Announcing SketchUp Shop

[DanRathbun]

@sjdorst

But I’m reluctant to add another $119 yearly expense on top of my yearly Pro maintenance.

4 days ago in another thread requesting an iOS tablet edition, I postulated this scenario …

@DanRathbun

But, what we do not know is how many or what percentage of SketchUp users would buy a tablet edition, either stand-alone or complimentary to their desktop edition license. (So we cannot say whether the user base would support such development costs.)

It is not likely that desktop licensees would get a free tablet license. Porting code to another OS is expensive, and the cost must be offset for the engineering and later ongoing maintenance. (A discount license bundle might be an option, if that makes sense to the marketeers.)

This is not the first request for tablet SketchUp, and in the other threads some people promoted the idea that paying Pro licensees should be able to use a tablet edition free because they couldn’t be using the Desktop edition at the same time.

But this puts the cost of development, deployment and maintenance upon other paying customers who have no wish or need to run on tablet or mobile.

The same thoughts hold for Web browser editions. Many desktop users will not need Shop edition and would not want the cost of Pro to rise to cover Shop maintenance. The funding for maintenance must come from someplace. If not a separate subscription, then the price and subscriptions for Pro desktop would have to rise.

Keeping the subscriptions separate is better because the choice is entirely up to the customers.
Pay for what you use, not for what you don’t.

I’m not surprised at all that the Trimble beancounters want new beans to balance the scales after all the development.