Xojo license considered a yearly subscription?

I saw a release note for Xojo on macintouch.com, and that the price is $699 PER YEAR.

I informed them that that is a bit misleading as it’s $699 for the license plus one year of upgrades, and that the license is perpetual.

Ric returned with a screenshot showing the $699/year moniker.

I know it states in the FAQs that the license is perpetual and not a subscription, but I don’t think most people even bother with checking the FAQs.

I just find it weird and confusing as any other PER YEAR price I ever came across was for a subscription. Xojo is the first example I ever came across of a non-subscription license that states the prices as being yearly.

Now that seems to be a very unfortunate representation on Xojo’s part.

Or do I see this wrong and Xojo is heading for a subscription model?

in my opinion Xojo IS a subscription model… as you are subscribing to recieve updates on a yearly basis,
and that includes the ability to get bugs fixed if they happen to be released beyond you active “subscription” period.

but it is unfair to characterize that subscription being $699 when there are various levels as we all know

For me a subscription model is one that if you don’t renew, then you can’t use the software anymore, like Office 365.

It is hard for newbies to navigate the Xojo prices and understand that the price they list as $699/yr (for PRO), it really means that you can use the product forever if you are willing to not update the product after 1 year.

for me a real subscription model is the adobe one.
if you stop paying, the app stops working.
with xojo it’s not the case, if you stop paying, you stop receiving updates, but the app you paid for still works.

I just think it is a real turn off for prospective coders …

BTW I can’t access macintoshes.com

I would agree. I avoid subscription model apps like the plague.

macintouch.com … autocorrect strikes again …

Markus I think you did a great service. I don’t see the $699 PER YEAR on that site, and maybe they even added the following to make the pricing more clear:

“All new licenses allow access to Xojo updates for the next 12 months. After that, you can continue to use versions of Xojo that were released before your license expired indefinitely, and your apps continue to be yours to sell or share! To get access to new releases of Xojo for another 12 or 24 months, renew your license. Your Xojo license is set to auto-renew.”

Yes, Ric changed it.

Which brings me to my next gripe: auto-renew should NOT be true by default!

I understand why Xojo set the auto-renew as default and they clearly say so.
It is very easy to change that.

I have other services/products that I need to login and change that feature. As a newbie that was not a deal breaker. At first the deal breaker was to think that I have to pay X/yr to keep the build feature on my current Xojo.

On MacUpdate, they put Xojo Free and Xojo Pro ($699).

There are so many way to distribute softwares that it’s a little hard to explain all in only some words.
All my softs are on MacUpdate and I asked them to add the possibility to put them as DonationWares. They answered me there are only two options, FreeWares or ShareWares (commercial).

I think it would be better to have only one Xojo on macUpdate, but how indicates it (FreeWare, ShareWare) ?

Xojo 2017r13 is priced at $699

In my opinion:
a. typo above,
b. in my opinion some have to check the origin (xojo) before commenting on comments :wink:

Edit:

for OS X 10.9 of later

Wrong, system requirements talked about 10.9.5 and later (and maybe it is an error for 2017r3…)

If you are serious about software development and are subscribed to the yearly macOS updates or Windows 10 feature packs/updates then yes Xojo is a subscription product.

If you are just humming along quite nicely on macOS 10.9 or Windows 7 you can get by with Xojo as a one-off.

We’re somewhere in between a “subscription” and a “one time purchase”.
You could buy, download and use that version for as long as it works - which is the same as most “one time purchases”.
But the initial purchase includes updates for a year - so it has “subscription-like” elements to it.
What stops at the end of that “subscription period” is the updates - NOT the ability to use the versions you already have as part of your purchase & updates.

We’re more like a magazine you subscribe to for a year.
You get the initial issues + the rest of the issues for the period until your subscription stops.
And after that you can still reread those issues as many times as you want - they don’t stop working.
They’re yours to use as long as you want.

This is quite different from most software subscriptions.
With Office 365 if your subscription runs out the software turns into READ ONLY mode.
With Creative Cloud you cant use it any longer.

Thats definitely NOT our model at all.

The Xojo subscription model is “somewhat” similar to MS Visual Studio, when it comes to Visual Studio’s one-time “stand-alone” licenses.

