Altium is killing off perpetual AD

[Analog]

Altium is killing the perpetual license and support for perpetual licenses. Altium has been putting new stuff into pro and 365 for a while so I guess this is to be expected.

[ataradov]

Is there a link?

There was this not too long ago https://www.eevblog.com/forum/altium/altium-offers-perpetual-licenses-again/

[Analog]

I learned about it from my Altium account rep. I don't feel right about posting his email. My subscription is about to expire so he was giving me information and options.

[thm_w]

You realize there is a Pro perpetual license right? The price difference is nothing: https://www.altium.com/altium-designer/licensing

I learned about it from my Altium account rep. I don't feel right about posting his email. My subscription is about to expire so he was giving me information and options.

So you don't think they will say whatever is necessary to get you to renew your subscription?
If you get value out of the cloud features then pay subscription, if you are not, there is no need to pay it.

[ajb]

There's been so much volatility in Altium's pricing and license models lately it's hard to keep track of.  I wouldn't be totally shocked if Renesas decided to go subscription-only, and that definitely fits with some of the language in their press release from a couple months ago.  But that acquisition was only just executed yesterday (5/30), apparently, and I wouldn't expect anything like that to happen quite so soon.  If you plan to keep using Altium for the next year or so, then keeping your subscription active is probably a good move in case they pull a VMware and suddenly decide to stop offering subscriptions for perpetual licenses.  Or if you're okay with whatever version you're on currently, you can just stop paying for support and keep your perpetual licenses as they are going forward.

[Bud]

Altium is killing the perpetual license and support for perpetual licenses.

Unless they mean no issuance of New perpetual licenses, Altium would invent a redefinition of the term "perpetual".

[nctnico]

  Or if you're okay with whatever version you're on currently, you can just stop paying for support and keep your perpetual licenses as they are going forward.

But what if they shut down the servers which deal with the perpetual roaming licenses which are out of subscription? If that gets shut down, a lot of companies can no longer transfer licenses from one PC to the other which makes it easy to share a license between workers and /or home and office PC. Worst, when the PC dies, the license may be gone with it.

[asmi]

I've just extended a support sub for my permanent license. Gave me a good discount too.

[thm_w]

  Or if you're okay with whatever version you're on currently, you can just stop paying for support and keep your perpetual licenses as they are going forward.

But what if they shut down the servers which deal with the perpetual roaming licenses which are out of subscription? If that gets shut down, a lot of companies can no longer transfer licenses from one PC to the other which makes it easy to share a license between workers and /or home and office PC. Worst, when the PC dies, the license may be gone with it.

If you can generate the offline .alf license file then you are good. But I don't know what the requirements are for that currently.
https://www.altium.com/documentation/altium-designer/standalone-licensing?version=22#working-offline

[jc101]

From the Altium forum, this is a mail someone received...

Starting July 1st, 2024, Altium will no longer offer new or renewal subscriptions for perpetual licenses.   Altium will honor previously purchased subscriptions through the end of their term but new or renewal subscriptions for perpetual licenses will no longer be available.   This decision aligns with industry trends and reflects the significant value our customers now realize from Altium 365. This change will reduce your upfront costs when adding Altium Designer capacity and enable Altium to invest more predictably in product development.   Prior to July 1st, 2024 you can still renew your subscription for one final 12-month contract.

Sadly, generating local licence files is mostly gone now, too. Licences are On-Demand rather than Standalone. I found this out when I tried to generate a standalone licence. I once could, but sometime in the past couple of years, I've become On-Demand. To get the standalone back was many, many pennies. 

The key is that perpetual licences can no longer have subscriptions to maintain currency. If you want updates beyond your current subscription term, it's SAAS or bust.

At the current prices, that is at least a 50% uplift annually per seat for all Altium users who wish to keep up to date and use any features above the standard level.

Impressive work that.

[Psi]

I've just extended a support sub for my permanent license. Gave me a good discount too.

Maybe because they knew it was ending and you would have to pay more for a new license too. 
Never underestimate the lengths companies will go to so they can bite the hands that feeds.
Eventually there's no fingers left on either hand and they starve, but it takes a while.

[jc101]

I haggled a 3 year deal, so in theory good to end of 2026. Though I suspect they could walk away from that if they want to.

What happens then? Well I suppose I have time to plan an exit strategy.

[Psi]

3 year deal for support or for the license though?

[jc101]

I have a perpetual licence, the deal was a 3 year subscription.

