Yes. Other than the first sentence asking the question, the rest of my post is copy paste from an email I received from a SketchUp team member today. I was curious if it was a blast email or targeted at me because my renewal date is within a month. Looks like just me.
Then I would also conclude that the Classic license option is going away. It’s in writing. I find it odd that they aren’t conclusive about it, but they certainly imply it’s happening.
The text of the email I received today seems to imply that it is (classic ending). How long ago did you renew? Perhaps we have just passed some kind of threshold?
I’m not surprised to see this, but not happy about it either.
I’m curious as to why you’d recommend the subscription. If you do that, then the last version you get to keep will be one year older if you decide to stop paying in the future.
Edit: if the recommendation was Trimble’s that makes sense.
They’ve likely decided to sunset the classic license, (there’s been many hints and indications of this) but give a full cycle to work it through, which allows the choice that they’ve offered to endlessfix above to renew classic license one last time… or switch to subscription for the same price (at least for the first year).
There’s been little doubt that Trimble wants everyone on a subscription eventually — the tricky question for them is how to execute the decision without creating a user rebellion.
Software subscriptions are much better for the companies offering them — predictable revenue streams and user lock-in — for the user, not so much.
To be clear, the “my recommendation” along with the rest is part of the text of the email I received. That part is in bold in the original text so it’s bold here too, it’s confusing I know. It’s not my words.
I agree that this not unexpected (hence my title) but disappointing. I also agree that the smart move is to hold out on the classic license as long as possible to make the last version of SketchUp one gets to keep perpetually working on their machine the latest version possible. That logic is assuming Trimble does not de-activate classic version licenses from their end after SketchUp goes subscription only.
They are still offering the Classic on the website at $695 with this at the bottom of the page: “Buy once to own your license forever. $120 to upgrade annually.” Pretty F’d up if they’re discontinuing…
So, lets say all my tools are “happily” on subscriptions and in this time of crisis I don’t have a money to pay? What I’m going to be left with? Nothing - Nada! So how I’m gonna work to earn eventually any money?
Not happy with this but no surprise. I will keep my classic license. Maybe after a few years consider getting a subscription as well if there a good reasons to do so. I hope at that time the subscription can run on the same account while keeping the Classic without having to re-buy all plugins again.
It suggests the SU staff member was just thinking out loud & let slip ! As the CAT is out of the bag so to speak, I wonder how long it will take for SU-HQ to confirm or deny this…
A year or so ago, a Trimble employee posted very clearly that the classic perpetual license would be eliminated as an option in the future. Within hours, as I recall, another Trimble employee replied to that topic stating that such a statement was premature and that no decisions had been made by the company etc. I await (another) formal official statement of the end of new perpetual licenses with dread and expectation.
Disclosure: I’ve been a Pro license holder since 2016, with active Maintenance and Support since that time. I upgraded to 2018. I have not downloaded 2019 or 2020 because they don’t have enough features to bother for my hobby usage, but I kind of hope that something might be added which would be of personal interest in the future.
As said, when I was prompted to renew my maintenance and support exactly a month ago there was only the prompt to renew, no additional offers. And it was clearly an automatically created message.
@endlessfix, did your message come from a reseller?
If a change to maintenance options is to take place, customers would expect it to be announced publicly early. I think that in Autodesk’s case the end of perpetual licenses was announced more than a year beforehand.
