
SketchUp Goes Subscription-Only - tech234a
https://blog.sketchup.com/home/same-sketchup-you-love-a-new-way-to-buy
======
runxel
It is really hard to read through all that marketing nonsense. Not sure if I
should cry or burst out in tears from laughing.

In any case I can't stand all that false statements. Let's take this one for
example:

> Subscription demands constant improvement of our product and enables us to
> make $Product better for you — faster.

In fact, the opposite is the case! Just look at Adobe. Or maybe CAD/BIM
products, like Revit from Autodesk. The only thing that was new in this years
version was slanted walls (!). Something competitors have for ~20 years
already.

So for me subscription basically is equivalent with the opposite. As soon
companies decided to switch from the possibility to let me buy their software,
as in "I own this thing and I can use it indefinitely." to "rent" their
software, progress came to a grinding halt most times.

The reason why this doesn't work like in the PR statement above is the way
things work in real life. First you lock them customers in: all their files
are now in your proprietary format. The presumption from above is, that you
won't renew you subscription when you don't like the new yearly version – but
then you can no longer access your files you need, since you do business! So
cancelling of subscriptions basically never happens, turning your company into
a gold mine.

Yearly realases are bad btw and nobody likes them. Except shareholdes maybe.

~~~
Marsymars
> In fact, the opposite is the case! Just look at Adobe.

Well from some points of view, they're right - I had an Adobe CC subscription
for a little while, and after six months of no improvements, I abandoned Adobe
products entirely.

~~~
tomnipotent
> after six months of no improvements

Historical Adobe releases were years apart but you're unhappy with a couple of
months because it's a subscription? I can't follow this logic.

Below history is just Photoshop, and if anything it looks like change velocity
has increased since it became subscription-based.

[https://adobe.fandom.com/wiki/Adobe_Photoshop_release_histor...](https://adobe.fandom.com/wiki/Adobe_Photoshop_release_history)

~~~
justinmeiners
> Historical Adobe releases were years apart

Because they were new versions and they had to sell you on the upgrade.

Presumably one of the advantages of subscriptions is they can make ongoing
improvements regularly as opposed to big releases. They release updates now,
they just don't have many new features.

~~~
trickldwn8nxjf
Blender costs nothing and is used extensively throughout the digital media
industry.

Presumably the advantages of a subscription is to cater to the meme “free ==
fascism”.

~~~
tomnipotent
Blender is great. I use it myself (3D resin printing). But I've also used
similar software I had to pay for, which was _much_ better than Blender
overall. Same way Photoshop is better than Gimp, and Windows UI is still
better than Gnome/KDE. Sometimes to get great software and experience, you
have to pay for it. And that's ok, it doesn't make the free software, like
Blender, any less eff'ing awesome.

------
buserror
I think all these companies rely on /captive audiences/. ie people who have
invested in their product already, and they can somehow "up sell" them the
subscribtion for a while and it sounds like a GREAT plan.

However, any 'new' customer will not let themselves be trapped. It's happening
with Adobe Photoshop and stuff, where they've been skinning their customer
base for years, but quite frankly who would _now_ as a new potiential customer
decide to shackle themselves to that? I know quite a few people who will use
inferior tools JUST so they don't have to hook up to Adobe blood-suck.

Say Adobe Lightroom. Super product, but updates started to slow down and slow
down and WOW now look it's all ONLINE baby for a price. I bought all updates
until LR6, but now I know it's a lot cheaper to archive my machine with LR6 in
a corner and use it for my photo edit than switching to the 'super value
online thingy' for $$$/year. I don't use it that much to want that, and next
time I want to use it, it actually might be incompatible with /whatever is in
my chain of hardware/ anyway.

I'm sad to say Sketchup is doing this, if they had a $100 upgrade price every
year or so, I'd pay happily -- however here's lies the other main problem:
these companies don't WANT to invest in R&D enough to have a 'valid' reason to
have a new major version every 12-18 months, they actually think people will
just keep paying.

Well guess what, perhaps some people will, but no NEW people will. In the case
of sketchup, whatever the marketing blurbs have spattered about, NOTHING IS
NEW for like 10 years, I mean, they try to add 'hooks' here and there, but the
main program is exactly the same, same bugs for that long. I suspect the devs
who know how to do matrix multiplication have long left after google dumped
the product, and they are now left with a handful of webheads.

Do I want to pay for that?

Hmm wait until I clean the coffee off the front my t-shirt.