With Visual Studio, when you do a one-time purchase for a particular version, e.g., VS 2010, you would get free update “patches” for that version until they stop making updates (typically when the next version is released, a year or two later). But I’ve found those updates were pretty infrequent in the past.

Visual Studio’s stand-alone licenses don’t permit a full version upgrade, without of course purchasing a new license (or sometimes a discounted upgrade license, which required the media of the original version to activate).

But at least with those “stand-alone” licenses you can continue to use that originally purchased version basically forever, for building & compiling existing and new projects. Which is quite similar to how a Xojo license appears to work now.

Visual Studio also has an annual MSDN subscription model too, of course. Which gives you access to the latest versions and updates continously, until you opt-out. But Microsoft changed the MSDN subscription model a couple of years ago, where now if you let your subscription expire and you’re using, say VS 2017 Professional, as soon as the subscription expires, the Professional version reverts immediately to their free “community” edition. Which is very unlike their “stand-alone” licenses.

I’ve been an MSDN Pro subscriber for many years. The annual MSDN costs are much more than the yearly Xojo Pro license. And now the MSDN model has changed to the point that it is now less attractive for an individual or small business.

For what it’s worth, in my experience, in so far as comparing the Visual Studio & Xojo licensing plans, the Xojo one is a better option.

But the MSDN subscription (for lack of a better term), provides access to ALL MICROSOFT products for a single fee (albeit a high one).

The company I used to work for gave a MSDN account to every developer and we downloaded what we needed, as we needed it…

Now that may very well have changed since then… but that was how it “used” to work…
I am still using Office 2011 for Mac that I got from back then… all the Windows stuff left when they laid me off and I had to return that computer… (the Mac was my personal machine)

You are missing the point.

WE know that - but as exemplified by Ric Ford from Macintouch people unfamiliar with Xojo will read it as a yearly subscription.

EVERYONE I know will not touch subscriptions with a barge pole.

Therefore having such a misleading description on your sales page will turn away people curious enough to visit the page.

Not the best way to attract new customers, me thinks.

Didn’t miss that point at all
It’s not easy to convey everything I wrote in 7 characters if all Ric focused on is “$699/yr”
I could see how anyone who only looks at that might indeed think it’s a subscription

I’ve pointed this conversation out to Dana & Geoff

[quote=363992:@Dave S]But the MSDN subscription (for lack of a better term), provides access to ALL MICROSOFT products for a single fee (albeit a high one).

The company I used to work for gave a MSDN account to every developer and we downloaded what we needed, as we needed it…

Now that may very well have changed since then… but that was how it “used” to work…
I am still using Office 2011 for Mac that I got from back then… all the Windows stuff left when they laid me off and I had to return that computer… (the Mac was my personal machine)[/quote]

For sure @Dave S, an MSDN subscription does give you access to more than just Visual Studio.

To also get the latest MS Office software, you must have been on the Enterprise plan, which costs a few times more than the Pro level I’m at. But I still get access to all versions of the Windows OS’ and other Microsoft development tools, including SQL Server.

The catch though (at the Professional level anyway), is that I’m only allowed to use all those Microsoft goodies strictly for development and testing purposes only. Not for production use.

And as soon as I let my annual subscription expire, I’m supposed to uninstall everything (including the OS’), because technically speaking, I’m not licensed anymore.

So yeah, as good as the MSDN package is, it all goes away, or stops working, or goes into read-only mode, as soon as I stop paying my annual fee.

A good example, as Norman pointed out, is the later versions of MS Office, where you have to sign into your online MS account to verify your subscription, to keep Office working.

The later versions of Visual Studio also does this now. If your subscription is no longer current, Visual Studio Professional (or Enterprise) reverts to the community edition.

Granted, the free community version of Visual Studio is “almost” full-featured, which would work fine for a beginners or small projects. But to take a full-stack professional and/or enterprise project and downgrade it to the community version, would be… well, impossible without throwing away a lot of features, functionality or other necessary integrations and development capabilities.

Anyway, from my perspective (coming from the Visual Studio universe), the Xojo plans are pretty straight forward and accommodating for an individual like me.