Same SketchUp you love, a new way to buy

Bang on! Well said

The question that I had was:

If you renew your Classic M&S in June, and by November you become convinced that migrating to subscription is what you should do, the Classic license gets marked as ‘migrated’, and you are now getting support via your subscription and not the M&S that was going to last until June next year. But, does that mean your Classic 2020 license won’t be updated to 2021, assuming that comes out during your original M&S period?

Apparently it will be updated. If you have M&S that ends after 2021 is released, and of course I can’t tell you what date that would be, you will get your 2020 license upgraded to 2021, even if you migrated to subscription in the meantime.

Just to be clear: the 2021 license would be a perpetual license in such a scenario, yes? In other words, if the user’s subscription were to be terminated at (any) point, the 2021 license would remain valid “forever”?

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What’s going to happen to those of us who have relied on annual Faculty discounts (via Creation Engine) to stay current? Or Students, or Non-Profits? It would have been nice to have been notified of this so I could get a new license that’d expire next May to replace the one that is expiring in December. Is there an ability to make our current licenses stay in effect with no upgrade eligibility? I’ve been able to teach my students so much and don’t know what we’re going to do going forward.

Clear as mud now lol…Let me rephrase what I’m looking for.

  1. I’m thinking of paying my M&S now, up at the end of June. This will entitle me to SU2021 as long as it comes out before June 2021?
  2. I’m also thinking of getting a subscription now since a discount is available, will this replace my perpetual license ?
  3. What I want to know is can I have both a perpetual and subscription at the same time totally separate ? Basically 2 licenses, and can the subscription discount be used this way or is the “discount” just to migrate my perpetual license ? If that’s the case Trimble isn’t really showing any love to long time Pro users.

Yes, the permanent license would be upgraded from 2020 to 2021, and would continue to work if they stop subscribing.

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I think that to be safe you could wait and renew support at the end of June, then any time after that do the migration.

They are different products, you could continue to use your classic license on two of your machines, and also use your subscription on two other machines you own.

For most education licenses the user will have switched from the old $50 per year of Classic license, to $55 per year for a Studio subscription. As far as I know the $55 product will continue, so most education users are not affected.

@Steve_Ketchup may know more about any lingering Classic education licenses.

Higher education faculty were allowed to “buy” a free 1-year license from Creation Engine, and have been for several years now.

I don’t know what the current or future states of those are. Steve works specifically with education, he will know better than I do.

If you accept the offer of a discount, your classic licence gets converted to a subscription. The maintenance and support ends which means no more new versions on your classic licence. Your classic licence can still be used, but won’t get new versions.

You will have two licences separate licences for the same product but your classic one will be frozen to the last version before you converted to subscription.

I just got my update email today. The 1 year offer isn’t worth it as it’s the same price as M&S except you’d lose out on a permanent licence for 2021. The 2 year offer is more tempting as you get 2 years subscription for the same price as M&S. I’ll worry about what to do after that runs out over the next 2 years.

@georgeeldredge Unfortunately the free instructors licenses are no longer available through Creation Engin, however Educators subscriptions to SketchUp Studio (our full product suite) can be purchased for $55/year.

Fully agree. After 12 years of daily SketchUp use, I switched over to Fusion 360 for my professional needs about 8 months ago and could not be happier about it. I kept my SU Pro up to date as a backup for the first year, but I think I’ve used it twice. Fusion is a bit of a steep learning curve at first, but the community is fantastic and the benefits of its use are worth every penny. SU just haven’t put any meaningful effort into the product in several years, and now they want to charge more than double for it. I think their team is just not big enough to be able to push the product forward from a development perspective. Watching some of these recent live streams from SketchUp higher ups was also a painfully stark reminder of just how limited this program really is. The people making the product were even struggling with it to perform what are really pretty basic operations for Fusion. Kind of the end of an era for me, but the future with Fusion has never looked brighter. I encourage anyone who feels the same frustration with SU as I do to give it a try.

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What you have said is different to what we are being told. If you renewed M&S and then migrate to subscription, the license does go into a migrated state, but it should still be upgraded when 2021 is release, so long as that is before your M&S end date.

I’m not making it up, that’s just my understanding from reading the terms I was given

It would be totally unfair to remove the download links from SketchUp Make 2017.
Many plugin developers make a living from their work because many users still use SketchUp Make 2017.
If Trimbel removes the links it will cause a conflict of interest. Those who made the success of SketchUp ferron without a doubt bankrupt.

I understand that Sketchup Team needs some predicable income to further develop the product. This is what the M&S is for. That users can pause the M&S for more than a year and then continue again with no big penalty was really nice. But this model makes an income prediction more difficult. From that point of view I understand the subscription model.
But I do not understand that this subscription has to be 2.5 times more than the current M&S of Sketchup/Layout.
As many others I pay the yearly M&S regularly, because I like to see the product being further developed.
But being forced to pay for Cloud Services, which I do not really need, is not good.

In summary: I would not mind a subscription, but then it should be at the same price as the current M&S with no or limited cloud and AR services included.
A separate subscription could then be offered for the cloud and AR Services.

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What is so predictable about subscription? How this guarantees that the next year you will continue and can pay the fee! How this guarantees that SketchUP will advance and pleases You and make your subscription worth? What was predictable so far about SketchUP development? Did You know in advance about Google, about Trimble, about SketchUP free, about SketchUP Make, about subscription only? How other companies can develop and innovate new products without subscription! Are You paid in advance or after the work is done satisfactory? Are You ready to pay in advance for everything with the promise to be so much better?

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The loss of client for SketchUp will be at least 50% which represents a huge danger for the developers of Plugins.
Either the developers of extensions will stop developing Plugins which will cause the loss of SketchUp in the future.
Either the developers will be forced to offer subscriptions to successfully survive.
It is very important that Trimble financiers take into account extension developers because their future will depend on it.

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@SketchWood, these are a lot of questions. I will answer some of them.
With predicatable I refered to the income for SketchUp Team.
If someone decides to not pay M&S, because (s)he does not need the additional features of the new release, then (s)he can continue using the program as before at no cost. With a subscription this will not be the case. Every user that continues using Sketchup with the same fucntionality will generate income due to the subscription. The M&S user may or may not generate income.
That is why for SketchuUp team their income is more predicable with the subscription model.

M&S is paid in advance, but you know what you get. I renew M&S in March, by then I already know what features went into the latest version that came out in Feb. I therefore can stop the M&S, if I do not like it. But the subscription I will probably not stop, because I want / have to continue working with all existing features of SketchUp.

I get paid once a month, but if the work was satisfactory or not has no impact on the monthly salary. Only during year end talks, it gets decided, if my work was satisfactory or not and then the company decides, if they want to continue the “subscription” with me or not. (Of course they can end the contract early, but this would (hopefully) happen only, if I do something really stupid).

Paying in advance based on a promise? This is no problem, if I trust the company. As I like Sketchup and they have proven to be able to add needed features over time, I trust SketchUp team will not ruin the product within the next year. If they do, I simply stop M&S or the subscription.

Important is, that the subscription price is at a reasonable level. Raising it by a factor of 2.5 compared to M&S with no additional value for me, is not good.

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