Sad update for users of the perpetual licence of Designer Pro X19

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Originally Posted by behzad

This I knew a year ago. It was obvious. The fact that Xara and them kept it under wrap is disgusting. I am finished upgrading for now. Even though I purchased 19 after having gotten a new computer Magix told me I am back to v18. Moving on. There is more fish in the sea. To me Xara was amazing but even now with the blocks etc.. they are trying to catchup to something 5 years ago. As a user for more than 2 decades I do have the rights to express how I feel.

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If you actually bought v19 then that should be the one that you can redownload and activate. Anything less is theft.

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There are a few people saying that they don't want to pay a subscription but for a different side... I really am loving it. I had one Designer Pro+ licence in 2020 and then quickly upgraded to the "Team" package for three licences. Three people, each able to install Designer Pro+ to two PCs, for $215 - which for me in the UK is £173, and the equivalent to only £58 a year, each.

With Magix, for a single user's upgrade it was £69 in 2015, £89 in 2018 and £99 in 2020. I'm more than happy with the equivalent of £58 each (I actually only wanted two licences, and was intending on having one Magix and one Xara - but it was cheaper to have three from Xara) - the support is second to none. The chat support is virtually realtime and bugs have been fixed within a couple of months of reporting them.

I gave my unused third licence to a friend, and none of the three of us have spent more than an hour looking at the Xara Cloud stuff, we just use the desktop Designer Pro+ desktop software. The £173 divided by two is still less than Magix's renewal was.

Thanks Daniel - that is a good summary of where xara have pitched: corporate/teams who always need to be using the latest offering; and it appears to be working well for them

I have used their chat support occasionally and it has been very good, even when the questions were not just pro+/cloud; Matt is very helpful

Those of us only needing one licence though, and in my case zero website requirement and minimal requirement for OCC, it's different

A lot of the OCC you can get elsewhere, some of it for free, though if it saves time, paying could well be worth it, depends

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Originally Posted by ss-kalm

If you actually bought v19 then that should be the one that you can redownload and activate

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Don't know about behzad but in my case ver19 was an update service upgrade from ver18 and the EULA is clear that I would revert to ver18 under those circumstances

since I can use version 15.1 it does not bother me; what bothers me is Magix pulling the plug on the older version activations and I'm not one 100% clear on the position regarding that, maybe someone else is ?

I had thrown in the towel long time ago. No comments.

Actually this is to Xara Staff.

Had you been honest with us and knew about this arrangement, you would have had a greater chance of users like myself to jump on your bandwagon instead of waiting for an update over a year for Magix.
Your lack of honesty and communication and business practice really turned me and others off.

To be fair they have been baiting people to contact them, strongly hinting if not saying outright that if someone has "unused Magix update time" remaining on a subscription, that they'll give a credit on subscriptions direct with Xara.

For those who've not taken out a "Team" subscription, as the account holder you simply send an invite to someone's email address so that they can "join" your subscription. You don't see their data, they don't see yours. It would be trivially simple to take out a Team subscription, invite two friends, and deal with the cost between you.

I'm a one-man-band with an occasional part-time assistant, not a corporate behemoth. I wanted my part-time assistant to be able to work on my Xara documents, so took out the additional subscription. I saved money by taking out a Team subscription (three licences) versus a Xara and a Magix subscription or two Xara subs, so the third was a free bonus. I invited a friend to use that, she benefits, so do I - I saved money by having it!

I find it appalling that companies treat their customers like this. Just the other day I found a programme I use occasionally to quickly turn my photos into a gallery that I can quickly browse just stopped working because they want me to buy the new version. Now I read that if I want to use Web Designer I need to pay £150 a year. It's not my business (I design & sell oak framed buildings) but I do have a few websites of my own and a few I do for friends, family and a couple of charities so I dip in and out of Xara fairly regularly. I have begrudgingly paid for updates for the premium version over the past ten years just because I am a bit computer geeky so like to see new features (although they have rarely impressed me very much) but I'm buggered if I'm paying a £1,500 for a computer programme where I don't recoup any of my expenditure so it's the end for me and Web Designer which is a shame because despite it's many faults, I do quite like it.

would you rather the company went out of business ?

because sooner or later that is the other option if their revenue stream is insufficient

sure some companies are rapacious, but I would not put xara in that catagory based on my experience...

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Originally Posted by kilo

I find it appalling that companies treat their customers like this. Just the other day I found a programme I use occasionally to quickly turn my photos into a gallery that I can quickly browse just stopped working because they want me to buy the new version. Now I read that if I want to use Web Designer I need to pay £150 a year. It's not my business (I design & sell oak framed buildings) but I do have a few websites of my own and a few I do for friends, family and a couple of charities so I dip in and out of Xara fairly regularly. I have begrudgingly paid for updates for the premium version over the past ten years just because I am a bit computer geeky so like to see new features (although they have rarely impressed me very much) but I'm buggered if I'm paying a £1,500 for a computer programme where I don't recoup any of my expenditure so it's the end for me and Web Designer which is a shame because despite it's many faults, I do quite like it.

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kilo, your Xara product will not stop working. You do not have to pay anything. It is not the same as your gallery application example.

If, however, you want the latest bells and whistles, you can download the trial for Web Designer Plus and check it over.
Thereafter, you could subscribe for a period but you still retain your older product for use.

If you have made sites for your business you have had some value. The yearly updates were just your hobby.
I assume your "£1,500" was a typo?

For a business, you could write down such as company costs.
I found that for even one client in a year, my subscription was well worth it. As a Professional, i do maintain the leat software versions and the subscription model suits. As a hobyist, i get to play with the product for the rest of the year.
Compare with Amazon Prime (~£100/y), great for free, next day deliveries but I don't use it each and every day for these. I do, however, enjoy the free videos quite frequently. having one's cake and eating it.

Acorn

OK Acorn, accepted that it's different to the gallery example and maybe I was a little harsh due to the gallery programme's actions but I think I've found a better solution now anyway so I'm happier than I was ;-)

I don't have a problem with the programme makers improving their product and as I mentioned I have paid for the upgrades on Web Designer over the years and my £1,500 wasn't a typo, it becomes a £1,500 programme if I use it for 10 years. I still use a very old copy of Photoshop because I don't need the extra bells & whistles of the updated versions but Photoshop don't throw up a nag screen every time I use it which I think is the thing that annoys me. If my car manufacturer sent me an email every few weeks to say I could now have tinted windows or racing seats at an extra cost, I think that would also annoy me.
I'm getting old - a lot of things now annoy me.

Anyway, I've bitten the bullet and bought the new version as I wanted to see how well the new 'blocks' work. They seem OK but not sure how much I'll use them as I rarely build brand new sites but we'll see.
At least this upgrade seems to have kept all the paid for add-ons which have disappeared a couple of times in the past and taken me ages to get back again.

Kilo