Renewal Price same as New Price?

I was going to take advantage of the Programmers Day special. I have an “expired” (silly term in my book) Desktop license and a Console license, but I really only need the Desktop. I noticed that to renew Desktop it’s $299, and a new license is also $299. Is this intended by Xojo?

Also, I was think of only paying ~$200 for two single desktop licenses (Mac and Win), and I saw that I’d be losing “Technical Support”. I’ve NEVER used REAL/Xojo technical support in my 15 years of using REAL/Xojo, it always cost money and the mailing list/forum always did the job in spades. What am I missing if I don’t get the tech support?

With single platform you also lose the access to the DB server plugins an only get SQLite

I don’t think I have ever used tech support, even when I had RS Enterprise. That said i don;t make my living coding.

I do wonder how much use Xojo tech support gets and what type of issues/questions they tend to deal with. It does seem most things are handled pretty well here.

  • karen

Yeah, i don’t use the DB stuff. I have used Console but I can always do that when I need it, or just compile those with an earlier Xojo version.

Yes. They announced that earlier this year. Renewal prices didn’t change, they dropped the new price down to match.

No.

For more info see https://forum.xojo.com/18007-renewing-it-is-the-double-price-what-do-i-do-wrong

Gist is: renewing makes little sense. Buy a new license when you think the new features are worth it (like the upcoming transition to 64bit and LLVM). Pass the old one on to your nephew or use it as additional installations if you have more than two computers.

General advice: Don’t buy into hype or expectations. initial releases with big changes tend to be buggy and it needs a while for bugs to shake out (comparable to big system releases).

True, they did change the bundle a little and they did add a new product. But the component renewal prices did not change, whereas the component new prices dropped. The composite price for a renewal may have increased on a case by case basis, but in some cases it actually went down. But in every case, the new price is lower.

In my life with REALbasic 1b24 'till 2015r1, I use that only once to get something like “I do not know” by the engineer.

I found the answer some days after I get that answer.

Also, as Markus already stated*, I get a paid upgrade to get Cocoa when it was announced (in 2004 ?) and like everyone here, I had to wait 'till… ages before Cocoa comes to life in (Xojo ?).

The last one was with Xojo: I will not talk again about how many times I had to search to understand how to set the license into Xojo, and all other troubles I had with it, but if I one day will be able to (have money to) be current, I will do it only after several releases that will holds 64Bits, LLVM etc. *

Talking about the price: the last time I checked it, it was 4 times the one I paid for Xojo (the first release) with 1/3 of the features (same kind of license). And becasue I do not get revenue from my work with Xojo…

  • Excellent advice Markus.

Let me say first that Xojo has the right to charge whatever they like.

Sorry Tim, this is simply not the case.

It is difficult to compare like for like as Xojo changed their licensing a lot (including number of allowed installations), and I don’t have time to look up all the old prices, but the effective discontinuation of the 50% off renewal pricing and making Console a $149 add-on doubled or even tripled the renewal price for many non-Pro users.

And yes, I know that they have put the database back into the Desktop version after it too was made a separate add-on, but the main reason for that was that users flocked to much cheaper database plugins.

It is also not cheaper for Pro users.

You say it is “cheaper in every new case” when you should say “while some prices for new licenses got cheaper, the total cost of ownership went up”.

One thing I recently discovered, that’s not mentioned here, is that a 2 year renewal does get you a 10% discount…

Good points - I think a lot like Markus said. I actually work on REAL2011r3 and hardly even touch Xojo-proper (yet). The reason is because I still want to simply support EVERYONE with one binary - as low as 10.4 PPC and as high as OSX 10.10 Yosemite.

I did get the Xojo renewal when it first came out so I’ve got some Xojo legs, but I do want to get the new versions because I’m ready to start the process of offering multiple binaries - one for 10.7+ compiled in Cocoa and the latest Xojo, another for 10.6 compiled in Cocoa and the Xojo 2014r2 (?), and a legacy UB for 10.4/10.5 and PPC users.

I didn’t end up taking advantage of the Programmers Day sale, as I’m worried that when 64-bit comes out, there will be yet other tier change. It’s only a $20 difference (I’d downgrade from DEKSTOP to two SINGLE DESKTOP licenses, saves $100, though I’m almost tempted to ditch the Windows license, but I like at least running that natively). I would want my 10.7+ versions to be a 64-bit app.

My apps run GREAT in Carbon even on the 10.10 level. The only disadvantage I notice is some common no-big-deal graphical anomalies.

So I’ll “buy Xojo again” - since renewing seems redundant if it’s the same price as buying it again - when 64-bit comes out, probably in 2027. (!) (Did I just say that???)

(Actually, I know that renewing at least lets you keep your original serial number, but that is barely meaningful.)

As Markus said, buy it only when you need it. Commercial purchases aren’t charity donations. I already paid for my REAL/Xojo, why should I pay for it again? Only when buying it again gives me additional things that I truly need, that are worth the cost.

In the meantime, I can start getting used to XCode 7 and get off XCode 3 (!!!) =)

Didn’t they just have a programmers day sale that had 20% off new licenses?

Yup, and if my memory serves me correctly… it’s still going on until the 15th (which is tomorrow).

EDIT: I was wrong, it was the 13th. :frowning: