Start looking around for a product that fits in this niche and you'll waste more time, money and effort than just shelling out for the perpetual version. I was back on 19 and hadn't upgraded for the past two years. I love Xara but the lack of new features each year were hard to justify an annual upgrade and it served my purposes just fine. There are plenty of resources available that made the catalog something I didn't need to subscribe to. Here's my take: Xara has reluctantly released the perpetual version. I'm not seeing any passion for it from their end. Obviously, they want everyone on subscription if they had their druthers. I took the dive and now have it installed on my desktop and laptop. It was a good investment from 19 imho and even though I'm not one into straining at gnats and comparing every little feature, it seems to be much more of an upgrade than being a couple of "versions" behind the subscription version. I will assume that as long as there's money to be made holding onto people like me, they will continue to release future versions. But, I'm not banking on it. It seems it will be a guessing game from here on out, but in this day and age what isn't?