I am using ArchiCAD 16 at the moment, and I am the only one using it in our office. But we have three licenses for ArchiCAD 16 from when there were more draftsmen working here. We have decided to upgrade to 18, but when I contacted Graphisoft Australia about upgrading just one license, they said we couldn't do that, but instead could only upgrade all three licenses including the compulsory support and upgrade subscription, or buy a new license and compulsory subscription. Those options are around $11,000 and $10,000 respectively. They also said that if we go with the upgrade option, we can split our license only after purchasing the three upgrades so that in future we will only have to pay for one.
You can imagine how we feel about that, given that we were expecting to only pay a few grand for one upgrade, so I won't rant about it. But the reason for me posting is just to find out if anyone can comment on this or has had a similar experience. Is there anyway around it? Could Graphisoft HQ split our license for us as it is, instead of dealing with Graphisoft Australia? The guy I spoke to told me that we could purchase an ArchiCAD license direct from Graphisoft HQ to avoid having to pay for a subscription, but that this would be more expensive than a license and subscription. Not that we don't want a subscription, but this suggests that we could deal directly with them, and that they have different policies on such things.
This is also just a heads up to anyone else in smaller businesses who may not always need all of their licenses. You may be better off keeping them separate, despite the small savings, so that they can be upgraded individually as necessary.