[nctnico]

Maybe Altium creates this uncertainty on purpose to make people feel they should pay to jump on the bandwagon... Meanwhile Reneses can show to their shareholders that buying Altium was a good idea.

[laseralex]

Maybe Altium creates this uncertainty on purpose to make people feel they should pay to jump on the bandwagon.

I will have the opposite effect for me - I'm going to stop giving them money.

If I switch to term-based licensing, my all my data becomes hostage.  If I ever stop paying, I will lose access to all the designs I make between now and the day I stop paying.  Imagine that I pay for the next 5 years and then stop.  Then 10 years from now a supplier drops the SOIC package for a part and I want to switch the  footprint to TSSOP.  I'm forced to buy a year-long license to do 15 minutes of work - and how much will they charge for that?  Current price is ~$4k but what if they decide to raise it to $10k?

On the other hand if I stop giving them money now I will always be able to create new designs, edit old designs, and have full control over my designs.  IN addition to not getting feature enhancements, I'll lose out on the database backend behind ActiveBOM which has been worth the cost for annual maintenance.  But I would much rather lose real-time component availability data than lose the ability to open and edit years worth of designs.

[laseralex]

I have a perpetual licence, the deal was a 3 year subscription.

Good to know.  Do you mind sharing what % discount you got relative to a single-year license?  I'm thinking I might try to do this with my seats, which are currently good through the end of October.

[jc101]

I have a perpetual licence, the deal was a 3 year subscription.

Good to know.  Do you mind sharing what % discount you got relative to a single-year license?  I'm thinking I might try to do this with my seats, which are currently good through the end of October.

It was over 40% off the standard price for the 3-year deal, which was invoiced annually, from memory.  I'd have to go back and look at the many quotes they sent me in December last year to be exact.

Compared to that, come 2026, I suspect it will be an unaffordable jump to continue.  Unless it all changes again by then, of course.

[laseralex]

It was over 40% off the standard price for the 3-year deal, which was invoiced annually, from memory.

Great deal!  I'll pay for a 3-year maintenance extension this month if they'll offer a similar deal.  But upon further reading, it sounds like they're only allowing a single 12-month extension at this point, with no further extensions allowed.  :-(

[jc101]

Not if they haven’t told you via e-mail about the new policy.
It is really a case asking them if they want some money or no money. They generally will go for the non zero option.

[asmi]

I told my sales rep that I didn't feel like I got enough out of last year's sub, and if this trend will continue, I will stop renewing it. I'm sure she would've mentioned if this was the last extension.

[ajawamnet]

I told my sales rep that I didn't feel like I got enough out of last year's sub, and if this trend will continue, I will stop renewing it. I'm sure she would've mentioned if this was the last extension.

It is from what the regional manager told me.  So if you have a perpetual or standalone you can no longer get support for it.  Going forward, if you get a perpetual for the new version it will cost you the full price - plus you get no upgrades.  Just whatever version is there the time you buy it.  It equated it to buying a car. 

If you want support, upgrades/patches you have to go term.   Which is over $4K per year.   I'm wondering if this is the way they got their valuation up for the acquisition. 

Honestly, I did over 1,500 designs with Ad 6.9 up unit 2015.  One won this award:
https://www.afsoc.af.mil/News/Article-Display/Article/162816/benchmark-dragon-spear-program-earns-william-j-perry-award/
Where:
"According to the award citation, the Dragon Spear program delivered the capability ahead of schedule, under cost and with greater capability than first theorized. The team's innovative and unconventional approach enabled the fielding of next generation precision strike capabilities in months and at 20 percent unit cost. Eight MC-130W aircraft were delivered just 15 months after production funding was approved and several more will be fielded by the summer - completing the line-up."

So it's the engineer.  I seriously look at AD and what I've now gotten since ad6.9

- Squiggly wiggly push and shove which is kinda cool, but many times I have to revert back to the way I did stuff.

- A newfangled layer stack manager that does a bit of field solving so I don't have to go to Saturn so much.  But the rules... well, if I base them on an impedance layer stack - and then change the layer stack - I just get an error in the Design Rules.  It doesn't update the rules when I change the stack geometry.

- I did get selection filters which are cool.  But it's like the only thing I really got that woks correctly.

I did LOSE a bunch of feature that used to be in AD17.   
- The loss of Modal Dialogs during placement.  I got a Properties panel similar to what Cadence has.  Which sucks.