~~~
roywiggins
I'm still on Lightroom 5, I bought it years ago and that's where all my photos
live. If I'd been forced into a subscription the total cost would have been
many multiples of what I paid. I don't rent my camera for years on end- why
would I rent the software that organizes all my photos?

~~~
StillBored
I agree and there are pieces of software I've only purchased once and have
used for decades. But that also creates a bit of an incentive not to worry to
much about quality. After all, selling you a fixed progress bar in the next
version gives people an incentive to upgrade.

Its really to bad, that paying for software isn't more about rewarding good
behavior.

------
mojomark
As one who has used SketchUp for many years (because it was free for Makers),
and even bought a pro licence at one point, I can say with confidence that
this product is NOT worth more than $25/yr. It's riddled with bugs and the
resultant models are extremely unreliable in terms of precision. Even with
Pro, you need to buy a ton of plugins to do things you would think would be
pretty standard for a Pro license like rendering, animation, pipes from lines,
etc (there isn't really a decent animation plugin either that isn't buggy).

This is for making quick rough concept models only. For any serious
engineering or 3D printing, I recommend Blender, Autodesk Inventor, or
Solidworks.

Do not waste your money on SkethUp. You will waste a lot of time working
around bugs and you will need to buy extra pluggins to do basic tasks, many of
which are barely supported by their owners (there are exceptions). It's a
product that had great potential, but has simply devolved.

~~~
starpilot
Onshape is made by former SW devs and is incredible. If you're used to
professional CAD you'll feel right at home. Here's a stool I made (no login
required):
[https://cad.onshape.com/documents/3a4dd47b03e073e4d7848163/w...](https://cad.onshape.com/documents/3a4dd47b03e073e4d7848163/w/4f496fb0c629a412ccfa5798/e/aca72e289f2c6252dc7c010a)

~~~
mojomark
Nice!

------
protomyth
I guess for businesses the whole annual pricing is fine, if not preferred, but
I wonder how many of these companies are killing any possibility of non-
businesses buying their software. Maybe that's ok with them and they have some
internal calculation that those people cost them more than they are worth.

I hate subscriptions, for a lot of the reason others have said (ex. getting
locked into a piece of software that holds my data hostage), but I got a few
others. Its been a royal pain in the butt to have a bunch of subscriptions
during this time. I have a lot more outgoing cash and living closer to the
paycheck since others need the savings. Companies are just lazy about
subscription scheduling.

It must be paid on the first day of the month or a fixed day. For the most
part, people pay rent on the first. I wonder how many creators on Paetron
would make more money if the timing could be changed.

Let's say you have a product that is used by seniors in the USA. You might
want to seriously consider doing a bit of work an allowing them to schedule to
pay you on the third Wednesday of the month or the Thursday following the
third Wednesday of the month.

The common refrain is that you shouldn't be buying product X if this is a
problem for you. Well, maybe, but dips like this are a pain and not getting
into a situation where accidents happen would be nice. Accidents resulting
from a bank fee is just a pain.

The other problem is now you are a Netflix, Hulu, Disney+, Utility, and Rent
competitor. There is a big difference between a one-time purchase and signing
up for a continuing cost along with all the others.

------
WhatIsDukkha
For many people its likely that just learning some Blender is a good choice
these days -

[https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=using+blender+2...](https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=using+blender+2.8+like+sketchup&page=&utm_source=opensearch)

Being able to work in 3d is like a superpower that is just laying there
waiting for you :)

------
ohazi
I'm so tired of this bullshit. Fuck proprietary formats and fuck proprietary
software.

The _only_ reliable, long-term way to guarantee that you'll have perpetual
access to software that you rely on is for you to own a copy of the source for
that software.

We can have additional conversations about open source licenses and funding,
but if you don't have the source, you will eventually be fucked.

