New Autodesk subscription idea – any interest?

New Autodesk subscription idea – any interest?

Let’s say Autodesk came up with a new offer for customers currently under maintenance. Let’s say you could switch to subscription (rental) with the same price as maintenance, locked in with no increases for three years. In addition, you get to retain, but not upgrade, your perpetual license.

Let’s say you’re on maintenance which is up for renewal later this year. You currently have a perpetual license of AutoCAD 2018. If you accept this offer, you will always retain that AutoCAD 2018 license. You switch to subscription and pay the maintenance amount for one to three years. Your subscription fee is guaranteed to rise by no more than 20% total by year five.

As long as you continue to pay subscription, you get access to new releases (2019, 2020, etc). If you decide to no longer renew your subscription at any point, you can no longer use the new releases, but you can still fall back on using your perpetual license, which remains as AutoCAD 2018. The use of the software would be subject to the usual fair use restrictions, e.g. during the subscription period you can’t use AutoCAD 2018 on one PC while using AutoCAD 2019 on a different one.

Would you be interested in such an offer?

I’ve added a poll, so please vote and feel free to comment on why you would or would not be prepared to switch under those circumstances.

Would you be interested in switching to Autodesk subscription if you could keep your old (non-upgraded) perpetual license?

  • Yes (24%, 32 Votes)
  • Maybe (25%, 33 Votes)
  • No (51%, 67 Votes)

Total Voters: 132

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Please note that this offer is entirely hypothetical. It arose from a recent telephone conversation with a non-Autodesk person. I have no inside information that suggests Autodesk is considering such an offer.

3 Comments

  1. So pay more for fewer and fewer significant advances that benefit me and all my future creations if I wish to use them have to be rented back from Autodesk? NO. I just renewed with Solid Edge for the next two years and was given amnesty for the year and a half I was gone. Permanent seats and better MCAD design software by far. HSM has not advanced all that much in the last three years and I have been told this is the way it is with them. Why should I reward those who want to raise my costs, forever rent my own data back to me for me to use it and use subs as a vehicle to avoid steady material improvements to what they sell me.

    The cost of subs for Inventor Pro HSM is as much as maintenance combined for CAD and CAM from others. Yes I know up front costs to get there but willingly becoming hostage with my critical business lifeblood seems much more expensive over time in $$$ and in other ways. I vote no unless they give me back what I first came here for.

  2. I could only see very little benefit with this offer. Not enough to switch.
    I really don’t see any point in moving to Subscription when on Maintenance. Adesk should keep offering Maintenance AND Subscription.

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