Worth Repeating: Altium Circuit Studio half price until 3/30/17 $495

[Iwanushka]

as far as I'm aware altium don't let you transfer licences between people. they are tied to you name/email etc so i dont think it would be easy to do regardless of altiums policy

This policy sucks and it violates EU laws as far as I know.

[timb]

as far as I'm aware altium don't let you transfer licences between people. they are tied to you name/email etc so i dont think it would be easy to do regardless of altiums policy

This policy sucks and it violates EU laws as far as I know.

You can now buy it for $500 from within Circuit Studio itself, no need to go through e14! (As of a couple of days ago, per a post by an Altium rep in the other thread.)

[Chopsticks]

personally i dont think it sucks as it is a subscription based package, though i am from Australia and perhaps my views don't align with the majority?

[GlowingGhoul]

personally i dont think it sucks as it is a subscription based package, though i am from Australia and perhaps my views don't align with the majority?

It's not a subscription it's a permanent, perpetual license.

[stuartk]

You can now buy it for $500 from within Circuit Studio itself, no need to go through e14! (As of a couple of days ago, per a post by an Altium rep in the other thread.)

I can't find that on the CS website. The only link to buy takes you to E14 and it says that it's exclusively sold by E14.

[GlowingGhoul]

You can now buy it for $500 from within Circuit Studio itself, no need to go through e14! (As of a couple of days ago, per a post by an Altium rep in the other thread.)

I can't find that on the CS website. The only link to buy takes you to E14 and it says that it's exclusively sold by E14.

You buy it from within the Circuit Studio software.

Download the demo version from circuitstudio.com. Go to "My account" on the home screen. Under "billing" enter your credit card information.

Then, also under "My account", click "licenses". You will see a buy button to purchase a license for $495 from within CircuitStudio.

[stuartk]

You buy it from within the Circuit Studio software. Download the demo.

When you attempt to purchase from within the demo, you have to insert your credit card number before they give you the price of the license.

I'm just not certain what that price would be, and by then your card is billed.

Can Altium comment on that?

[Neganur]

The card will not be billed. You have to enter the card data first, it is saved under your profile/payment info. Only then can you see the price and click on the actual purchase button.

And I agree this is not standard shopping cart behavior, and poor usability.

[GlowingGhoul]

To get the $500 discount you must now buy through: http://www.altium.com/eagle-switch/circuitstudio/

Also, discount code REACY1 takes another $25 off for a final price of $470

[jpb]

Unless I've got this wrong, the Farnell price is £395 so it looks like the discount is available in the UK through the normal channels

http://uk.farnell.com/altium/11-100-15-1-e/circuitstudio-commercial-license/dp/2490980

I notice several posts stating that you have to be a business to buy through Farnell - this isn't the case in the UK, I have an account and just use my personal credit card. I don't think I was even asked if I was a business or not.

[Neganur]

Hah!

My trial expired and I decided to go purchase the license. But I encountered a nice 'feature' when clickingthe '+Buy New License':


OK I thought, I'll update....but no:

 

[dimkasta]

  I had the same issue but I assumed I had to upgrade to the new version. Is it out yet?

[Neganur]

1.4 is out, but at least you can't update from within the software

EDIT: The website installer offers to update:

[plazma]

You can update from the software.

[Zbig]

REACY1 code doesn't seem to work on the Farnell site for my location (Poland), neither does ACS10. Any hints what else could I try? Or perhaps it was just a "hole/exploit" in the way that the codes were only meant to by used with the full-price versions and they plugged it? I noticed that it's now a separate SKU after you click the link at http://www.altium.com/eagle-switch/circuitstudio/ - mentioning Eagle migration in its name explicitly.

[Neganur]

Maybe I wasn't clear enough.

You cannot update from within the software when your trial license expired,
you can't purchase a license from within the software if your version is not the latest.

You can go to the website and download the installer for the newest version and it will offer to update your old software.
Once you've updated you can purchase a license from within the software - at the price of $995.00

Farnell Finland still offers the reduced price - but I can't buy it from there.
Farnell Export GB (export.farnell.com) still sells it for £395.00 : Manufacturer Part No:   11-100-15-1 P E / Order Code:   2726528

The voucher for Circuit Studio at normal price is on the "offers" page of export.farnell.com but is not valid for the already discounted order code above.

[jpb]

I see the Farnell price has now gone up to £805 - more than double the £395 it was when I last posted.

The trouble with special offers is that when they end the product seems super-expensive. Altium seems to have randomly changed the price twice now - I would have thought stability would be much better for customer confidence.

[Neganur]

Exactly, and since the offer was originally advertised until 30.03. I think?
But then again, was that tied to an actual Eagle license or not...too confusing this whole thing.

I just hope they also will eventually use other distribution channels than Farnell.
Surely they must have someone who tests that the purchasing process works smoothly, or don't they have a usability analyst...?
Maybe just a decision from above without proper research.

[PlainName]

I recall some while back there was a special price on the X1 desktop search for PC, and a group of whom I was a member got wind of it. Naturally, many of us went to buy it but found vastly differing prices, around an order of magnitude. There didn't seem to be any logic to it, and I think someone eventually emailed X1 to ask wtf was going on.

To our surprise, the X1 top bod popped up in our group to explain. It seems that they didn't know what price to charge(!), whether to price high and get lower sales or get less profit but many more sales. The variation in pricing was to try and find the sweet spot for profit vs sales, and we were screwing it up by trying to game the system. He offered us preferential pricing if we promised not to blab about it and spoil their experiment (this is going back some way so no longer matters).

Could be that Altium are trying the same kind of thing.

[GlowingGhoul]

OK, it now appears the most reliable way to get the promotion is to go to the Farrell or element 14 site for your country and search for "eagle users promo". $495 on US, 395 pounds on UK, and 572 euro on DK.

[jpb]

PCB CAD software is not like buying a piece of hardware say, you have to commit to a system and probably will want to upgrade to later versions for features or bug fixes.

If you can't trust the price to stay within reasonable bounds then buying in on a cheap one off offer will mean that you're stuck if they put the price back up to $2k in a year or so.

[GlowingGhoul]

PCB CAD software is not like buying a piece of hardware say, you have to commit to a system and probably will want to upgrade to later versions for features or bug fixes.

If you can't trust the price to stay within reasonable bounds then buying in on a cheap one off offer will mean that you're stuck if they put the price back up to $2k in a year or so.

Why would you need to buy it again for $2000 (or whatever high price) in a year? Upgrades are included for the first year, and maintainance is $150 year after that.

[electrolust]

Thanks, I just bought it, in the US.  4/2/17.  I clicked through the banner link on circuitstudio.com to get to the special offer on newark immediately.  I also bought the maintenance at this time, to hedge against a price increase.  Anyway just 1 year of maintenance isn't at all useful.  Funny advertising from Altium, dissing subscription licenses when in fact CS also really decreases in usefulness without the maintenance (includes Vault subscription).

The email from Newark said, "order placed".  No license has come to me yet, so presumably they can still cancel the order.  That would be pretty bad form though, if they want the offer to expire I should not have been able to order in the first place.

FOLLOWUP: I got the license.  I have a slight buyer's remorse, as I can't import my Proteus data and CS doesn't have the IPC wizard so I still have a crap workflow for footprint creation.  bah.  I think I did know this from prior research but forgot about it due to sale fever.  At least I can import my Eagle data.

[Zbig]

It seems the deal is still on. They have probably finally figured out that lowering the price by X times could actually get them more than an X times increase in sales. Go figure.