Contact with Altium about a light/hobbyist version

[IanJ]

Hi all,

I fired off an email to Altium to ask about a version on a par with Eagle PCB's pricing/restrictions etc. After bouncing around the globe a bit here's their reply:-

Hi Ian
My Name is Lesley and I would be your Altium contact here in the UK, we are Altium’s largest reseller.
I do understand your point of view and while I appreciate your approval of the Altium Designer software, in my 11 years of issuing these licences, Altium has never considered a light/hobbiest version for release.  However, we are very supportive of the educational community and Premier EDA Solutions are very active in our support in the UK.
Altium does have an annual licence available complete with a Subscription and this would be £2995 but obviously at the end of the year this would terminate.
Please do not hesitate to contact me if I can be of further assistance and if you send me your complete details I can set up a record for you.

Ian.

[HLA-27b]

In other words

Please use the back door on your way out. I do not want the rich clients to see you.

[harnon]

I love the line - "we support the educational market in the uk with a package costing £3000 a year"...

Bwahahahaha. On my current student budget it would take me 6 years to save up for a one year license!   

[armandas]

I love the line - "we support the educational market in the uk with a package costing £3000 a year"...

Bwahahahaha. On my current student budget it would take me 6 years to save up for a one year license!   

Last time I checked, Altium cost £95/year for students. The real "issue" here is that there is no affordable option to those not in higher education.

[harnon]

I love the line - "we support the educational market in the uk with a package costing £3000 a year"...

Bwahahahaha. On my current student budget it would take me 6 years to save up for a one year license!   

Last time I checked, Altium cost £95/year for students. The real "issue" here is that there is no affordable option to those not in higher education.

Ah fair enough... I guess the email just made me think the two statements were linked   Even so, its instructive to type Altium Designer 10 into google and see what it auto-suggests... one of the top results starts with CR and ends with ACK.

Some other big software/CAD companies that you "may have heard of" (Autodesk, Dassault Systems and Microsoft to name three) now offer free versions of a lot their software to students.  In the past most students just found a pirated copy so I'm grateful to be able to do it legally!

[alm]

Even £95/y isn't that cheap for a student version in my opinion. Someone in a four year programme would pay close to £400, and lose access to it after graduation unless they spend the £3000 at that point. Compared to student licenses for most other software, this is actually quite steep. Most are a one time fee, and some remain valid after graduation.

Just because the retail version is 30 times more expensive doesn't make it cheap.

[armandas]

I didn't say it was cheap, just that it is reasonably affordable (compared to 3k), if you want to be legal. For everyone else, there are "free" versions available online.

[IanJ]

As an engineer I use AutoCad every day.
AutoCad Full = £4200 RRP
AutoCad LT = £1250 RRP
......and thats an outright cost, not some silly yearly sub.
PS. The LT version is very capable and for a lot of users they'd struggle to find any difference.

I can only figure that the top dog at Altium has delusions of grandeur.

Ian.

[EEVblog]

Classic Altium in that the only response you get is from the Reseller, and not Altium themselves.
You can't even get such a question answered inside the company, you get the death stare...

Dave.

[electrode]

They are entitled to their choice of not making more money. Lots of hobbyists will simply continue using Altium for free.

[IanJ]

Update:

Am being referred up the ladder a bit and possibly back to Altium themselves.

To be continued.........

Ian.

[EEVblog]

Am being referred up the ladder a bit and possibly back to Altium themselves.

That would be more response than I ever got, and I used to work there 

Dave.

[harnon]

Update:

Am being referred up the ladder a bit and possibly back to Altium themselves.

To be continued.........

Ian.

Perhaps we should start a distributed EEVBlog email campaign.  See if 1000 different emails asking the same question gets the point across!

[EEVblog]

I was THIS close to doing a rant video on it, like Dave's Top 5 tips for saving Altium, but alas, I have to be careful what I say here...

Dave.

[HLA-27b]

Perhaps we should start a distributed EEVBlog email campaign.  See if 1000 different emails asking the same question gets the point across!

If Altium doesn't want to bother with the community we might as well put the same effort towards open source programs instead. A few lines of code, a useful suggestion or maybe even a donation is all it takes and its not like they don't need any. If we all do this there will be no need to suck to altium for very long I guess.

[IanB]

If you look at the kind of capability a tool like GIMP has, there is no reason a free tool couldn't compete in functionality with something like AD. I suppose the reason it doesn't really exist is that the market (i.e. size of interested user community) is too small. It would be a very specialized application and unless someone were really keen and enthusiastic enough to take it on single handed it is unlikely to come to pass.

[alm]

If you look at the kind of capability a tool like GIMP has, there is no reason a free tool couldn't compete in functionality with something like AD. I suppose the reason it doesn't really exist is that the market (i.e. size of interested user community) is too small. It would be a very specialized application and unless someone were really keen and enthusiastic enough to take it on single handed it is unlikely to come to pass.

In my opinion GIMP is no match for Photoshop either (do they have real CMYK support yet? 16-bit per channel color?), although it may suffice for many hobbyist applications, and many people have complained about the UI. So the situation may not be that different from the Altium vs. Kicad/gEDA situation. Both offer most of the essential features for not too complex projects, both have some missing features and annoyances. Both are targeted at people who are usually not software developers. Of course GIMP has the advantage of a larger user base.