- When dragging a group of symbols, if erroneous connections occurred, AD17 would flag them.  Nope not no mo' - just a green check mark even if a bunch of connections short out.

- a Constraint Manager that appears - again -  to be an attempt by Altium to woo Cadence users. trying to get those big companies.  Well first problem is:
"Big companies also do ASIC's.  They use Cadence tools for that.  They get the Cadence PCB design tools for free.  I know.  The old regional manager of Altium - whom I worked with back in the late 1980's when he was at PADS - called me one day in 2015 shouting, "I CAN'T COMPETE WITH FREE!!!" and told me this.  I mentioned on the forum and indeed other users stated the same thing. 

Second problem - a Constraint Manager sucks.  Big time.  Why?  I use have to use Cadence. Was an ORCAD user before I switched to Protel.  ORCAD screwed up the Winblows port so bad I had no choice.

 My one mil client had to go with Cadence since back in the mid 2010's since Altium moved to China and during that time they started what would be come the cloud services.  Well, one of the mil installations firewalls caught Altium trying to connect to a server in mainland China. 

Stop Buy.  Immediately.  I had the group I work with set to buy 20 seats of Altium.  Nope. The guy at the base calls - "they moved to China!!"  I was like WTF?  Yep it was true.  Our fearless forum leader mentioned it was to get cheaper coders.  I also suspect they were trying to convince Chinese companies to use legit seats - since most consumer electronics at the time were being designed with cracked copies of Altium - even Protel 99 SE.

So I have to use a Constraint Manager in Cadence. 

Problems with that are shown in these two videos as to why schematic directives are superior to a CM:

https:\\www.ajawamnet.com\noconstraintmgrforme.mp4  where I show how a directive makes it easy to push rules - even for nets unnamed by the designer - to the PCB.  I don't want to have to name every little 2 pin net to make it a certain width.

which also leads to:

https:\\www.ajawamnet.com\reuse.mp4  - As shown in this vid, all the rules come across when copy-pasting circuts - even into new designs.

More stuff here:

ability to import newer KiCAD files - lot of people complaining about this on the forum:
https://forum.live.altium.com/#/posts/258412/834949
It gets more critical since many mfg's are starting to send ref designs with it.  Might be due to them hiring fresh kids out of school and that's what they are using:
https://forum.live.altium.com/#/posts/258233
I see less and less offers from Indeed and Linked In for PCB work using Altium.

Need to update that kicad thing...

My client wrote a partial converter:
https://forum.live.altium.com/#/posts/258412/834949

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The regression from AD17 of the layer drawing order not being respected when moving a component
https://forum.live.altium.com/#/posts/258342/834186
video here: https://s3.amazonaws.com/AltiumEcosys1-1/ALU_Apps/forum/attachments/834186/layerdrawingorderAGAIN.mp4

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And the lost feature of connection lines jumping to vias/tracks when moving components/net elements - Even your previous long term employee is asking about this:
https://forum.live.altium.com/#/posts/252264
Video here: https://s3.amazonaws.com/AltiumEcosys1-1/ALU_Apps/forum/attachments/801406/connectionlinenotjumpingtoclosestnetelement.mp4


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All the issues with Constraint Manager and the issue where even your Chief Ecosystem Officer & Head of Cloud (Nexar) Business Unit - Ted Pawela - Couldn't understand what was wrong with that business model and how it breaks the ability of Standard users from collaborating with those using a Pro License.

See this link:
Renesas to Acquire PCB Design Software Leader Altium to Make Electronics Design Accessible to Broader Market and Accelerate Innovation https://forum.live.altium.com/#/posts/258287/833967


Some reasons here why it's not worth using anyway:
https://s3.amazonaws.com/AltiumEcosys1-1/ALU_Apps/forum/attachments/833347/reuse.mp4
https://s3.amazonaws.com/AltiumEcosys1-1/ALU_Apps/forum/attachments/833347/noconstraintmgrforme.mp4


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And now they broke the forward compatibility with Camtastic:
https://forum.live.altium.com/#/posts/258321/834110

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And development on the  the new split plane pour seems to have stagnated and has some funky errors:
https://forum.live.altium.com/#/posts/258207/835278
https://forum.live.altium.com/#/posts/257670/830500
https://forum.live.altium.com/#/posts/253291/806905
Video here: https://s3.amazonaws.com/AltiumEcosys1-1/ALU_Apps/forum/attachments/833355/betasplitplanepour.mp4


