Christmas discount for upgrades

[dee]

Is it possible to combine the 25% new-user discount with the 40% upgrade discount?

[Mario]

No.

I think a 40% discount is fair enough. It is hard work to create and support IMatch.

[dee]

I agree it is hard work and a great software. I just compared it to other software solutions, and I can't justify the costs, so it looks like I have to stick with the previous version.

For example an Adobe Photography subscription with some discount is about 100USD/year and for that price you not only get the latest Lightroom but the Photoshop too. While I hate forced subscriptions, from financial aspects buying iMatch each year is the same as a subscription. Yes, you can use your bought version indefinitely, but if you don't upgrade each year then you lose your upgrade discount. So you are forced to pay each year if you want to keep your 40% discount.

To have more perspective about upgrade prices, here are some more examples:

• DXO has about 50% upgrade discount for previous versions and it is automatically combined with the actual seasonal deals, so the existing customers are treated as the same as the new ones. Also you can freely skip a few versions without losing your upgrade benefits.
• Snagit has 45% upgrade discount+seasonal discounts, allows upgrade from any previous versions and it gives you one year of free upgrades, which includes the next version. Moreover there is an optional yearly "maintenance plan", which gives you the latest versions, and its cost is just 20% of the full price.
• ACDSee has about 40% upgrade discount, but there are periodic promotions combined with it which makes it up to 67% cheaper than the full price. It also allows you to skip versions.
• On the contrary, ON1 has only 20% upgrade discount, but at least it includes any previous versions and it is also combined with the actual seasonal deals.
• And there is PhotoSupreme which has only 30% upgrade discount and only allows upgrade from the preceding version.

 

[Mario]

I sell IMatch as a perpetual license. It will not stop working if you don't upgrade.
And it will work as long as there are no breaking changes in Windows or in one of the 3rd-party components and services IMatch relies on (Map Panel, reverse geocoding, AutoTagger, Chromium etc.).

[dee]

Yes it's perpetual license, I wrote the same. All the examples are also perpetual licenses. (Except the Adobe, but that I used only for the price-value comparison.)

But if you don't upgrade each year, you lose the upgrade discount. If you skip one version, then you can buy the latest only at the full price. It is different from any of the examples (except for PhotoSupreme).

So compared to PhotoSupreme the 40% vs 30% upgrade discount is generous, but looking at the big picture, compared to other software, both iMatch and PhotoSupreme has very restrictive upgrade policy (no seasonal discounts, no upgrades from older than one versions).

I'm not arguing on your prices, it's entirely your choice how do you sell your work. I just note that generally other software vendors give more motivation for their existing users to upgrade and keep using the software.

[Mario]

I'm not arguing on your prices, it's entirely your choice how do you sell your work. I just note that generally other software vendors give more motivation for their existing users to upgrade and keep using the software.

Other software vendors are businesses with tens or hundreds of thousands of users.
I'm just a person spending a large share of his spare time to develop and support IMatch. Quite the difference.

If you consider the upgrade as too expensive, just don't upgrade. Entirely your choice.
Many users don't upgrade and don't write about it in this community.
Whatever works for you is good.

[Aubrey]

I consider that Mario is very generous with his continuous free improvements before a paid upgrade.

I don't know many (any?) vendors that put significant improvements in an existing version.

Other vendors don't even publish what they're planning in upcoming versions.
(https://www.photools.com/release-notes/)

Aubrey.

[Mario]

Other vendors don't even publish what they're planning in upcoming versions.
(https://www.photools.com/release-notes/)

The release notes always show new features I will include in the next release. Changes to existing functionality and the bugs reported and fixed.
This allows interested users to see what's coming or if they may run into a problem because of a bug (and thus can avoid it).
It also shows how much work goes into IMatch for each of the regular free updates.