Quote Originally Posted by jmanganelli View Post
Just figured I'd add my voice to the chorus. I use xara everyday at this point. it is a great application. it is quick and convenient and stable, for the most part. however, there has been little quality improvement or feature expansion in the last few years. i know a lot of pre-made content has been added, but that is not useful to me. Support for layered tif, exr, and psd files would be useful. ability to handle larger dtp documents would be useful. improvements to brushes would be useful. performance improvements for filters would be useful. being able to reference other image/graphic files without importing them would be useful. a general sense that the desktop programs are being actively and aggressively developed would be reassuring.

in the last few years, it seems most effort has gone into the online tools, and the desktop tools have gotten just barely enough development to avoid mutiny among maintenance subscribers but not really the kind of attention that a company puts into its feature products. I'm not judging. I'm sure that xara had to make tough decisions to get its online offerings off the ground. but now that the online offerings are off the ground and now that xara recently sent a survey to subscribers indicating that it intends to continue developing the desktop applications and asking us for input on development priorities, it is time to follow through on this promise to develop the desktop applications.

at this point, i'm not abandoning xara. it is useful and i enjoy using it and i use it daily. but i don't believe that i've seen enough development in the last three years to warrant paying the subscription fee each year. i'll take a wait an see approach over the next ten months, til my subscription is up for renewal. but if the only updates to designer pro in the next 10 months are more free content in the online catalog and a smattering of bug fixes with one or two minor, incremental feature improvements, it will not be enough to justify the $120 annual maintenance fee. $120 is also the annual maintenance fee for photoshop and in comparison to xara's desktop products, photoshop appears to have received far more development in the last few years. though i mostly left adobe over their new pricing structure and increased cost, i have had to maintain some access to and use of their tools on occasion and have been pleasantly surprised at how aggressively they are developing them. similarly, affinity's development in the past few years is astounding, and there is no annual cost for access to those improvements. in comparison, xara's desktop app development efforts appear disconcertingly pedestrian these past few years.

In summary, xara is a great program and was a good investment as i transitioned from adobe cc. importantly, xara is just a fun and easy but also powerful program to use, which makes it enjoyable in a way that some of its competitors' products are not, in my opinion. But the maintenance fee that i've paid the last few years has not been worth the paltry improvements the desktop programs have seen in that time. if xara does not develop designer pro more aggressively, it will not make me question my investment in the software nor will it make me cease using designer pro in the short-term, but it will make me stop paying a subscription fee when it is not at all clear that there are sufficient benefits for the cost of the subscription.
Thank you for your balanced assessment. It is nice to recall that the Xara Desktop applications are "fun and easy", but appear to be in a backwater.

I should advise that you need to read Xara's https://www.talkgraphics.com/showthr...ting-Explained where Xara refutes its Upgrade Service is a subscription model:
Note: The Update Service isn’t a subscription, and there won’t be an automatic recharge. You will make a choice as usual about whether to upgrade your copy and extend the Update Service for another 365 days.
While one can continue using the Xara Desktop application in perpetuity (almost), I still strongly disagree with Xara that it is a subscription, as without it, bug fixes, features and on-line content can can be removed from one's repertoire.