~~~
ur-whale
> The only reliable, long-term way to guarantee that you'll have perpetual
> access to software

Wholeheartedly agree, but it's worse than that: it's not perpetual access to
the software that matters, but perpetual access to your own damn work.

Anything you create with proprietary tools is on a guaranteed path to bitrot
and not being readable at some point int the near future.

------
smnrchrds
So they are going from 700$ for perpetual license to 300$ per year
subscription. How on earth are they framing it as a net benefit for their
customers?

~~~
antaviana
Probably the quality of their product will increase because they will not have
the pressure to engage the yearly upgrade circus, adding dubious features just
to justify upgrading and competing with themselves.

Also they will be more likely to stay in business due to the recurring
business so you will not have to fear a mature yet useful product going away
because their demand dries up.

Subscription aligns objectives. They want your continued business and you want
that a product that does something you need is not abandoned when you reach a
point where upgrades do more harm than good.

~~~
smnrchrds
> _you will not have to fear a mature yet useful product going away because
> their demand dries up._

Now you have to fear it much more. With perpetual licenses, you never lose
access to your work and your files. Maybe you have to keep a computer working
with current version of Windows, because the software does not work with the
next one. But you can continue using the software, well, in perpetuity. Many
people are still using the last non-subscription version of Lightroom,
Photoshop, etc. Some people are still using Lotus Agenda and WordPerfect.

In contrast, with subscription software, if the company does not do well and
goes out of business, or does moderately well and gets acquhired, or if for
any reason loses interest in continuing providing the software, you get an
email about their incredible journey and how proud they are and oh yeah, the
service will stop working in 20 days and your files and years of work locked
in a proprietary format will become inaccessible.

~~~
antaviana
Hopefully you will not have to reinstall your perpetual license application
when the vendor activation server is long gone.

Since the long term survival chances of businesses based on permanent licenses
are a lot lower, then your odds will be better with freeware, open source or
pirated software.

~~~
smnrchrds
Wouldn't virtual machines solve that issue?

------
AbraKdabra
SketchUp died the day it was bought, I mean, it's awesome for its purpose and
I've been using it for +12 years, but it lost the magical essence from when it
was owned and made really great by Google.

------
mgamache
This is of course driven by the desire to have predictable and steady revenue.
It's easier to plan and resource, but I would also say it's easier to coast
for a mature product. If you need to push a release to generate a revenue
influx, you would be more motivated to deliver. However, in the case of a
mature product each feature will probably have diminishing returns. For the
user this makes the incentive to skip an upgrade tempting, so locking them
into a sub model while there's still leverage is a strategy.

------
vatys
I've been using the free SketchUp (now SketchupMake) for many years, and it
seems that no longer exists. I think it's been replaced with a new web-only
free version. I found it to be pretty nice for simple woodworking and home
projects, with a rather intuitive interface. My use was so casual and
infrequent that I never really considered the paid version.

Is there a good alternative (free or reasonably priced paid) for very simple
and casual 3D modeling?

~~~
chabes
Tinkercad is free. It’s even simpler than sketchup. Might be what you’re
looking for. [https://tinkercad.com/](https://tinkercad.com/)

~~~
ab_testing
TinkerCad is owned by AutoDesk. So I would not be surprised if it ends up in a
similar situation as Sketchup. If you want a totally free product that is also
open source - your 2 options are

1\. Freecad [https://www.freecadweb.org/](https://www.freecadweb.org/)

2\. Blender [https://www.blender.org/](https://www.blender.org/)