[ejeffrey]

The weird thing is, to me it seems that tools like PCB CAD is one of the few areas that I can see the hobby market being a non-negligible fraction of the market.  There is no way that hobbyists are going to be more than 0% of the market for components, PCBs, and that sort of thing.  One model of the iPod probably ships more silicon than the entire hobby market in a decade.

But the thing is, a garage engineer who turns out 2 prototype PCBs a year still needs a CAD program (also a multi-meter, a soldering iron, and so forth).  I don't think the number of electronics hobbyists is a negligible.  It isn't going to be huge, because those people can't afford the $$$ you charge large businesses, but it seems like it could be a non-negligible revenue stream.

I don't mean to imply there aren't downsides.  Maybe your support costs go up if you offer a discount version to hobbyists, maybe you lose some of your pro customers to the light version, maybe a lot of hobbyists are going to pirate your software even if it costs $100, and who knows maybe you are worried that your product won't be taken seriously by professionals if you market a light version.

Those are all legitimate concerns, and would be fairly compelling if the company in question were the market leader and living rich.  On the other hand, if you are a company struggling to find a niche with a shrinking market share and a faster shrinking market cap, dismissing potential customers as unworthy of even consideration is greek tragedy level hubris.

[EEVblog]

I don't mean to imply there aren't downsides.  Maybe your support costs go up if you offer a discount version to hobbyists

Nope, you just make a zero-support policy for the free version. It need not cost the company any extra time, money, or resources to maintain, except to spit out a new version occasionally.
Leave support up to the community forums.
This is why a free ad/or low cost version is an absolute no-brainer win-only decision for the likes of Altium. But they are too stupid, or maybe, too smart, clever and "forward thinking" to see it.

maybe you lose some of your pro customers to the light version, maybe a lot of hobbyists are going to pirate your software even if it costs $100, and who knows maybe you are worried that your product won't be taken seriously by professionals if you market a light version.

What's the difference between pirating a $100 version or a $10,000 version? In both cases you were never going to get any income anyway, so you haven't lost anything. At least with the affordable $100 version, you will get a lot of genuine converts who buy in. It won't be a huge amount of money, but it's money for jam - 100% profit. And the more people you have using the software, the more converts you'll ultimately get to the full package.

Those are all legitimate concerns, and would be fairly compelling if the company in question were the market leader and living rich.  On the other hand, if you are a company struggling to find a niche with a shrinking market share and a faster shrinking market cap, dismissing potential customers as unworthy of even consideration is greek tragedy level hubris.

Spot on.

Dave.

[george graves]

Am being referred up the ladder a bit and possibly back to Altium themselves.

That would be more response than I ever got, and I used to work there 

Dave.

Lol- too funny.

[EEVblog]

Lol- too funny.

Unfortunately, very true.
You learned very quickly that suggesting anything against the (current) company direction was a very bad idea indeed. Any such questions were met with deathly silence.
Like minded people at the company were forced into clandestine meetings in trench coats and groucho marx disguises in the basement carpark:
"Psst, hey, what do you think of this new Morfik crap?"
"Everyone's asking when we'll bring out a low cost tool, lets spread the word and start an internal revolt..."
"Shh, lookout, duck!"

Dave.

[IanJ]

Nope, you just make a zero-support policy for the free version.

I run my own email server (family use) running MDaemon which is arguably one of the top email server apps for Windows, an app that can support thousands of users.........and I have the 6 (six) user version!
Part of the purchase agreement for my low-user version is that I get very little support.

Suits everyone involved................Altium are you listening!

Ian.

[IanJ]

Hi all,

Got reply from Phil Mayo, MD of Premier EDA Solutions UK.

Long email, here's the jist:-

Quote:

The subject of a “lite version” rears it’s head frequently in the Altium-world and over the years many business cases have been put forward supporting the concept. The main problem is that fundamentally Altium Designer has been built from day one to break down the artificial barriers and constraints that our founder, Nick Martin, believes surround electronics design. This belief was valid in the ‘80s when we had workstation-based CAD and is still valid today where many software vendors offer limited functionality as a “hook” to upsell additional software to their customers.

It is clear that the hobbyist “market” is ideal for a cut down version but in today’s complex global electronics industry, one man’s hobbyist is another’s consultant and it is inevitable that there would be cross-pollenisation between the market sectors.

To add further spice to the debate, Altium Designer today is more than just an electronics design system. The main thrust of the development is to unify electronics design processes with the other processes involved in the creation of modern products. Things like supply chain, release control, version management and such like are not usually found in the hobbyist domain. It’s not as simple as adding some component/pin/layer limits to schematic and/or PCB. So, personally, I would question the “fit” of Atium Designer conceptually with this market."

So, I tried!..........sorry folks!..........I guess I'm back to Eagle PCB.

Ian.

[HLA-27b]

... it is inevitable that there would be cross-pollenisation between the market sectors...

Like a whiff from devil's toilet.

[olsenn]

I honestly don't see what's so great about Altium, but as far as their policies go; suicide or not;  is withen their rights to make. If they don't want the hassle of dealing with students/hobbyists, then they can continue selling their software for thousands of dollars. Any project simple and small enough to be done by a single person, little on a student, can probably be done just as well with Eagle or DipTrace etc. If it can't... download it illegally.