Altium Design Trade-In 45% Off

[EEVblog]

https://www.altium.com/trade-in

$8000 with the trade-in? 

Trade-in KiCad 

[ahbushnell]

Can you trade in Circuit Studio? 

[ajb]

At this point "free" is the most appropriate price for the subscription anyway, even if the base price of the software weren't eight fucking thousand dollars. 

[Lromine]

Hi all, I'm the VP of Marketing here at Altium and the short answer to your questions here is, Yes. We've enjoyed significant growth over these past years and we are keen to make it as easy as possible for everyone to join the family. This growth has created a lot of opportunities for sole proprietor Service Bureaus (Large Service Bureaus for that matter too), and we want to make sure that everyone has the ability to be a part of this growing family. Likewise, as we've added so many users, companies are finding a lot of design and engineering talent out there coming on board with Altium Designer experience and we want it to be easy for these companies to make the switch too. So, bring us what you got and we can most certainly work something out with you. These opportunities are worldwide, for the most part, so, ring us or just complete one of our forms around the internet or on our home page at www.altium.com. We have something for everybody; existing customers looking to add a user, those looking to upgrade an older version of Altium Designer to the latest, trade in a competitive product, etc.

On the Trade-In offer specifically, you will be locked in for 2 years which means you'll also be in the queue to get access to AD20 and AD21 while also having access to technical support the whole time. 

[mstevens]

On the Trade-In offer specifically, you will be locked in for 2 years which means you'll also be in the queue to get access to AD20 and AD21 while also having access to technical support the whole time.

"Marketing"... I know there were years where I paid for maintenance and got nothing. Then later Altium had a promotion where if your license was not current you could bring it up to date for less than $1k; so even though I had been paying every year those who opted not to were able to just get all those years of updates for essentially nothing. AD20 and AD21 may be a bit dubious.

Then there is the I have been off maintenance and now I must make up all the back maintenance scheme.

I own an AD license and have since Protel 99. I am glad to see Altium prospering. It would be nice if there were some consistency in the pricing and perhaps some lowering of it as well.

[T3sl4co1l]

Judging by the cluster going on in your Bugcrunch, not nearly as many customers are going to be attracted to new or continued subscriptions as you had hoped...

Tim

[ajb]

Hi all, I'm the VP of Marketing here at Altium

Hi Lawrence, thanks for popping in!  I have a marketing suggestion for you:  If you're keen to get people on board with the subscription, you should probably do a better job of demonstrating its value.  The shiny new features are great, but lots of veteran users have longstanding issues that are daily or even hourly pain points with Altium.  Just look at Bugcrunch.  Actually, does anyone at Altium look at Bugcrunch?  Serious question, because of the 2700+ active bug reports (many active since 2011!) almost zero have any visible interaction from Altium staff.  If you could get some actual responses from the development/testing team to some of these issues that would really help with user confidence.  #7632 is probably a good place to start:



(note that this was submitted 2.5 years ago, and still zero response!)

I'm sure you have or can obtain some numbers on subscription retention, but as far as I'm concerned the subscription does not present a net positive value anywhere close to its asking price, which I guess is part of why you're keen to give it away.  It's also probably why our rep agreed to such a steep discount when we renewed this past year.  If it weren't for that and the hope that AD19 would be worthwhile, I wouldn't have renewed at all.  I'm definitely not renewing this year.  When AD20 or AD21 comes out I'll be happy to demo it and if it seems worthwhile, great, I'll be happy to pay for it.  But I'm not gonna pay for promises.

[DerekG]

Can you ask Altium to revise its stupid EULA?
I paid totally $12k on it, and I'm moving back to China after a few years in US.
Now my license is suddenly not legal to use in China due to the stupid geographical licensing shit. To be exact, term 2.4.1.

Altium US refuses to issue me a waiver, and Altium China refuses to allow a transfer, even if paid.

This is easily got around. You need to use a VPN, setting the end server to the USA when using Altium. Do this to access the Altium component vault.

When not interacting with Altium's servers, simply set up your PC firewall to block altium.exe from accessing the net.

