Web Designer 365 Premium - Now a subscription product?

[pauland]

Since xara keeps track of when you registered your purchases... Why would it go back to version 12.0 after reinstalling.

It could easily go to 12.x.x according to what you are entitled to!

It's not free to create the mechanism to provide the 12.x.x software that was current when an individual's subscription lapsed. The cost of doing so could be significant for Xara. There's no 'easy' about it.

In terms of entitlement, user's entitlement is what they agree to at the time the subscription starts, which seems to be a 12.0 disc, and no access to updates to 12.0 after the subscription lapses.

[katemoir]

Stevey - in fact Xara Online Designer is one of the reason's for the change in model (see http://www.xara.com/update-guarantee/ for more information on the model and the reasons). Online Designer is an online service that will be updated frequently, and some of the changes in Online Designer will require matching changes in Web Designer / Designer Pro in order to maintain file and feature compatibility. Therefore we had to find a model that facilitated frequent updates to the client side part of the bundle, while trying to avoid a classic subscription product that simply removed access to everything at the end of the subscription period, in the Adobe / Microsoft mode.

Client access to Online Designer is currently free, see http://www.xara.com/cloud-xara/access/ - note clients have a more limited version of Online Designer than the one included with Web Designer Premium and Designer Pro.

The Update Guarantee page http://www.xara.com/update-guarantee/ has some more info about what continues and what doesn't after the end of 365 days, but basically you buy a perpetual license to whatever is the current version of Web Designer on the day you buy (so currently 12.0.0) plus for the following 365 days you get access to the Online Services (M hosting, Online Designer, the Online Content Catalog with all the templates in it) and any updates issued during those 365 days. At the end of 365 days the online services either end or fall back to lesser services and you no longer have access to updates. You could look at those updates delivered during the 365 days as 'advance access to next year's features', but we have perhaps confused people by not removing those updates from the installation(s) that you have at the end of the 365 days - they actually continue to work indefinitely, the program only falls back to 12.0.0 (or whatever version you purchased) when you next try to install it on a new machine.

[handrawn]

kate

is it possible to clarify if repartitioning a disc will count as a new computer - this is something I do from a housekeeping point of view every now and then and suspect I am not alone in this - also I don't really want to go down the route of 'Trigger's broom' but if someone suffers the misfortune of a hard disc failure then if xara is going to penalize further in this regard yhen they are not the company i thought they were...

thanks

steve

[katemoir]

To be honest I don't know the answer to that, but I will ask the Magix team who handle the activation system. Handrawn if you find the new features tempting (http://www.xara.com/web-designer/whats-new) but aren't comfortable with the conditions on the updates offered during the next 365 days then one option you could consider is rejecting the updates and then looking again the program in a year's time and deciding in the usual way whether you want to upgrade or not (at which point you'd get a new perpetual license to the then-current version, including the updates we had released in the previous 365 days). That would be something more like the v11 model.

[haakoo]

Reading this makes me sad.

It seems that if I buy the product in March 2017 it will have all features/fixes from the last 365 days,so I get a full blown program.
But if my pc crashes in March 2017 , I get only the stripped version.
So if there are much needed bugfixes,which will come surely,I don't get them and am left with an unusable program only to be bettered by me buying an upgrade.

Good luck and you may have lost another longterm customer

Hans

[pauland]

one option you could consider is rejecting the updates and then looking again the program in a year's time

That's untenable advice Kate. Nobody is going to do that.

If Xara continues on this path then there will be a lot of backlash, now and in a years time when people's subscription expires and their hardware forces them to re-install.

[katemoir]

one option you could consider is rejecting the updates and then looking again the program in a year's time

That's untenable advice Kate. Nobody is going to do that.

If Xara continues on this path then there will be a lot of backlash, now and in a years time when people's subscription expires and their hardware forces them to re-install.

Why untenable? It is actually opting to return to the model we have used for the last few years ie upgrade once a year.

[katemoir]

Reading this makes me sad.

It seems that if I buy the product in March 2017 it will have all features/fixes from the last 365 days,so I get a full blown program.
But if my pc crashes in March 2017 , I get only the stripped version.
So if there are much needed bugfixes,which will come surely,I don't get them and am left with an unusable program only to be bettered by me buying an upgrade.

Good luck and you may have lost another longterm customer

Hans

No, that's not how it works. You can find information on how the 365 Update Guarantee works on our website at http://www.xara.com/update-guarantee/.

[zaphodeist]

Can you tell us whether the upgrading discount will still apply to renewals and to re-installations?

[katemoir]

Yes, there will still be a discounted price for upgrades/ renewals