Another SSA Price Increase!

[Rex Maximilian]

I've been off the boards for a bit, so I'm not sure this has been discussed previously, but...

There is another SSA price increase! For anyone doing the math, in 2022, 2023 and now 2024, in the span of 24 months, that is a 25% price increase.

Why Graphisoft?

I am still crashing on my MacTel machine. Even on the Apple Silicon version I have to restart every now and then when strange anomalies arise, only in ArchiCAD, and one that tech support says they can't solve.

How can there be justification for raising the price AGAIN when you've just put out a perpetually buggy version of ArchiCAD? Maybe the buggiest one to date. We Mac users to wait months after release for solutions to the crashing. This is seriously bordering on a breach of contract or lack of good faith on GS's part. We paid for software that we had a reasonable expectation of stability for, but to date, there seems to not be a crash proof version... and then you raise the price.

Graphisoft ( @Marton Kiss   @Akos Pfemeter) we need a legitimate explanation and most likely a repeal of this price increase. Again, this is the third price increase totaling around 25% in the past 24 months.

My suspicion is that this is a tactic by GS to force perpetual license holders (their most loyal of customers) onto their subscription model.

Operating system used: Mac Apple Silicon 14.4.1

[PB]

Its a reference to a very lax relationship with truth, consistency, alternative facts, etc., etc.

And yes, FYMBTTSMMOOU is definitely applicable !

[rm]

Its unfortunate that the "Big" ArchiCAD firms have not authored a public letter to GS, essentially making the case the both the yearly changes in the software and the yearly subscriptions are not in alignment and effectively are forcing some, mostly small practitioners out of business.

I also wish there was a worldwide government regulations that would not crush the software companies, we want them to succeed, but not at the cost of crushing their customers either. There needs to be a win-win approach hear, and all the major architectural software developers have completely lost site of this, but never loose site of their greed and GS is right at the head of the class.

[jl_lt]

Yeah. Im not aware of any other group (or president)  that uses that acronym, so we can stay just talking about Architecture and the currently anemic (but financially insensitive) architectural software Industry

[mthd]

We call this “bill shock” in our part of the world. As we all know COVID caused crazy price increases in just about everything we buy including the cost of construction. CLC “Cost of Living Crisis” is also being used down this way. We all feel your pain and we hope the extra dollars given to GS will greatly improve the product after AC30 ??? I would like to have the old roadmap reinstated if at all possible ??? If they do they could stop the GSAC ship from sinking as I foresee it. I am no fan of Revit and could never afford it either. Lets wait and see what happens.

[furtonb]

This whole thread is deeply depressing. I’ve finished the BIM Manager program and I’ve bought a (YA back then) perpetual license that I was (am) kerping up to date with SSA, but as a freelancer I always had the peace of mind of cancelling if sh!t really hits the fan – and it did recently. GS is not showing a behaviour that I can trust in the future, making all my previous investments (the software, the courses, and more importantly: all my time) feel like sunk cost.

The construction industry is in a nosedive in Hungary (to illustratrate the situation, not only did projects dry up with the exception of some large players, but already awarded architectural competitions are regularly not paid on time by the government), the only player in control seems in control is Graphisoft. When your client base (especially the SME businesses) are fighting for their life, they need to figure out the loss of control over their authoring software and getting vendor-locked.

My English vocabulary is not sophisticated enough to have my thoughts translated about this.

Last year a governmental decree was put into practice in Hungary to make BIM mandatory an all publically procured project over the EU procured threshold (~2bn HUF), so practically any project. This was on the 21st of September 2024: https://njt.hu/jogszabaly/2024-31-20-8X

Although we had information this earlier, the shift to subscription-only licensing and the termination of perpetual licensing was posted again within a week (30th September 2024):

https://community.graphisoft.com/t5/General-discussions/Next-phase-of-subscription-transition-announ...

Talk about timing.;)

I find this abuse of previous b2b relationship highly unethical (who cares, really?), given the lack of meaningful development (but you have your latest and the greatest hoops to jump over, think about the GSID-only user management of recent BIMcloud as a Service updates), the last really impactful feature was Graphic Overrides on the workflows - design options being a close second, but many projects are still lagging behind with version updates.

No news on energy modelling (you can just salivate at the Pollination workflows), Rhino.Inside is miles ahead of the GH-AC connection, creating window and door schedules with the required level of detail to be acceptable requires serious workarounds, no plans to renew instancing workflows, out of the box rendering is a joke, MEP has its own 100 page long thread already, and list just goes on and on and on…

In the meantime I have buildings to retrofit (…energy, anyone? I forgot phasing/renovation filtering) and projects to keep afloat, and the majority of my workload needs to be done outside AC anyway (point cloud manipulation, energy or building physics modelling, presentation-quality rendering, assembling usable-sized slides) - I can only echo the rhetorical questions above.

For me in the current economic situation the only viable option is to sit on the latest version provided by my SSA (although 28 is a lot less stable than 28, I have no hopes for 29 at this point) and try to emulate a chunk of my workflow with Rhino. VisualARQ is also an interesting option, and I find Bonsai really promising.

…I haven’t even touched the question of collaborating with building services consultants, or playing well with more complex historic shapes (i have a ~1GB Rhino model for baroque ornaments that I try to import for almost 3 hours by now, this time allowed me to rant here).

To close the comment, I don’t see myself in the future picture paying “service fees” for a tool, and in an academic context I also don’t find it ethical to teach potentially exploitative software for architect/civil engineering students.

A serious effort is needed by our profession in the upcoming years to free ourselves from this ridiculously tool-oriented ecosystem and  restore the order: these software are glorified pencils imposed by the (at this point quite questionable) quest towards “efficiency”.

If GS is not seeing this way, no problem - someone else will.

[mthd]

Not worth getting depressed over because it is up to them to lift their game and provide the value  for money or they could loose quite a bit of future business. There are plenty of alternatives out there too. Or back to the drawing board like the old days. The good thing about that is you can still work when the power goes out too.

[torben_wadlinger]

That's "funny" you mention this point. In fact I tried this five years ago in Germany, Austria and Switzerland. As a first step, I was able to convince over 100 architectural firms to join my initiative. Among them were really big offices from the capital. But suddenly almost all of them got cold feet and in the end there were only five of us ...

So much for solidarity between architects.

[PB]

Being caught between a rock & a hard place, I am discussing the transition to subscription with Graphisoft UK (who have always provided great support for us). As per the Graphisoft website, the promotional subscription costs are available for either a 1-year or 3-year deal. Logically, the 3-year deal should be structured to provide greater appeal in compensation for guaranteed income to Graphisoft. 

However, Graphisoft UK cannot advise me on the meaning of the light blue band for years 2028-2030 on the 3-year deal. If it represents a further 3-year deal being available at an annual increase of 8% then it is clearly advantageous. However, without clarification and assuming 2028 reverts to full pricing, the potential cumulative cost after 4 years could actually be worse for the 3-year deal than the 1-year deal. Table below shows cumulative cost after 4 years in the UK.

Can anyone in authority clarify please?

[rm]

No apologies for your English are needed, your thoughts came through clearly here. Can you guess what lobbying body made sure all projects in Hungary are delivered by BIM processes - hmmmmm, remind where GS is headquartered?

This all keeps pointing to excessive >>>>>>>>> greed!

[PB]

If the light blue shading to years 2028-2030 represent the same as for the 1-year deal, i.e. 8% increase per annum, then the 3-year deal is the better option for those who can commit.