Difficulty Upgrading ArchiCAD (in Australia)

[Anonymous]

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.

[Barry Kelly]

Sounds reasonable when you really think about it but I can understand your frustration as well.
It seems such an easy thing to do to split the network key into separate keys and then upgrade one of them.

But I guess the problem is you have a network key for 16.
They don't sell licences for 16 any more so you would need to purchase 3 x 18 licenses (upgrade to 18 and then split the key).

Plus the fact that your licenses are 16 and you obviously don't have the support agreement or you would have them upgraded already.
So you are asking Graphisoft to support the software that you no longer have (or never had) a support agreement for.

The frustrating part is why they can't split your network key and leave them as version 16 so long as you pay a fee to do this.
Maybe split one key off and then leave the network key with 2 licenses - but you would be better off with 3 separate ones.
Then pay to upgrade just the one you want.

Only Graphisoft can say if they can no longer program a key for version 16.
Maybe that is the problem - they can't.
But then you should be able to split one key off and leave the network key with 2 x 16 licenses - for a fee of course.
Again maybe they can't do this unless they are upgraded first or maybe 3 is the minimum number for a network key?


I have split network keys a few times but then I have a Select Support Agreement so all keys are up to date and it has not been a problem.
I am guessing that this is your dilemma.
Your keys are not up to date so they technically are no longer supported.

Barry.

[Laszlo Nagy]

Also, let us not forget that when you purchased those 3 licences, if you purchased them with a network key, you paid much less than you would have paid had you have bought 3 individual licences.
So if you switch to individual keys, you need to pay the price difference that you saved when originally purchasing the network key.

[Karl Ottenstein]

No matter how one looks at it - this is sure a great case study for some business school in how not to treat customers. I can fully understand your frustration, and even angst at how to resolve this licensing cost while maintaining your scaled-down business.

Graphisoft Australia should be treating you as a valued customer and member of the ArchiCAD community - even if there are issues of the cost difference for the original network vs individual licenses and the upgrade for a single 16 license. This should concern Graphisoft HQ as well.

My 2 cents as a fellow user anyway.

[Laszlo Nagy]

So if I gather correctly, you guys would like Graphisoft to be as flexible as to provide the possibility to users to make changes to licence arrangements made about 2 years ago (I am assuming those AC16 licences were purchased about 2 years ago). I mean, isn't this the responsibility of the costumer to assess their possible licence requirements and make the purchase accordingly?
Still, this could be a request for Graphisoft to make their licencing policies more flexible to allow for such cases as well. Ben, you could make a wish for that here on the Forum, people could vote for it and then I could forward that vote result to Graphisoft.

But on the other hand, I am reading news and stuff and for example, Autodesk's policies are just horrifying to me. If you don't have subscription and you want to upgrade from last year's version, you have to pay 70% of the price of a new licence. From March next year, this will go up to 100% of the price of a new licence. So they want to force everyone on subscription.
I just want to put this into perspective for you guys. THAT could be a great case study in a business school, not on how not to treat your customers, but on how to drive them away.

[Anonymous]

Thanks for the support guys, and also for the Graphisoft point of view. I hadn't really thought about fees for changes to the key or the savings we received for buying multiple licenses in the past, and they are certainly reasonable costs for them to factor in to our situation. But I assume that even with those costs factored in it would still be significantly cheaper to upgrade just one license.

According to the guy I spoke to, the network key can be split down to a single license and Net 2, so it doesn't seem that there is a minimum number issue there. And Laszlo, you're right in assuming the licenses were purchased about 2 years ago, and it must have been without Select Support.

I am obviously biased, but yes I would like to see some more flexibility in license arrangements. And wouldn't everyone? I am in no position to start learning another program, and I'm sure Graphisoft wouldn't miss our business anyway, so we rely on them, and I think they are taking advantage of that instead of valuing it as Karl pointed out. It doesn't matter if a competing company is worse, although it's good to keep that in perspective.

Anyway, I am happy to create a wish for more licensing flexibility if it would be beneficial. I will do that tomorrow if there are no other suggestions. And thanks again for the discussion and encouragement.

[Laszlo Nagy]

benanna88 wrote:
Thanks for the support guys, and also for the Graphisoft point of view.

Just want you to know that what I wrote is not Graphisoft's point of view, it is my point of view.
I am not a Graphisoft employee, I work for them as a freelancer.
What I wrote is not an official Graphisoft statement.

But do make that wish so I can forward it to Graphisoft.

[Anonymous]

Thanks for clarifying that.

By the way, I have posted that wish here.

[Laszlo Nagy]

That's great, now people can vote so we can get an idea of how needed this option is for various users.

[Anonymous]

No matter how one looks at it - this is sure a great case study for some business school in how not to treat customers. I can fully understand your frustration, and even angst at how to resolve this licensing cost while maintaining your scaled-down business. ???

[Laszlo Nagy]

challpagal wrote:
No matter how one looks at it - this is sure a great case study for some business school in how not to treat customers. I can fully understand your frustration, and even angst at how to resolve this licensing cost while maintaining your scaled-down business. ???

You should check out Autodesk sometimes and see how they treat their customers. No upgrade price from February 1, 2015? Only new licenses for 100% full price, even if you want to upgrade from last year's version? That is a case study in monopolistic behavior in my opinion.