a savings account strictly for recurring expenses. This way you could transfer the monthly amounts to the savings account – out of sight out of mind – and can withdraw the money purposefully when needed (I follow this practice for my insurance expenses and other)
But how could that work? For, say, 1/12 you get one month of updates? And then you wait with the next payment until you deem the number of cumulated updates worthy of paying another 1/12? While somebody else who chose annual payments pays the full year price for the same amount of updates?
This model works for actual subscriptions, where you have to pay for the software to work. Subscriptions often have a monthly (or weekly) tier and an annual tier with a discount. With DEVONthink’s pricing model the monthly payment would be the cheaper one, that doesn’t make sense.
And while it is less likely that Devontech would overcomplicate their licensing model it would be easier to adopt a strategy as proposed to cope with the – much understandable – general issue you mentioned
Devon would be paying roughly an extra $5/year in fees to their processor if they charged you monthly instead of annually (regardless of license type.) Plus, there’d be the human time to manage the extra pricing scheme and hand-wring over whether to pass the cost on to you.
I can think of several ways how this could easily work. It’s only a matter of implementation. And I’m not saying they “have to” do this. I’m simply voicing an opinion.