Buying Sketchup Pro is a terrible user experience. When I buy a product I expect I can sign in to use it, or that at least it automatically guides me through some obvious steps that then drop me off at the product.
But no, instead here’s what happened. I went to the website and purchased the product; no problem. Then I try to open Sketchup and use it and it says that I’m still on the Sketchup Trial. Ok maybe I just needed to sign out then sign in, no big deal. Nope, that doesn’t fix it. Well that’s already a huge red flag. What kind of company’s main workflow where you purchase their main product is just broken by design?!
I ended up having to contact support for them to point out that I have to go to Plan Settings then assign the product I just purchased to myself. From the perspective of a new user, I would never have expected to need to do this. Why is this not automatic?! I am not some estupido, I used to work as a software engineer for 4 years. The absolute top of frequently asked questions is “how do I sign in?” This process is obviously broken and needs to be changed. Was this that checkbox that I unchecked during the buying process? If so that checkbox REALLY needs a better explanation on it.
I will still use Sketchup as it’s still the most reasonably priced, quite functional product for my needs but please god make the purchase process of Sketchup Pro not horrible.
I see that some posts here have been moved to other places. Mike tagged Kathy, who is in charge of user interface things. The part about assigning seats is normally done automatically, but sometimes that doesn’t work out. Usually it’s because someone else did the purchasing, or you did the purchasing and unchecked a box that was important.
@ty_s is involved with online sales these days, he either will be the right person to respond to your feedback, or he will know who is best to read about your experience.
That does sound frustrating. There is a checkbox during the purchase process that is checked by default and results in the SketchUp subscription being assigned to the email of the account that is purchasing. We have lots of customers that are buying for other users so we gave that option to make it simpler to get SketchUp to the right person (SketchUp user, not the purchaser). When the box is unchecked, the subscription isn’t automatically assigned and then should be assigned in our Trimble Account management portal: Trimble | Account Management
For steps on how to do that and other account management steps, please check out this article from our Help Center: Managing Subscription Plans | SketchUp Help
Hi Tyrel, ok yes I think that is what happened to me. As a first time user, seeing a checked box that says “Assign a subscription to me” sounds like those boxes when you sign up for other places that sends you lots of annoying marketing emails so I unchecked it. Please please please include some sort of better explanation there on what that checkbox means, if it was clear what the checkbox meant then I wouldn’t have unchecked it and ended up with this frustrating result.
Thank you for the feedback. We are working on making improvements to make our systems better. I will pass along your feedback as it is a good example of why someone would uncheck the box.
I have to agree with the awful experience comment - I renewed my license and received my confirmation email with sales order and subscription item, downloaded Sketchup, but the “Welcome” screen is totally unresponsive.
So far I have read miles of text and tried everything suggested:
so far I have done the following:
-I cleared browsing history in Safari,
-restarted
-downloaded Sketchup 2022 for Mac OS
-removed pop-up blockers and content blockers for www.sketchup.com
-took care to select the email address that is associated with “purchased through Creation Engine”
-tried logging in using Firefox (pop-up and content blockers disabled for Sketchup.com
but I can’t get past this retched screen that ironically says “Welcome”
when I click sign in, it says to complete sign in on your browser, but no browser window launches