Over the last 25 years I've spent thousands of dollars on Corel software and now they have decided not to allow me to upgrade anymore. They decided I should rent their software instead, I don't rent software, ask Adobe I quit their software for the same reason. Does anyone know another software package?
What do you do?
The work I do can only be done in Adobe or Corel so it is what it is. However there many things people do that can be done with other software.
In reality all you ever do is rent software, you buy it, time passes and it will no longer run on current systems, I bought a $2,750 software package that was sold as a lifetime license. Seven years later I got the screw you notice, pay another $3,500 or stop using the software.
Life's a bit#h, what are you supposed to do, give up your business over $500?
I'm a lead software engineer, I do a lot of websites and screen designs. I know software is not going to last forever but I bought the 2020 version of all their software now one year later I can't upgrade it. I have their full line of software so I have to find replacements for all of them,
Corel has done a really terrible job making the purchase options clear to customers who want to buy a copy of CorelDRAW. It's either that or they've been trying to obscure the fact that all of the buying options are pretty crummy.
The "upgrade protection" option is almost hidden in the sales pitch for the full $499 one-time-purchase version. Customers merely buy the $499 version and then make a few assumptions. One guess is that full $499 version can't be upgraded at all, which isn't 100% accurate. The other guess, a common one, is that the full version can be upgraded to the next version release since that's how most perpetual license software is sold. That's not how it works either.
Currently, in order to buy the full version of CorelDRAW and be able to upgrade it later you have to pay $499 up front PLUS another $149 up front for "upgrade protection." That's nearly $650 up front. And then the following January when the new version is released you get to pay another $149 to download the new version and continue that upgrade protection plan. In the space of a few months a CorelDRAW customer can blow nearly $800 just keeping a license current. I don't think that pricing model is by accident. When adding up that total cost it makes the $249 per year subscription price not seem quite so bad. If you buy the full $499 version and opt-in for the "upgrade protection" plan you would have to be on that plan for 4 years before you started seeing any savings at all over the purely subscription version.
$249 per year isn't as steep as the roughly $650 annual cost to subscribe to Adobe Creative Cloud. On the other hand, the CorelDRAW Graphics Suite really has only two real full-blown applications: Draw and PhotoPaint. All the other apps, such as the Font Manager, are just applets. Nearly $250 per year for just two real applications is pretty steep on its own. That's $125 per application, which works out to a more expensive per-app price than Adobe Creative Cloud.
And then there is the sheer lack of application development and maintenance taking place. Years ago Corel was struggling to flesh out new product generations of CorelDRAW when it was on a 2 year development cycle. Now that full version upgrades are happening yearly the level of features and improvements being introduced is really pretty weak. We're 9 months into the 2021 product cycle and CorelDRAW 2021 has received only 1 update. When factoring in those issues that $249 per year subscription cost feels like a rip-off.
I'm pretty worried about the future of CorelDRAW. The executives at Corel (and higher ups at KKR) really need to take an honestly objective look at the situation and make very serious adjustments. If they stick to their guns with this current business model CorelDRAW won't survive any longer than a couple or so more version releases.
$650 to upgrade my already paid for software is not an upgrade it's a replacement. I've been with Corel from version 1.0 but I guess this is where we part.
MSE said:$650 to upgrade my already paid for software is not an upgrade it's a replacement. I've been with Corel from version 1.0 but I guess this is where we part.
Yeah, I think it's a big mistake for Corel to play hard-ball with existing CorelDRAW users. To paraphrase Princess Leia, the more they tighten their grip on CorelDRAW customers the more they'll see customers slipping through their fingers.
I think the policy established a couple years ago to ditch traditional perpetual license upgrades will end up reducing Corel's income from CorelDRAW purchases. Sure, some hardcore professional customers like myself who've been using CorelDRAW going back to the 1990's might stick with it since we're so vested with the software. Other existing customers will be tempted to bolt over to rival software. Some may go with Adobe's stuff. Others may migrate to any of the low cost or free alternatives available.
A big part of the CorelDRAW customer base has been more casual, non-professional, office-productivity graphics production. Basically we're talking "bean counters" doing their own DIY graphics work in-house. Their needs are fairly basic in nature. And they don't need something expensive to fill that need. Without offering any normal upgrade path I think Corel is effectively saying goodbye to that block of customers.
Meanwhile Corel is literally doing nothing to grow its customer base. How can they expect to attract new users with this pricing model and their track record as of late with maintaining the product? Lackluster new product versions and performance issues are not going to win people over from the Adobe camp or convince others to spend a little more rather than go with a free or low cost drawing package.
David Milisock said:I still need the program, I pay my upgrade pricing and it's a reasonable price. Currently the price structure would have me buying once in three years.
I got in on the $99 "upgrade protection" rate when they were fixing to pull the plug on upgrades for existing CorelDRAW licenses. That essentially works out to what it used to cost to buy every CorelDRAW upgrade years ago when they were on a 2 year product cycle. And even back then some of us users were skipping an upgrade or two. Today that deal is no longer available to any existing, long time CorelDRAW users.
David Milisock said:The reality is what it is. The question is do you really need CorelDRAW? Many Corel users don't any longer, their only need is to open old Draw files, the actual tasks they perform can be done with other software.
What graphics programs outside of CorelDRAW accurately import CDR files? Adobe Illustrator briefly had a CDR import filter but then they removed it (they also removed Freehand import filters too). Affinity Designer, Vectornator and Autodesk Graphic don't import CDR files either. Inkscape is the only drawing app I know of that will directly open CDR files, but it doesn't do a very accurate job at it. But, to give Inkscape a little credit, it will import CDR files made in version 5 or earlier -which is something CorelDRAW itself can no longer do.Whether Corel survives or not CorelDRAW users will need to have functional CorelDRAW installations to be able to open archived CDR files and export the artwork in AI, EPS or PDF for use in rival graphics software.