Shift to a subscription model - your questions are welcome

[Akos Pfemeter]

Dear Community,

You may have already read the press release or the Insights post about our strategic shift to a subscription model. 

Here is a quick summary of the news:

BUDAPEST, April 2, 2024—Graphisoft, the leading Building Information Modeling (BIM) software solution developer for architecture and multidisciplinary design, today announced that, as part of its strategic shift to a sustainable subscription software delivery model, perpetual licenses will be gradually phased out by the end of 2025. This change does not affect the delivery of Software Service Agreement (SSA)/Forward subscription services to existing customers. 

Archicad perpetual and SSA/Forward licenses will be available for new customers through December 31, 2024, and to existing customers through December 31, 2025. Starting in 2026, Archicad will be available only through subscription. Active SSA/Forward contracts will continue to be serviced beyond 2025. Alternatively, SSA/Forward customers can convert to Archicad Collaborate subscriptions at the same price as SSA/Forward. This offer is designed to help existing SSA/Forward subscribers take full advantage of the Archicad Collaborate subscription, which combines award-winning Archicad for architectural design with BIMx and BIMcloud SaaS for fast, efficient, secure, real-time access to shared projects.

Please ask your questions and share your thoughts here -- Graphisoft's expert team will try and provide answer to all sorts of questions you may have!
Thank you.
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Edit by Moderator:  here is the link to the evolving information/FAQ page about this announcement:

https://graphisoft.com/convert-ssa-forward-to-archicad-collaborate/

[Bricklyne Clarence]

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@Barry Kelly wrote:

@lparke 

I am not Graphisoft, so I can not give an official answer.

But in a conversation I have had with them, there is no intention to stop BIMCloud basic (on premise).

But you may find that in the future, BIMCloud SaaS will have new features that are only available with the true cloud service, and it may then be beneficial to switch over - the choice will be yours.

......

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There was also no intention to shift to subscription-only, if I recall.

Or so we were told and assured not that long ago, and yet here we are today.

This is not a slam against you personally per se, but such is Graphisoft's credibility on this and any other issue, and that's how much their assurances are worth,  but they only have themselves to blame for this, and as I can see from this thread no lessons have been learned on their end.

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[Eduardo Rolon]

I was on the same conversation as @Barry Kelly and my take away is that we are back to square one.

Answers will be forthcoming to as many scenarios as possible.

• Existing Perpetual licenses will continue
• Buying new Perpetual licenses might stop at some point
• There will be no "forced" switch to subscription
• All TW/BimCloud will stay and work the same

[Bricklyne Clarence]

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@Eduardo Rolon wrote:

I was on the same conversation as @Barry Kelly and my take away is that we are back to square one.

Answers will be forthcoming to as many scenarios as possible.

• Existing Perpetual licenses will continue
• Buying new Perpetual licenses might stop at some point
• There will be no "forced" switch to subscription
• All TW/BimCloud will stay and work the same

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Now you see that gives me great pause.

On the one hand, you can claim there will be no "forced" switch to subscription, but if you create the conditions and a scenario that otherwise makes it untenable to not switch or less viable to stay out of subscription, then aren't you just forcing people to switch by default, only not so declaratively so?

Secondly,......"Buying new Perpetual licenses might stop at some point"....???????

"might"?

What's that supposed to mean?

Isn't that right there the crux of the issue, so much so that they shouldn't be playing word games and doing those kinds of rhetorical and semantics mental gymnastics?

And still no clarification on that TW/BIMCloud question.

Is a person on subscription still going to be able to 'collaborate' (another of those buzzwords they seem to love so much these days) with another colleague or team-member on TW or BIMCloud, who's still in a perpetual license and (therefore likely) still a version or more behind them?

I guess that's more of a technical question they still have to figure out on their end with the "1's" and "0's", but sadly for us we have to make these decisions sooner rather than later.

Also, thanks for the answers and the updating.

These are some of the questions we had been hoping and expecting the expert answers they promised us originally, and which ultimately expose the flaw of using their current FAQ system since, ........surprise!! surprise!!!,....it turns out questions often-times tend to spawn follow-up questions that need clarification themselves.