NOTE - in the latest 24, they removed this totally instead of fixing it.  Sad, 'casue it was really nice.  I don't like using signal layers with copper pours; most boards I do have dozens of split planes.  I hate working on something that looks like the Partridge Family bus - https://www.roadsideamerica.com/attract/images/ny/NYASHpartridge_arehart3_640x310.jpg


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And the fact that when you waive a violation it doesn't stay waived after you close the PCB file:
this one has been around for years... https://forum.live.altium.com/#/posts/249810/835252
video here:
https://s3.amazonaws.com/AltiumEcosys1-1/ALU_Apps/forum/attachments/835252/waivesNOTwaiving.mp4

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And the regression that when you have slots and holes with the same routing/drill size, the thermals get all confused:
https://forum.live.altium.com/#/posts/258426/
sample there as well as this vid:
https://s3.amazonaws.com/AltiumEcosys1-1/ALU_Apps/forum/attachments/834705/holesizethermalsilly.mp4


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That holes respect the layer drawing order. 
https://forum.live.altium.com/#/posts/258680/836271
video here:
http://www.ajawamnet.com/holes.mp4

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After editing for a while, PCB Library editing - even with a small library - it just gets really slow to respond. Closing Altium and reopening will fix it.
https://forum.live.altium.com/#/posts/258677
video here:
http://www.ajawamnet.com/slowlibraryediting-memoryleak.mp4


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So many issues with vector based files.  Sad, since most Windows programs - even free seem to have no problem with it. And old versions of Altium had a lot less issues.
https://forum.live.altium.com/#/posts/258655  vid: https://www.ajawamnet.com/goodlord-IdontknowifIcantakethisanymore.mp4
https://forum.live.altium.com/#/posts/258656/836120 vid: https://www.ajawamnet.com/cantplacevectorgraphic.mp4

Another user points out:
"https://bugcrunch.live.altium.com/#/bug/14016

There's your answer, Altium doesn't care and won't fix it.

I was under the impression that they fixed it one point  https://forum.live.altium.com/#/posts/238465/729972

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We need a Preference > PCB Editor > Defaults for the Layer Stack Table
You have to reset it every time... that gets annoying... There's one for the Drill Table.


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Layer Drawing Order is not respected when moving an object. See vid. Also, after moving something like a pad, pad holes do not respect the layer drawing order. I don't know how many times I've posted about this, but it really makes using Altium 17 much nicer than what a version that a user pays maintenance for. That just doesn't seem right.
https://s3.amazonaws.com/AltiumEcosys1-1/ALU_Apps/forum/attachments/834186/layerdrawingorderAGAIN.mp4


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There's also a critical Split Planes error, where non-connected regions are not caught by the DRC. https://bugcrunch.live.altium.com/#/bug/22977  Almost lead to a user junking USD50k worth of assembled boards.


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Unions in libraries, can't break them in PCBlib editor

https://bugcrunch.live.altium.com/#/bug/8538

https://bugcrunch.live.altium.com/#/bug/11983


 So I've been "Shadow Banned" by Altium's official forum.  It turns out that if I'm having to stay with 24 it doesn't really matter.

My regional did say he's getting a lot of push back on the no updates/renewals for perpetual licensees.   I guess we'll see. 




 

[Eternauta]

Just received an email from Altium. Permanent licenses will no longer be sold starting July 1, 2024.

I quote from the message, “This decision is part of an overall strategy to align our offering with industry best practices and our customers' expectations. Moving to a subscription-based model allows us to continuously improve our products, offering more frequent updates, enhanced functionality, and more effective technical support in line with evolving market needs."   

[8086]

Just received an email from Altium. Permanent licenses will no longer be sold starting July 1, 2024.

I quote from the message, “This decision is part of an overall strategy to align our offering with industry best practices and our customers' expectations. Moving to a subscription-based model allows us to continuously improve our products, offering more frequent updates, enhanced functionality, and more effective technical support in line with evolving market needs."   

I received the same email. Very disappointing.

In light of this development, I'm curious to know the forum's opinion/suggestions on alternative tools for mid to advanced schematic/PCB. Any thoughts?

[jc101]

Not had the mail yet. 

I guess that means the entire current perpetual customer base, who have an active subscription, is looking at a 50% uplift annually compared to the maintenance subscription costs per year.

For those in the UK, could this be the Gerald Ratner moment for Altium, in terms of how to impress your user base?