Subscription Purchase Plan is a very bad idea.

I have been using Corel Draw since version 3 (not X3, but version 3)  and one of the reasons I use Corel Draw is that it's not Adobe. It's easier, less snobby and far less expensive.

However with this new trend towards subscription pricing I may be forced to drop Corel Draw. Subscription pricing is bad for the consumer on so many levels.

When I pay for software, I expect to be able to own it and use it whenever I want for as long as I want. But now Corel wants to charge me extra for that convenience? No F*ing way!

Since I qualify for the upgrade pricing, I can get X6 for $180, AND keep and use it indefinitely. If I use it for 3 years, that's $60 a year. But if I go for the subscription pricing I would have to pay nearly $200 and have access to it for only one year. Where is the value in that? 

Also, on occasion I have skipped versions because of bugs that were introduced and not addressed in a timely manor in the new version or Corel introduced features that were of no benefit to me. I can care less about "Website design software" or "Complex script support".

When moving form version 9 to version 11, I had to convince Corel to give me 10 instead since 11 broke some of the features I used in 9. Yeah, I paid Corel for an older version. And version 6 offers me nothing of value over version 5. I tried the demo and found it was even close to being worth the $180 upgrade price. Trace is still pathetic (slow, and inaccurate), very few bugs were fixed in Draw and Photo-paint is virtually identical to the old version. 

And how about adding/fixing little things like:

  • corner nodes on meshes that will not smooth  
  • allowing mesh nodes to snap to guide lines
  • fix the frequent crashes in Draw
  • fix the envelope tool to allow for cylinder effects 
  • let me drag tools from the tool bar flyouts directly on to the toolbar  
  • adding HDR functionality to Photo-Paint
  • actually support most Photoshop plugins and not just a small fraction of the older types

Corel claims "Early access to new features and updates". Yeah so that the subscription holders could be the beta testers and find the bugs for them. No thank you. 

Despite all this I still love my CorelDraw but if they continue to move closer to the Adobe model I will be moving further away from Corel Draw.

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