[Eduardo Rolon]

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@Bricklyne Clarence wrote:

---

…

Secondly,......"Buying new Perpetual licenses might stop at some point"....???????

"might"?

What's that supposed to mean?

…

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First post indicates that they will stop selling perpetual licenses in 2024 but that "MIGHT" possibly change and offices will be able to keep purchasing perpetual licenses.

The intention is that collaboration will keep working as it does now. Projects will not be siloed or limited based on license type.

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Hopefully they will avoid making the perpetual users second class citizens with their pricing strategy but I have no data on this.

[Romans]

Dear All,

It is a true pleasure to be part of this beautiful community! There are many thoughtful and in-depth rationalizations for this turning point in Graphisoft's customer relationship.

But on the other hand, this from the longstanding client base unwanted 'shift' marks a departure. Times are changing...

I am happy to own perpetual licenses that guarantee my access to all the data we produce with Archicad, at least for the foreseeable future.

Converting it to a subscription is out of the question because this makes no financial sense at all. Subscription fees are way too expensive — one of the few unique selling points against the only real alternative so far (Revit). This is over now.

Then, someday, along the road, subscriptions become unavoidable, and some alternatives will hopefully be available.

I guess AI-powered solutions will eventually become part of our practices, and dinosaurs like Archicad and Revit will eventually become obsolete.

Kind Regards

Roman

[Romans]

e.g.

https://blog.thinkparametric.com/post/the-5-best-ai-tools-for-architects

[Jose Gradoli]

I recently discovered the new subscription path for ArchiCad and I'm very frustrated about the future of our Architect preferred software.

My case is a bit different from the ones you quoted in this post. I'm no more an SSA / Forward suscriptor due the lack of advantages in my opinion (I'm no redshift user, never need private hosting from Bimx, no need discounts in learning because I didn't used them at least in my language, already had a Twinmotion license, no need for the library part maker... etc). The main advantage was the renewal of the next main version of Archicad, but the fact is I'm stuck in the 25 having license for the 27. Why? Because the BimCloud change from one version to other is very irritating. In fact I think there's no way to do it other than saving PLN manually and adding them to the other server. Some might say (Oasis) there is no problem in running two BimCloud instances but it's not my case: overloads unnecessary our office server and we need to have more than one Archicad installed simultaneously (+7GB per version).

So I will extend my AC27 license all the time our macs allow to install and I will resign all incredibly new features will have ArchiCAD in the next year or two (only real new feature from ac24 to 27 was arm native versions..) . Then we will decide if we pay the subscription with the no need of premium features (BIMcloud saas) or look for another software (tried Vectorworks but they have same subscription model and in my opinion is less intuitive than archicad).

Anyways thanks a lot to this community.

[Akos Pfemeter]

@All,

to provide further clarity we have made revisions to questions #6, #14, #17 and #18, and also introduced additional topics under questions #19, and #20.

https://graphisoft.com/convert-ssa-forward-to-archicad-collaborate/faq

Please continue sharing your questions, and thank you for collaborating with us.

Many thanks,

Akos

[Barry Kelly]

Thanks Akos,

The FAQs now seem to cover most questions.

A few more questions that I think could be clarified though are ...

1. Will there be a cheaper subscription for those that do not want the BIMCloud/BIMx Pro side of things.

Or is it that the price difference will be negligible and the full subscription will be necessary for future inclusions that don't have at present.

2. Will there be future inclusions that will only be available with the subscription?

If so (maybe you can't say what they will be), but will they be available withing the next 3 years?

As this may affect if people want to accept the 3 year deal or not.

3. Will the cost of SSA/Forward support always be proportionally less than the subscription costs (except obviously for the first 3-6 year deal where the subscription will be at the SSA/Forward pricing).

I understand that the costs of both may increase each year (except during the 3-6 year deal).

4. FAQ 6 says that a person can get a 3 year deal for subscription at the current SSA/Forward price (if paid 3 years up front).

If paid yearly there is a 10% markup - that is clear.

