New Subscription based KS11 pricing?

TGS808 · January 31, 2022, 05:20:53 AM

Quote from: JuhaL on March 18, 1975, 12:11:09 AMIs it possible use Keyshot 12 without the subsrcption?

No. See Derek's post, seven posts above your own.

DerekCicero · January 31, 2022, 01:15:31 PM

A couple of points I wanted to make. I manage / budget the purchase of software as well as make it, so I understand the issue as an end user and I've been reading and listening to your feedback.

The goal of Subscription is to make a lower barrier to entry for new users, and, in addition, reflect the reality of where KeyShot is going as a tool, such that it's not so "New Feature" focused in major releases, but rather about layering features on top of delivering consistent value. If you are currently on maintenance the cost is going up $100/year for Pro with KS11. If you are a new user, the three year cost is nearly the same from the old model to the new one. I think the pricing we arrived at is fair, but if you're the one writing the check, you may have a different opinion. What will happen in 2023, 2024? I can't say, as those decisions have not been made. I think if you call a sales rep as a long time customer you won't feel like it's "Take or leave it".

I'm not going to try and convince anyone of what "value" is to them. We've tried to make KeyShot as valuable as we can with each release, and in the last few versions we've focused on how to make our tools more versatile for both creation (Physics, 3D paint) and output (GPU, AR, VR, CMF) but if you have other tools that do it better / more cost effectively, fair enough. The reality is a feature we add to KeyShot 11 may be immensely valuable to User A and not applicable for User B. All we can do is try and make a better product for as many users as we can.

Will did a great job of outlining some of the challenges that come with a software company in Year 10 versus Year 2, and while it's true that it's harder to listen to everyone as the user base grows, we do a care a great deal about what users think and try to reflect your input in the product and pricing.

phos4 · February 11, 2022, 05:57:43 AM

Will the new subscription model at least have the possibility to work with KS on different PCs without having to previously deactivate the license? Just because of this annoyance I bought last year a second KS pro package, so I am now totally independent of where I work even though theoretically I can work from 2 PCs with one KS license (not at the same time obviously)...

Will Gibbons · February 11, 2022, 10:33:13 AM

Quote from: phos4 on February 11, 2022, 05:57:43 AM
Will the new subscription model at least have the possibility to work with KS on different PCs without having to previously deactivate the license? Just because of this annoyance I bought last year a second KS pro package, so I am now totally independent of where I work even though theoretically I can work from 2 PCs with one KS license (not at the same time obviously)...

I believe you will be able to activate the subscription license on multiple machines (up to 3 I think?) but can only use it on one machine at a time. I think a benefit of subscription is you will be able to activate/deactivate machines on your own without Luxion support.

phos4 · February 11, 2022, 01:25:12 PM

I'll keep my fingers crossed and I hope the whole process is as smooth as possible, like in Rhino as an example, where you can change between PCs just by clicking once on a popup when the software is started on the new PC you want to work with.

Do you know why Luxion would limit the amount of PCs, that KS can be activated from if you can only work from one PC at a time anyway?

quigley · February 12, 2022, 03:51:37 AM

Flipping that on its head then, if subscription enables you to activate Keyshot on 3 machines is that only on 3 machines, or can you deactivate on one and reactivate on a 4th?

I get the perceived inconvenience about the existing license but activate/deactivate works well. Certainly not enough to switch to a subscription model for that feature alone.

The point about subscription costs meaning it is lower cost for new users, and after 3 years you have cost parity against the previous purchase model is great. But that again means existing customers forced to switch to subscription are effectively subsidising new customer during those 3 years.

I don't think it is acceptable to launch a new sales model without proper consideration for your existing customers. The ones who got you to this stage. To say "talk to a sales rep" is just so shady as to be ridiculous. So what you are saying there is "make us an offer?"

That is not the Luxion I have supported and promoted to MY customers all these years.

mikalind · February 12, 2022, 10:11:59 PM

Hi Luxion

Its been a great ride, but now i am moving on to other software, feels like its the end of the road concidering what is offered as new features in version 11. And the new subscription model only confirms that there will be very little changes in the years to come, better lock up users with subscription if they want to use Keyshot at all. I am keeping version 10 to be used on existing files but i will phase out and use other products.

Mikael

mousek · February 15, 2022, 08:32:16 AM

Bad day for me. Keyshot is a product not service. It was very nice journey! I quit today with upgrade and i ll work my old K9. Have a nice time. Bunkspeeeeeed is dead!

mattjgerard · February 15, 2022, 09:53:28 AM

This sort of thing happens every time a software goes to an SaS model. Every business that makes the transition accounts for the loss of x% of lost customers because of it, they are not planning on losing money on the deal. 2 odd things about this transition about KS though-

1) No monthly payment option- for the smaller fish this is much easier to swallow vs one large outlay per year. Especially when the service is advertised as a "monthly cost" but then requires annual payment. Just odd wording. Pretty much everyone else offers a monthly payment scheme, and usually charges a bit more for that to cover ongoing transaction costs.

