Got an email to purchase 2019 upgrade and it's also stating upgrades are ending??? Is it going the dreaded "subscription" (rent, never own) model?!
After reading the many bugs and problems with 2019, very reluctant to move on to that one. I'd hate to purchase that 2019 upgrade and they leave it to die and NEVER fix it, but force me to SUBSCRIPTION after they take my money.
CorelDRAW Upgrades are Ending!
Now is your last chance to upgrade to CorelDRAW Graphics Suite 2019. Later this year, upgrades will no longer be available.
Hi everyone. I want to provide a bit more context. As everyone knows, we pride ourselves at Corel in offering choice for how to get CorelDRAW Graphics Suite. For some, that means subscribing. For others, that means buying a perpetual license. The only thing that is really changing later this year is the "open upgrade" whereby users of any previous version can buy the perpetual upgrade license of CorelDRAW Graphics Suite 2019. We will still provide the opportunity for current version owners to get into the latest version without having to subscribe or pay the Full version price. In the past we have changed the upgrade policy where only certain recent versions were eligible. Right now, the policy is wide open. But that is the only element that is changing later this year. As for Upgrade Protection, if you choose to go that route, it is valid for a period of one year from when you purchase it before it would need to be renewed to remain eligible for new versions as they come out. Thanks.
John Falsetto said:We will still provide the opportunity for current version owners to get into the latest version without having to subscribe or pay the Full version price.
Can you please "elaborate" on this very important part?
Typically it has usually been $199 (or $159 or so as I have seen at the lowest on sale) for an UPGRADE.
What are we looking at now?
We have not finalized any specific details in that regard, but the plan is most certainly for it to be available for current version owners at much less than the Full version price.
Thanks.
John Falsetto said:to be available for current version owners
So "current" would be v2019? correct?
So if I have X7 or 2017, I am NOT eligible correct for that "much less than Full version price"? I would have to pay FULL price for 2020 version? Or purchase the LAST v2019 upgrade before it's gone?
Right now, 2019 is considered the current version, that's correct. But until later this year and the policy changes, any version owner can buy the upgrade version of 2019. When the policy changes later this year, only 2018 version owners will be eligible to buy 2019 at a discounted price compared to the Full version price. When the next version is released, then only 2019 owners will be eligible for that discounted offering. So once the policy changes, it will be the previous version only that will be eligible.
Very long time CorelDraw user here (90's), and former CorelDRAW beta tester as well.
An "upgrade version" is a well-defined and long-standing industry product, with certain expectations that numerous companies all agree upon: if you own a "former version", sometimes with some reasonable limitations of how far back that version can be, you get a good discount on the new version. It's called building customer loyalty, and keeping customers from saying "hey, why should I pay 100% full price for a product that's only 10% different from what I have? If I have to do that, maybe I ought to try out the competition I've been hearing good things about".
I could tolerate a "forced v19 -> v20" upgrade scheme only if the strict yearly release model were not being used. It's just too much to be forced to upgrade from a "finally functional" program that's being used on a daily basis to a possibly buggy program, each and every year. Many users like to "wait and see" from others if it's worth it, and maybe hold off for a version or two if certain new bugs don't seem to be being fixed.
And that's one of your problems there - there's no guarantee that old versions are going to have all of their bugs fixed. So not only are you trying to force people to pay for versions they don't necessarily want simply to avoid having to pay full price, but for all those who DON'T move on, you're likely going to strand them with crappy software because v19's bugs will only be fixed in v20 or v21.
Really, this is leaving a very sour taste in my mouth. I know CorelDraw is your premium product, but you are NOT the industry standard and you SHOULD NOT be trying to tick off people who have been steadfast supporters of yours for literally decades. Greed is unbecoming.
Try a less severe upgrade restriction. I don't think anyone's going to argue that you should support a CorelDraw v8 user upgrading, but how about a few years back? Like maybe if it was designed to run on Windows 10?
Making only the previous version of CorelDRAW eligible to upgrade is effectively an act of forcing perpetual license owners of CorelDRAW into a subscription arrangement. And considering the extra $99 fee one has to pay to join the "upgrade protection" program, on top of the $199 price to upgrade to CorelDRAW 2019, it's not much of a discount versus the $198 per year subscription price for new users who don't have a previous perpetual license version of CorelDRAW. It would be cheaper for me to just wait several years until CorelDRAW has built up enough improvements to make buying a full new version worthwhile, that is if I haven't switched completely to using a different vector drawing program by then.Back in the 1990's CorelDRAW had different levels of upgrade pricing for upgrades from 1, 2 or more versions back. Corel was forced to go to a single upgrade price due to competition from Adobe, Macromedia, Deneba and others. Here's the thing: today CorelDRAW has more rivals than just Adobe Illustrator. Applications like Affinity Designer, Autodesk Graphic, Vectornator and others are growing more mature and more popular. Those applications at full price cost just a fraction of a CorelDRAW upgrade. I think Corel is going to lose a bunch of casual-hobbyist designers to those alternatives.Lots of people in the sign industry such as myself use CorelDRAW, but this forced upgrade thing might be enough to make them rely solely on industry specific "CAS" applications for generating designs and client scale drawing sketches. In my shop we have to rely on Adobe's software for some aspects of our business as well as industry specific software for vinyl cutting, routing parts or large format printing. We could get by without CorelDRAW. I wouldn't like it, but it is do-able.
TOTALLY AGREE.
I "depend" on CorelDRAW, but if need be, X7 and 2017 will suit me for years to come. (I do NOT need those extra couple gimicky features they add each year)(I just need the CORE of CorelDRAW since it's been since day 1)
I am NOT upgrading to a not-for-primetime buggy release of 2019 and threatened I must in order to take part of the lower price sequential future versions. (or pay full price if I do not!) What the hell are they thinking? Glad I did not jump on the v2019 bandwagon!
They might want to watch out for Affinity Designer. (and Adobe for that matter)
Corel is REALLY SCREWING UP THIS TIME.
The folks at Serif over in the UK still need to make some further improvements. Affinity Designer still lacks some key features (even though it boasts some functions not found in Illustrator). There is no GPU hardware acceleration on the Windows version (the OSX version has some very fast GPU acceleration). But version 1.7 of Affinity Designer is fairly impressive for only a one time fee of $50 (upgrades are free). Autodesk Graphic costs even less, but it's only available for OSX and iOS. I tinker around with it and Vectornator Pro on an iPad Pro. There are other low cost commercial alternatives. And Inkscape is still around and technically free/open source.I think Adobe is pushing its luck a little. They got rid of the lower cost CC Photography bundle that packaged Photoshop and Lightroom together. The single app subscription price is now over $20 per month, but you get the other add-on goodies that come with a full CC subscription, such as the Adobe Fonts service. Even though the full CC subscription jumped from $49.99 to $54.99 it's still a pretty incredible value considering the wide range of applications you get along with the bonus features. I paid dearly for the Master Collection CS5.5 suite, but aside from the full slew of Adobe applications it didn't have much in the way of bonus items, even something as basic as fonts. With me being a sign designer the Adobe Fonts service was a big deal. In the past Adobe was very very stingy in regard to fonts they bundled in with copies of Adobe Illustrator and PageMaker. It was even worse during the Creative Suite phase. With Adobe Fonts users are getting a giant amount of commercial grade fonts from many participating foundries, including a lot of recent releases. I still get on MyFonts and other sites to jump on new releases at deep discounted prices. But Adobe Fonts saves a heck of a lot of cash on font purchases.