------
monadic2
Is anyone aware analyses of how this affects a company, their employees, their
products? I find it very difficult to reason about value with subscription
services, especially when the costs are even more divorced from labor than
normal.

~~~
som33
Subscription software is just a way to fleece gullible people, most software
before mass internet penetration allowed stealing software (I refuse to call
software as a subscription a rational thing for 99% of software).

Is just a way for companies to sell you the same shit repackaged with only
minimal effort. You don't seem to grasp the fundamental principle of a
corporation is to give you the LEAST possible service for the highest possible
price. AKA it's fuck you I got mine.

99% of the time Software as a service preys on gullible people and flaws in
your psychology you aren't aware of. Best to stay away.

Piracy actually put pressure on companies to innovate because you could get
the complete version for free there was some incentive to improve the product
to make it better than the pirate version, as strange as that sounds. Piracy
is actually good for competition because most people are honest, if that
wasn't the case Microsoft, EA, Valve, etc couldn't have become rich pre-
internet where it was trivially easy to pirate everything by just copying the
files.

Modern DRM is literally holding files hostage using the internet as a dongle
and using encryption.

So no software as a service preys on gullible people to sell you last years
with minor tweaks at inflated prices.

~~~
justinmeiners
> fundamental principle of a corporation is to give you the LEAST possible
> service for the highest possible price.

And as a consumer you want to get as many goods as possible for as little
price as possible.

~~~
monadic2
This is why I have 18 smart cars in my driveway.

~~~
justinmeiners
Maximizing total number of goods is not the same as maximizing goods per
dollar spent. You want 1 smart car, and you want to pay as little for it as
they will let you.

------
gurjeet
Serious question. Why would I learn Sketchup when I can invest the same time
in learning Blender [1] and get much higher ROI?

[1]: [https://www.blender.org/](https://www.blender.org/)

------
blackaspen
This is annoying. I recently got a 3D printer that actually works (as opposed
to one that requires endless tinkering) and I've been using SketchUp a lot
lately.

Just today I encountered an issue with some bad mesh and I was thinking "you
know, I like this product, I might just give them money, at least I'll get a
perpetual license out of it".

This makes me reconsider that. I really think JetBrains went the right route
here for their subscription/license and I was excited to see Trimble follow in
their footsteps, until now.

And also this marketing copy is just a giant slap in the face. Give me the
numbers!

~~~
avhon1
In my experience, Sketchup consistently produces poor STL meshes. The only
solutions I've found are to import the meshes into Blender and repair them
manually, or redesign the project in a different CAD program. (I've settled on
Solvespace for my personal use.)

------
fmajid
I didn’t realize the Trimble GPS company made 3D modeling software. I am in
the market for some since I got a 3D printer to go beyond TinkerCad, hopefully
less overwhelming than Blender.

Subscription pricing is an absolute deal-breaker as far as I am concerned, so
I am glad to learn this so I can avoid SketchUp. I have largely switched over
from Adobe CS to Affinity (only Lightroom remains tricky to migrate from, even
though I’ve done 4 DAM migrations before).

------
randompwd
> You can subscribe for a year, skip a year, renew every year — it’s up to
> you. Whatever you choose, you’ll always have the latest version with the
> newest features

They may want to rework those sentences to be less absurdist. Those lines are
more akin to "Cancel your subscription? - we'll still always give you the
latest version! All bits must go!!"

------
jdechko
Anyone know of any alternatives for Architectural Modeling? Preferably in the
same price range with MacOS compatibility.

~~~
profsnuggles
I don't do architectural modeling, I build furniture, but check out
bricscad.[https://www.bricsys.com/en-intl/](https://www.bricsys.com/en-intl/)
I describe it to people as if AutoCAD and Sketchup had a baby. I bought it
because it was a reasonable priced CAD with linux support, but it has gotten
really amazing in the last few releases.

They even released a stripped down free version with a more sketchup like
interface called BricsCAD shape.

~~~
jdechko
Thanks for the link. Unfortunately, it looks more like an alternative to
AutoCAD than Sketchup. It’s only a side gig so it’s not critical at the
moment.

------
ur-whale
My prediction: there will very soon be exactly two buckets for Desktop apps:

1) open-source 2) subscription

------
igammarays
First software ate the world. Then capitalism ate software, as it degenerated
into rent-seeking.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rent-
seeking](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rent-seeking)