Is that a fixed price + 10% for 3 years if paying annually, or will there be annual price increases built into the fees if paid annually?

I am assuming "price parity with subscription" and the "same discount percentage at the first renewal" means that cost may increase if paid annually?

People need to know this as it will affect there decision to take the full 3 year deal or not.

Barry.

[MinhNguyen]

And to add to the above (sorry for repeating it for the third time and sorry if I missed it), we are yet to have any hint/promise/answer on whether subscription licenses (or cloud licenses, for that matter) will work on different language versions or if the license is strictly country-locked.

[Botonis]

I am always using the INT!!! 

Why should a license be locked based on the localisation used??????

Sometimes I am using more than one language version because of this idiotic policy not to release all the official Graphisoft addons in all languages.

Unless the marketing department is using an AI based policy strategy. 

[MinhNguyen]

Because…look no further:

https://community.graphisoft.com/t5/Licensing/Licence-language-CZE-INT/m-p/584162
I’m not sure if the policy has changed since, therefore I’m asking

[Karl Ottenstein]

Thanks for posting that link, Minh,  I had missed that thread.  This is an extremely serious question / issue if subscription is cloud license only yet cloud licensing prohibits the use of the INT version.   (It’s just dumb - from a user perspective - in the global workflow of 2024 that a valid license cannot be used with any localized version whatsoever.)

[torben_wadlinger]

If you think about it, Graphisoft does it the other way around. The rental licenses should actually be much cheaper than the permanent licenses. And it should be possible to upgrade rental licenses to permanent licenses. This would ensure that you can react flexibly to your own needs and you could build up a base of permanent licenses so that you always have access to your own data. I am sure that this would also attract more users, because a license for 100 euros / dollar is more likely to be bought than a license for 350 - or more. That would be in the interests of the users.

[Jp1138]

You are completely right. But in the announcement, they say this change is so they can earn more money to keep to program going. So all the part about the conveniences for the users is some kind of afterthought. A price of 100€/month is not too different from what we are paying now for the SSA, and it is not enough for them to maintain their structures, it may seem.

[torben_wadlinger]

Just look here:

https://www.Nemetschek.com/en/node/2224

[Jp1138]

Yep, they are very poor, the company is on the brink of bankruptcy 🤐

[thesleepofreason]

From #19 ("keep their differently licensed Archicads on the same build") it seems that there will be a difference in availability of updates between perpetual and cloud licences.  Is this correct and how what will it mean? Will cloud get a constant stream of "innovation" which will be packeted for yearly perpetual updates? Will cloud get instant hotfixes while perpetual get them quarterly?

[Rex Maximilian]

My question is how this will affect perpetual licenses? Also, is GS trying to price their long-standing, loyal clients out of perpetual licenses by the wildly high percentage SSA price increases? From $800 to $1050 in a 24 month stretch? That is a 39% price increase. Can we expect this to happen every year until your are charging us full price every year to be forced on your subscription model?

Please, please explain how a 39% price increase is mutually good for your client base and company going forward?

[mthd]

The COVID crisis including the war pushed up energy and shipping charges but AC is effectively electronic delivery. So I would hope that future prices rises would be in line with inflation ?

We definitely cannot default on PL/SSA/FW from now on because there is effectively no more upgrades from that option. Once we default we will need a subscription if we want to use the latest version of AC as was explained to me by our representative.

My SSA/FW price went up 5% from last year.

[Barry Kelly]

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@mthd wrote:

We definitely cannot default on PL/SSA/FW from now on because there is effectively no more upgrades from that option. Once we default we will need a subscription if we want to use the latest version of AC as was explained to me by our representative.

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Just to clarify.

If you have a perpetual license, you can carry on with your SSA/Forward support and you will get all version upgrades in the future.

Yes, from next year, you must carry on with your SSA/Forward support payments if you want to stay with that method.

If you choose to stop SSA/Forward payments, you will not be able to restart them, as SSA/Forward support will no longer be offered from the end of this year.

If you later choose to restart and upgrade, you will have to take out a new subscription.

Barry.