I just received an email that informed me that my CorelDraw Suite monthly subscription has almost TRIPLED!
I thought this must surely be in error and went to Coreldraw.com to see the latest pricing... has Corel gone bonkers? Are they actually TRYING to drive people towards Adobe products?
Both the once-off and subscription prices have escalated enormously. I don't think I'll be able to justify using Corel over Adobe to the boss anymore, especially after the v2019 fiasco where we literally found the software useless and a danger to productivity due to all the bugs...
Shouldn't Corel Corp be mending fences instead of burning bridges?
You have to get on a plan where the subscription is billed annually. They have a new "monthly" subscription plan which costs a whopping $34.95. That comes out to nearly $420 per year. It would be insane for anyone to pay that over a year or more on a month by month basis.The normal subscription plan price has been hiked up $51 from the original $198 rate to $249. In monthly terms that translates to a jump from $16.50 to $20.75, a $4.25 increase. Again, to get the current $249 per year rate you have to pay the full year worth in one lump sum.I have version CorelDRAW 2020, but still use v2018 at work and X8 at home due to some technical problems with v2020. The older versions frequently have opening page ads when the program is launched and pop-up ads when they're closed to pitch buying v2020. I was pretty shocked the first time I saw the $34.95 subscription price. The first ads said nothing about it being a month to month rate with no yearly commitment.Even under a "normal" $249 per year rate that comes out to paying the equivalent of buying a full version of CorelDRAW graphics suite every 2 years. That's pretty steep. It cost a good bit extra up front, but over the long term the $99 per year "upgrade protection" thing Corel offered perpetual license users will end up saving a good bit of money. IMHO the $99 per year rate is what Corel should be offering if they want to attract new users. That pricing is equivalent to the previous 2-year upgrade cycle Corel previously had years ago.
Corel are at risk of losing a lucrative market. Those who are not graphic designers but who use CorelDraw as a tool in a much bigger toolbox, like myself. I use software maximum 10 hours a week, its to do a specific job and then we move on to using other tools to complete the project. So I have no desire to saddle myself with additional cost for something that isonly a small part of my workflow. I've often said, if I have to I could revert to X5 and still earn money exactly as I do now.
If 100% of your time is spent with software then yes you can stand a price hike, provided the improvements are there. This is why in the Uk sign shops are usually 3, 4 indeed 5 versions old with their CorelDraw versions, they can get away with using an older version as newer isn't often better and they have to watch the £'s for tools that aren't necessarily essential. They would upgrade every few versions and keep current. Now they won't because it's £499 and for what? unfamilar bugs and not a lot new.
If Corel choose to price equivalent to Adobe they had better up their game a hell of a lot. PS is a hell of an application. PP is pp (p*** poor) in comparison. It could have been so different.
I agree if Corel wants to price themselves like a pro application they need to up their game to a pro level in terms of programming, feature set and implementation.
I use 3 Corel apps, AfterShot Pro 3, PaintShop Pro and CorelDRAW Graphice Suite. The first 2 programs augment the lack of features in Draw.
Currently the CorelDRAW Suite price is IMO due to the quality of their programming at the breaking point. Add to this the unknown graphic needs of the post pandemic economy I may never buy a Corel product again.
I'm now out of the upgrade process. I wasn't going to be pressured into paying Corel upfront for dubious promised offerings in the future. So the bar is now set very high for Corel for my £'s. They need to have upped their game hugely for me to invest my hard earned. As a minimum I need the core bugs that affect me every time I use the software fixed. Then I need to see some tangible benefit for the £599 ( I was wrong earlier its not £499). Like tools that have been well thought out and properly implemented. This hasn't been the case for a decade or more. Everything needs more works and doesn't get it. Half arsed.And then I need them to stop making changes for changes sake. We invest our time in learning to make things faster to use, they change it, we slow down and get cross. Options is a case in point. Nothing new, just a reordered menu which breaks a lot of previous functionality.
You were right, it is $499 but U.S. not U.K.
From my observations Vector made Corel the corporation more valuable by concentrating on lower end/lower cost software, then they sold Corel for a major profit.
The professional graphics suite product is no longer desirable to many in the predominant "good enough" graphics market and therefore is no longer the flagship product at Corel.
Allot of the graphic software today does cool stuff but only for digital output and the screen, the print sucks but it's good enough because the end user does not know any better. The reality is that there may not be a future market for CorelDRAW because the true professional market may not bear the cost of two suites.
The product reflects what appears to be a Corporate Attention Deficit Disorder, they can't seem to find and maintain a positive stable path. The only path they seem to be able to maintain is a negative disorganized mayhem.
Examples of this disorganized mayhem are easily seen in the unbelievably poor recoding of 2019, and the disastrous 2019 MAC version followed by a half hearted 2020 elease which is a poor excuse for a SP1 to 2019.
The great idea of a new object manager and keep desktop objects on layer feature that ended up implemented like a middle school coding project seems to be the best they can do.
David Milisock said:Allot of the graphic software today does cool stuff but only for digital output and the screen, the print sucks but it's good enough because the end user does not know any better.
I suppose the cool software you're referring to is something like Affinity Designer. It's a consumer product, and consumer products never were serious about much beyond basic illustration tools. Serif has been making products exactly like that for 30 years so nothing has really changed. Anyone looking to make a professional product will know that they would need support for professional workflows and formats. The real problem is that nobody has made anything like Adobe or Corel in decades.
I think though, that Corel has made the same calculation as Adobe. If they jack up their prices or go subscription only, customers are stuck with nowhere to go. Adobe and Corel are unique enough that you can't easily replace one with the other, but even if you could, there's enough money to go around for both, especially with subscription income. Corel tested the waters for a couple years to see how people would warm up to subscriptions, then they dove in. Adobe only needed 1 year to go from optional, to subscription only. At the very least though, I have zero complaints about Adobe quality whereas I stopped buying Coreldraw at X4 because I saw at that point that there was no hope that Corel would do better.
There are many low end graphic applications, by that I mean they are not fully compliant with PS/PDF, ICC, GDI and Device N color supporting live transparency.
Adobe is entrenched and readily accepted in many professional fields, Corel has done it's best to alienate the professional fields and is increasingly getting competition from these low end and low cost applications.
Most work being done by CorelDRAW users can be done with lesser programs. I mean really most graphics today are for web and the quality of print andcweb graphics are getting worse every day.
So, if you pissed off the professional market and can't compete with the cheap graphic applications, where do you go?