[DerekG]

but lots of veteran users have longstanding issues that are daily or even hourly pain points with Altium.  Just look at Bugcrunch.  Actually, does anyone at Altium look at Bugcrunch?  Serious question, because of the 2700+ active bug reports (many active since 2011!) almost zero have any visible interaction from Altium staff.

Welcome to the World of Altium.

I did not update my licence of Altium 6.9 due to bugs carried over from earlier versions that Altium claimed had been rectified.

And I note in Altium ver 14 which I use for work, that some of these bugs are still present.

[Lromine]

I sent you a Direct Message and I talked to the GM in China. Just reach out to us via those contact details and we will move it over once we give it a look in the database...

[Lromine]

These are fair points. I've been here at Altium for ~14 years, started as a sales guy and have direct experience with customers on this very topic. It's a balancing act to be sure. When we say we want to make it easy for people to access the product, this must include those that have lapsed their subscription, for whatever reason. Often it's simply due to workload and they simply let it go dormant, and yes, sometimes it's because they've decided that we weren't for them. Fortunately, it's typically the former. No matter the reason, from time to time we do lower that financial barrier so as that these users can come back into the fold. We do it rarely, and it's typically a very positive thing. Once on subscription (or back on as it were), we assume the onus to deliver value greater than the dollars you've invested.  Again, fortunately, the vast majority of our subscribers do renew with us. As and for the consistency of releases, many years ago we had an admittedly lackluster record. However, this has not been the case for many years now, and we consistently release robust new versions on time year after year. We strive to strike a balance between revolutionary new features, requested must-have feature requests, and yes, bug fixes. These release notes can be found here https://www.altium.com/documentation/19.1/display/ADES/Altium+Designer+19.1+-+((New+Features+and+Updates+Summary))_AD You can toggle between the various releases going back to AD15 and anything earlier than that, you can find under "Historical Release Notes". Again, it's a balancing act, but we really do make an effort to enable everyone that has a desire to use our products.

[Bud]

Can you ask Altium to revise its stupid EULA?
I paid totally $12k on it, and I'm moving back to China after a few years in US.
Now my license is suddenly not legal to use in China due to the stupid geographical licensing shit. To be exact, term 2.4.1.

Altium US refuses to issue me a waiver, and Altium China refuses to allow a transfer, even if paid.

This is easily got around. You need to use a VPN, setting the end server to the USA when using Altium. Do this to access the Altium component vault.

When not interacting with Altium's servers, simply set up your PC firewall to block altium.exe from accessing the net.

Why blueskull should be doing this dance after paying 12k.

[Bud]

My problem with Altium Designer was it was  never been a finished product. Each version had infuriating bugs. I was under impression Altium did not give shit  about making efforts to make releases polished.

[mrpackethead]

Often it's simply due to workload and they simply let it go dormant, and yes, sometimes it's because they've decided that we weren't for them.

I decided not to renew my subscription because I have lost trust in Altium.

When we were a small startup, we purchased two seats and subscription.. It was version 13 time.   We had endless trouble with  bugs. ALtium blamed our hardware, so we went out and bought new PC's that were exactly to spec. Yet the bugs remained.   I remember nearly have a crash every few hours, and it just made it impossible.  Given that we had spent so much of our money, we had no option to continue.. After numerous attempts at getting things resovled and after some 12 months we were at the end of our 'subscription' and thing had not improved.   I had some bad experiences with Altiums support people and had they been my people, they would have been called in for a serious talk.   Your sales engineer kept pestering me and eventually Altium did the right thing and gave us a new subscription for free, in recognition of the problems we had ( although never admitted that there was a problem ).

We upgraded and got to version 17, and it does 99% of what I must have. It does not do all i'd Like to do, but i can work around that.   I evaluated version 18, and i was just terribly disapointed, that it was once again full of bugs,  and i was not going to move to that from what was finally a mostly stable bit of software.    When i look at bug crunch right now,  I see that there is still many thousands of unresolved issues.   So when it was time for sub renewal, i was back where i was intially.. asking what actually was the sub paying for?  Being able to upgrade to buggy software, when i had something that mostly worked for us.    I have not looked at v19,   I'm told its better by some my industry peers, but none  are giving me 'rave' reviews, and several i know have also just stayed at v17 and are getting on with it.

