I don't do this often enough but I'd like to show my appreciation to Xara over the years. My first experience with Xara was in 1999 with Webstyle. I used to create in my opinion pretty awesome navbars (for the time anyway). I have upgraded every year from Xara X (released in 2000) up to the latest version which at the moment is called Xara Designer Pro X (v8). Over the years Xara has been my main application for graphics. If I needed to edit a bitmap or create a detailed alpha mask I'd go to Photoshop and save the result as a transparent PNG, it would end up in Xara for my final layout purposes. And that's still how I work today.

The reason I'm starting this thread is because I see a lot of companies moving away from being customer oriented, or at least trying to appear to be customer oriented. Most noticeably at the moment Adobe with their recently announced renting only scheme. Before that they screwed us over by only allowing us to upgrade from one version behind, knowing full well that they would stop giving us perpetual licenses. That is not the type of behavior I want to support.

Quark now also announced that you can only be one version behind to upgrade starting Juli 1, 2013. Autodesk has been screwing over their users for years now with their subscription scheme. Prices just keep going up and up.

With CorelDRAW you can be two version behind and still qualify for an upgrade, that may not sound like a lot, but the new versions are two years apart so you can at the moment upgrade from X4 (which was released in January 2008) to X6 and still get it at a normal upgrade price. That is very reasonable.

Personally I really like Xara's approach to upgrading. When a new version is released there is a grace period where you can get the upgrade at a discount price (in Euros its €89 instead of €129).

You can still upgrade later in the year without the introduction upgrade price if you so desire of course. This way a loyal customer is rewarded when always getting the new version right away.

You can also decide to skip a year or more if the new features just aren't worth it for you. You can be FIVE versions behind and still get the same upgrade price as everyone else. This way it's the users who are in control in deciding to upgrade or not. I know this makes a lot of companies shudder just thinking about their users having these choices. When you treat your customers correctly they actually want to upgrade and get the latest features. I like the way Xara handles this, especially compared to Adobe's and Quark's new policies.

Xara has been very consistent over the years releasing one new version every year around the same time. No weird policy changes, no weird upgrade schemes where you are forced to upgrade or be left behind. Just the same consistent customer support and pricing as always. You know what you get, when you get it, and what you pay for it.

I was worried that MAGIX was going to destroy Xara's normal policies when it acquired Xara in 2007, but so far all has been good.

So thank you Xara for being a normal company that we can rely on to do our work.