2) Pretty sure that 99% of the people that bought the maintenance did is soley for the yearly free upgrade. This is the first time that i know of where the major release upgrade did not fall within that 12 months period, so those of us that did not use the tech support at all feel ripped off. Partly our fault for not realizing what the maintenance agreement was mainly for (support, not upgrade)

Probably the biggest incident of this happening before was Adobe CC, and while they took TONS of flak for doing it, with people threatening everything under the sun, they still did it and they have done well after 4 years of doing it. I feel that their apps have done well, improved enough to make it worth it, and have avoided the whole conundrum of how to decide when to release updates/bugfixes/feature upgrades since they don't have to be tied with a release or an upgrade payment. I do sincerly hope that this sort of thought process allows Luxion to make releases more often, with smaller options and fixes on a more regular basis. There are still so many littel quibbly things that are annoying to deal with, I hope that they can grow the software team to help start checking some of these off.

https://www.willgibbons.com/keyshot-11/?vgo_ee=z71DGR7M2A6IpO7iVsDORc%2BmlmfwsuiZXDT0jIiElG8%3D

That all being said, I agree with Will Gibbons overall view of KS 11, very narrow niche feature set, that while might be laying the foundations for future features, it would be nice if they would focus more on the base. BEtter, faster renders, more robust GPU support, better material behaviors, dealing with the stuff that is CONSTANTLY in the forums being complained about- fireflies, inconsistent render times, keyboard shortcuts not being implemented 100%, interface bugs that are super annoying (talking to you, scene tree grouping and duplicated files being dropped to the bottom of the object list, and most of all, the Make Pattern tool ONLY WORKS ON GROUPS AT THE ROOT LEVEL inconsistantly)

Anyway, we have to continue to use Keyshot, as we now have 5 years of projects in the system. Can only hope they will respond to some of the issues we mention here. Totally understand people ditching KS for other solutions, but it seems that a lot of other renderers are following the subscription model as well. From a business perspective, its the only way to garuntee a certain level of income across the year to support the development.

hve · February 18, 2022, 05:38:57 AM

To be honest I'm disappointed, not by the subscription itself, but the fact it's quite expensive vs other companies and that you only have a one year option not monthly. I hoped to see fairer prices and now it's actually even more expensive then a simple update. I've been looking for other solutions (Maverick Studio is very nice) but yeah we all have tons of KS projects now on our computers so it's not that easy. I'm searching around but am definitely not happy with the price and one year only limit.

Hans

HaroldL · February 20, 2022, 03:53:13 PM

Just the FAQs, in case this has been missed:

https://luxion.freshdesk.com/support/solutions/articles/60000708986-subscription-faqs

hve · February 22, 2022, 12:45:44 PM

Have been testing v11 which is very nice, some features like 3D paint are very handy, still hope to see more flexible subscription options in the future and lower price but v11 works very well cheers, Hans

hoolito · February 24, 2022, 07:07:18 AM

But that's changing a product into a service. What happens if I stop the subscription?
This means you own my right to open the Scenes I made, forever....

There's something completely broken about the subscription-only based software.
What happens if Luxion decides to develop further towards animation? or clothing? or VR? All things I don't use.
Why do I need to be forced to finance a development team doing that when it has no value to me?

TGS808 · February 24, 2022, 10:05:04 AM

Quote from: hoolito on February 24, 2022, 07:07:18 AM
But that's changing a product into a service. What happens if I stop the subscription?
This means you own my right to open the Scenes I made, forever....

There's something completely broken about the subscription-only based software.
What happens if Luxion decides to develop further towards animation? or clothing? or VR? All things I don't use.
Why do I need to be forced to finance a development team doing that when it has no value to me?

Valid points. Problem is, instead of pushing back when Adobe started all this subscription based nonsense nine years ago, people just bent over and took it. Once Adobe proved the model worked (that the suckers would keep paying and paying indefinitely, thus, "renting" the software forever), all other developers realized they could do it too. No going back now.

hve · February 25, 2022, 07:35:14 AM

Quote from: TGS808 on February 24, 2022, 10:05:04 AM
Valid points. Problem is, instead of pushing back when Adobe started all this subscription based nonsense nine years ago, people just bent over and took it. Once Adobe proved the model worked (that the suckers would keep paying and paying indefinitely, thus, "renting" the software forever), all other developers realized they could do it too. No going back now.

I personally find subscriptions rather interesting, for example when I first bought the full Adobe products they were pretty expensive so for so the subscription was interesting for me price wise. For KS I find the subscription expensive, if I look what you get for a one month subscription at Maxon One that's really a great package with tons of products in it, expensive but complete, KS is one product and almost the price of Maxon One where you get quite a lot for the money. So the suscription is rather cool but the price is too expensive.