The issue i have is that i'm asked to pay quite substainial fees for 'subscription' but in the main,  I dont' see how i can trust Altium to provide the service it said it was going to do, which was to fix problems.

i'd need some pretty compelling reason, and a lot of reassurance to renew a subscription and there is no way that i think that i shoudl have to pay for the time that V18 was an option, given its large number of bugs.   

Once on subscription (or back on as it were), we assume the onus to deliver value greater than the dollars you've invested.  Again, fortunately, the vast majority of our subscribers do renew with us. As and for the consistency of releases, many years ago we had an admittedly lackluster record.

V13,14,15    were buggy, 13 was nearly unusable.

16 and 17 were acceptable.
18 was ( to all accounts, but not my experinence ) not really usable.
19 Is not getting rave reviews, but has supposabley fixed some things.

You are right, its been very lackluster,  and you burned my trust ( and others )

However, this has not been the case for many years now, and we consistently release robust new versions on time year after year.

Version 18 was not that long ago?

We strive to strike a balance between revolutionary new features, requested must-have feature requests, and yes, bug fixes.

Had Altium just fixed the bugs, you woudl still have me as a subscriber, but one who probably had a neutral view on it.  Adding some new features would give you the opportunity to convert me into a raving customer who loves you..  But because ( in my expereince ) bugs never got fixed and i suffered lots of crashes,   well,   I dont' think that you do fix bugs, and you have lost my trust.

I'm really glad that you have decided to post on the forum though. That is a good thing.

Doing a proper evaluation of something like AD is not something that you can do in a few hours. You really have to do quite a bit of work in it, and thats time i cna't get back.    I'd like to be able to submit a PO for a subscription, but i need to be able to justify it to my team, and right now, I can't.

[thm_w]

v19 is quite good, only crashed on me once in ~30hrs of use (app kept open, never restarted) .

If you want a trial, it looks like its easy enough to get a 15 day license: https://www.altium.com/altium-trial-flow

[radar_macgyver]

In my case, it doesn't have to crash - there are two bugs that force me to close and re-open it several times an hour:

1. The properties tab often stops showing properties for the thing that's been clicked, and instead just shows the properties of the schematic sheet
2. 'Refresh' in svndblibs does not do an svn pull from the server, just refreshes the database.

Also memory usage. I'm glad it's 64-bit, but this reminds me of the bad old days of Firefox where memory usage would grow without bound. I often find X2.EXE using > 6 GB of memory and slowing to a crawl. Clearly a memory leak. Even just letting it sit idle with a design open, watch task manager and the memory usage slowly creeping up.

I too have posted on bugcrunch numerous times, only one so far has ever got any response besides 'we're deactivating this because there was no activity'. Ugh.

[ddavidebor]

It's not a memory leak. I've seen it get up to 19GB with 4-5 boards and 40-50 schematics open.

Davide

[djsb]

I got the "Trade up" email. I thought about it for maybe five minutes. I paid £5k for Altium many years ago (I have a perpetual release 10 licence). I just can't afford to upgrade. Simple as that.
I now use Kicad and ONLY Kicad. Why pay lots of money for software that is so buggy and for features that I will never use? This statement "We strive to strike a balance between revolutionary new features, requested must-have feature requests, and yes, bug fixes." seems to me to have the wrong priorities. In my opinion the bugs should be a priority and then the must have features and then the "revolutionary" new features last.
I have access to both the Kicad developers list AND the Altium forum. Non of the messages I receive in my inbox from the Altium user forum are about bugs that HAVE been fixed (in fact these bug fixes are invisible to users as far as I can see). There are MANY messages from users complaining about bugs in new releases.
Contrast that with Kicad where every evening I get messages about ALL THE BUGS THAT HAVE BEEN FIXED, feature requests and full transparency on how the software is being developed. Why would I want to go back to software that is going backwards. Anyway it seems to me Altium is in trouble. Why the discounts all of a sudden? Sorry I'm sticking with Kicad.

