We have a mixture of network and single user licenses that we upgraded from SketchUp Pro 8 to SketchUp Pro 2015. With the recent price increases, the cost of annual renewal of these licenses is more than $2000, a pretty good chunk of change. Beyond the right to new versions and support, what are the benefits to keeping SketchUp on maintenance? Is there any loss in functionality (e.g., loss of access to the extension warehouse) if we don’t renew for a couple of years? Our designers don’t see a need for keeping to the latest version and we haven’t had to use support so I’m just wondering if there’s any downside to letting support lapse and just renewing in a couple of years with the penalty fee. Thanks.
nothing.
no, besides APIs or URIs to the online ressources (Warehouse/Extensions/GEarth) do change sothat older versions might not be able to access them anymore.
phone support is btw limited to installation and activation issues only… besides you are buying by a reseller. Latest versions do obviously not incorporate new functionality only but regularly lots of fixed issues too.
At first sight maybe there isn’t much changed and you can stay with SU2015. But if you want to upgrade your OS, you can be in problems because SU2015 is never developed for the newest OS. But the most important reason can be the updates of the API functionality. For example SU2016 brings for the first time a LayOut API, this means extensions which use this functionality can’t be used with SU2015.
$2000 is a lot of money but this means you have a lot of versions. Take a look to the price of other software and what you pay for SU maintenance is peanuts.
My thought is that if we were going to let maintenance lapse, we would likely do the upgrade to SU 2016 first.
With regards to OS versions, I guess that depends on the volatility of Windows 10. If it’s more like OS X, then there could definitely be some issues as new versions are released. If it’s more like Windows 7, then that will be less of an issue. We are currently on Windows 7 and likely will be until AutoDesk fully supports Windows 10.
I’m not questioning the overall value of SketchUp. Our users love it. At the same time, if the new functionality that is provided has limited benefit to us (e.g., we don’t use LayOut), then we might not get the value that others get from keeping it on maintenance. If there was no option to buy back into maintenance at a later date, then it would make sense to keep the maintenance active. I’m just weighing the pros and cons at this point.
as already elaborated above, maintenance is not only new functionality but fixes for problem issues too… which can be of the same or higher priority than new functionality which btw nobody uses to the full extent of any non-trivial software.
you can upgrade even after the maintenance (+ 30 days grace period) has lapsed at any time, an enrollment fee of currently U$ 60.-/lic. (single user lic.) will be charged to reinstate the maintenance.