Next phase of subscription transition announced

[Richard Doll]

Dear Community Members, 

Following my recent Graphisoft Insights post on the Subscription transition update, we know how important this topic is for you as our clients and anticipate your comments and questions. To streamline communication, we’ve created this thread to gather everything in one place. We’ll also use it to identify topics that may need further clarification, which we’ll address on our FAQ page.

Please note that while we cannot respond to individual questions in the forum, your local representative is available for personalized support.

Best regards,
Richard

Link to Insights article: https://community.graphisoft.com/t5/Graphisoft-Insights/Important-update-Next-phase-of-subscription-...

[Paul King]

I think the near universal consensus amongst users I am in touch with is not to be bullied away from our perpetual licences, and once these can no longer be upgraded, and to simply stop throwing good money after bad, given that within 3or 6 years of converting, costs will triple.

Probably the single biggest reason for selecting and sticking with ArchiCAD, despite the much higher up front perpetual licence cost, and the ongoing higher staff training costs is the lower annual cost offered under a Select arrangement.

Staff training cost are much higher because candidates already trained in ArchiCAD are much rarer, and there is reduced practice attractiveness to potential new staff (further limiting the talent pool), since to most staff, lack of Revit skills and experience is far more career limiting than lack of ArchiCAD skills, since most other practices use Revit.

The requirement to pay such a staggering 3 years in advance just to secure the so called 'discount' (which is actually a significant price increase over current Select pricing) is a huge worsening of the deal - we not only get a price increase, but we must also pay much more interest on that money borrowed, and we face triple the risk of total loss of the sunk investment -  many of us cannot be sure we will be able to use the license for all three years;  people can and do get sick, they stop working to have a child or deal with other life events, or they simply fail to find enough work to make use of their licences. 

This is on top of the fact that with updates there has been a strong pivot away from architect centric development in recent years, meaning that for architects, we are getting less upgrade value for our money.

The deal has become worse for us in every direction - less upgrade value, higher risk, 3-6 years of higher cost, followed by 300% higher cost thereafter.

GS have just destroyed most of their customer good will, and their own revenue pipeline for 2030 and beyond.

Tough luck for those that do swallow the subscription Kool-Aid if (when) GS declares bankruptcy within the next few years, as a result of flushing away all three of its main competitive advantages over Revit - price, perpetual licensing & architect-centric development. (in fairness, that last item has already been sacrificed in an attempt to become more Revit-like)

Seems to me there is a high risk that those who give up their perpetual licenses or who do any work on AC versions more recent than V30 will sooner rather than later lose ongoing access to their projects, as they will be reliant on cloud subscription and hosting infrastructure that will no longer exist.  

So yes, the incentives are all completely backwards.

[The MR]

I have read all the comments on this topic over the last couple of months or so & as someone on 26 I decided to obtain an upgrade quote. Then I ruminated for a while over what to do.

Should I upgrade to 28 now to ensure I can keep a 29 or maybe even a 30 perpetual licence?

What will the upgrades entail that I will benefit from or even use? How difficult will they make it for me to open old files? The roadmap is unlikely to be an enforceable document.

The goalposts look like they are going to keep moving for a while yet & with the proposed 3 year upfront deal being talked about & how everyone progresses or regresses beyond that. The dust will take a while to settle to the Graphisoft new normal, obfuscation.  To which they have been exemplary so far on this subject.

I started on 6.5 so I've seen some great upgrades & a fair few not so great.

I had a very poor 12 months with Archicad in around 2021 with thousands of continual crashes & no fix until hot fixes were released so I have seen the worst of it when it doesn't work. But I stuck with them.

When 27 came out I couldn't see any solid reason to upgrade other than design options but I have done without that for 20+ years & doesn't really impact the way I work or use Archicad as I am by hand for for all of my concept ideas.

The cost to upgrade now is a lot more than I was anticipating & a cost to which I will probably not recoup based on any potential increase in my productivity for the outlay over the next, say 12 months or so. So in the end the decision was made for me. I cannot justify the outlay & I will not upgrade but (hopefully) continue to use 26 until I stop working for clients which is only 2-5 years away. 

I will now put up with its foibles, its occasional crashes, lack of formal support & the fact that my mac will stay on 14.7 OS Sonoma.

I've done simple & some incredibly complex projects in Archicad so it is a tool that is very useful but it is still just one tool.

I do understand many others are in a position where they are being stood over & forced into a position of eventually pay or be shut out of your own intellectual property. That hurts. Maybe in some jurisdictions that could be illegal. In AUS I don't think so (didn't finish my law degree) & anyway, it would be a long fight to find out.

Graphisoft have taken a hard line for on paper at least, their future bottom line. They had a lot of goodwill in the Archicad community. Goodwill has to be earned over a long period of time, which they did. 

A lot of that goodwill has been eroded over the last few upgrades but due to that original goodwill, the Archicad community by and large grumbled but stayed. 

Now that goodwill has been drained completely. 

[Marcel Cooper]

I've only just woken up to this issue and need to catch up on the relative costs but as a gut reaction and since V28 more or less works adequately, I may take a few years "holiday" from support, bank a bit of cash and then buy back in to the subscription model when I feel I am beginning to lag behind.....but at that juncture, I will review all the available BIM software and re-valuate before re-investing.

I may then remain with Archicad or I may move elsewhere, that is Graphisoft's gamble. I took a break from Microstation support between 2008 to 2014, banked a tidy sum and when I reviewed, I moved to Archicad so who knows, perhaps Autodesk next time?

Archicad are not alone in wanting to change the licensing model and I'm afraid this is what the future holds for us generally, but one thing I can promise you is that software companies are not doing this with the aim of earning less money, which means we are intended to pay more.