[DerekG]

I got the "Trade up" email. I thought about it for maybe five minutes. I paid £5k for Altium many years ago (I have a perpetual release 10 licence). I just can't afford to upgrade. Simple as that.
I now use Kicad and ONLY Kicad. Why pay lots of money for software that is so buggy and for features that I will never use?

I moved over to DipTrace 4 years ago. I too was sick of the Atlium bugs. I've never looked back.

This statement "We strive to strike a balance between revolutionary new features, requested must-have feature requests, and yes, bug fixes." seems to me to have the wrong priorities. In my opinion the bugs should be a priority and then the must have features and then the "revolutionary" new features last.

I fully agree. Altium make such an advertising hoo-haa about their new features that users decide to take an upgrade or a new licence ......... to find out that half of the new "features" only half work.

Non of the messages I receive in my inbox from the Altium user forum are about bugs that HAVE been fixed

Welcome to the world of Altium.

There are MANY messages from users complaining about bugs in new releases.

I joined in an Altium Webinar several years back to see the latest features on offer. The poor instructor had received an update overnight from the Chinese development centre only to find out the new update broke the very feature he was trying to show everyone. It was very embarrassing for him.

Anyway it seems to me Altium is in trouble. Why the discounts all of a sudden?

You could well be right. Altium are a publicly listed company with many shareholders to feed. They have to keep up all the hype to keep bringing on new users just to survive.

[Gibson486]

Lol... I was surfing the web and an ad popped up. It was for Atium. It said the price was 3499 or something like that. I was kind of stunned and clicked it. It came with 2 upgrades. I was kind of confused and thought they were advertising the subscription, so I clicked around and I accidentally navigated out. I tried going back, but Google ad sense gave me a different ad instead. If that price was for real, I would buy it.

[DerekG]

so I clicked around and I accidentally navigated out. I tried going back

Look in the history of your web browser to find that Altium special offer.

[jc101]

Lol... I was surfing the web and an ad popped up. It was for Atium. It said the price was 3499 or something like that. I was kind of stunned and clicked it. It came with 2 upgrades. I was kind of confused and thought they were advertising the subscription, so I clicked around and I accidentally navigated out. I tried going back, but Google ad sense gave me a different ad instead. If that price was for real, I would buy it.

Was it for the Altium Startup Program?  https://www.altium.com/altium-startup-program/

Basically you pay and get Altium Designer and support for 3 years, for around that price.  Then at the end of the time the licence times out, but if you purchase the full licence the price of the startup licence is deducted from the final bill.  I went for this package as CS was causing me grief and I have already moved over from Eagle to CS and didn't want the pain of going back.

[EEVblog]

I own an AD license and have since Protel 99. I am glad to see Altium prospering. It would be nice if there were some consistency in the pricing and perhaps some lowering of it as well.

Altium have a history of rollercoaster pricing.
I was in the room when Nick Martin told all staff that they there slashing the price by 75% and were "burning the bridges" and could never go back to high priced software 

[Robert Karl]

Lol... I was surfing the web and an ad popped up. It was for Atium. It said the price was 3499 or something like that. I was kind of stunned and clicked it. It came with 2 upgrades. I was kind of confused and thought they were advertising the subscription, so I clicked around and I accidentally navigated out. I tried going back, but Google ad sense gave me a different ad instead. If that price was for real, I would buy it.

Same here!
But I found that link was for upgrading an existing Altium licence to the latest. https://www.altium.com/upgrade-old or https://www.altium.com/de/upgrade

I think this is prob what you also saw.

Honestly I'm pretty disappointed. I'd not hesitate to buy it at that price.

[mrpackethead]

So, how do i know that versions 20, 21 will be resonably stable and bug free.  I'm being asked to pay for something that i can't test, and in fact no body has tested.    Based on previous expereince I simply dont' have confidence in Altium to deliver.