If you use it for business purposes, pay what they are asking and write it off as a business expense, if you use it for personal purposes, either re-signup every year, or dump it entirely and move to FreeCAD. I've done the latter about a year ago or so, and although initially it was not easy, but I persevered and now I feel quite comfortable in it, at least enough for my purposes (which is mostly designing stuff for 3D printing).
My subscription has now expired and I turned off auto renew yesterday, I just followed the renewal link after launching F360 and was able to put the sale price subscription in my cart without issue. So yeah, it doesn't appear to require a new email address etc, an existing user can access it. So it's literally as straightforward as a price gouge for anyone who checks the auto renew button, unbelievable.
If you use it for business purposes, pay what they are asking and write it off as a business expense, if you use it for personal purposes, either re-signup every year, or dump it entirely and move to FreeCAD. I've done the latter about a year ago or so, and although initially it was not easy, but I persevered and now I feel quite comfortable in it, at least enough for my purposes (which is mostly designing stuff for 3D printing).
yeh, if it is for business, the ~600$ a year should be in the noise
My subscription has now expired and I turned off auto renew yesterday, I just followed the renewal link after launching F360 and was able to put the sale price subscription in my cart without issue. So yeah, it doesn't appear to require a new email address etc, an existing user can access it. So it's literally as straightforward as a price gouge for anyone who checks the auto renew button, unbelievable.
So not a big deal then. Now we know not to check auto-renew.
As mentioned above by Jeroen, this is standard practice from major ISPs, cell phone companies, banks, etc. The longer you are a customer often the worse your deal is, they don't magically call you up and say "hey price is dropped you should re-subscribe". OK some of the small ones do but most don't. Thats how we end up with people paying $50/month for 1mbps DSL to this day, because that was the price ~15 years ago.
Shitty business practices 101
If you use it for business purposes, pay what they are asking and write it off as a business expense, if you use it for personal purposes, either re-signup every year, or dump it entirely and move to FreeCAD. I've done the latter about a year ago or so, and although initially it was not easy, but I persevered and now I feel quite comfortable in it, at least enough for my purposes (which is mostly designing stuff for 3D printing).
yeh, if it is for business, the ~600$ a year should be in the noise
You realise not every business is Microsoft, right? For a sole trader, who is often at the mercy of clients paying on time, if I don't need to pay hundreds of dollars extra per year for something I'd like to avoid doing so. "Business" money isn't Monopoly money- for a business owner, more cost to the business means less money in your pocket, it's that simple. I don't know where people get this idea that things are magically written off by an accountant and there's no loss as long as things are purchased under a business name, it's bizarre.
If you use it for business purposes, pay what they are asking and write it off as a business expense, if you use it for personal purposes, either re-signup every year, or dump it entirely and move to FreeCAD. I've done the latter about a year ago or so, and although initially it was not easy, but I persevered and now I feel quite comfortable in it, at least enough for my purposes (which is mostly designing stuff for 3D printing).
yeh, if it is for business, the ~600$ a year should be in the noise
You realise not every business is Microsoft, right? For a sole trader, who is often at the mercy of clients paying on time, if I don't need to pay hundreds of dollars extra per year for something I'd like to avoid doing so. "Business" money isn't Monopoly money- for a business owner, more cost to the business means less money in your pocket, it's that simple. I don't know where people get this idea that things are magically written off by an accountant and there's no loss as long as things are purchased under a business name, it's bizarre.
but to put that money in your pocket you need to pay tax, so in hours of work how much is those few hundred really?
You realise not every business is Microsoft, right? For a sole trader, who is often at the mercy of clients paying on time, if I don't need to pay hundreds of dollars extra per year for something I'd like to avoid doing so. "Business" money isn't Monopoly money- for a business owner, more cost to the business means less money in your pocket, it's that simple. I don't know where people get this idea that things are magically written off by an accountant and there's no loss as long as things are purchased under a business name, it's bizarre.
Are you seriously saying it's better to pay more for the same exact same subscription, because "business"?
You realise not every business is Microsoft, right? For a sole trader, who is often at the mercy of clients paying on time, if I don't need to pay hundreds of dollars extra per year for something I'd like to avoid doing so. "Business" money isn't Monopoly money- for a business owner, more cost to the business means less money in your pocket, it's that simple. I don't know where people get this idea that things are magically written off by an accountant and there's no loss as long as things are purchased under a business name, it's bizarre.I am a business owner, and I know how ecomonics work - if a software is saving me more money than it's cost, I have no problem paying up. $600 is about the cost of 6 hours of engineer's time, over the year that's not even noise, it's a microscopic blip on a balance sheet, hardly even noticeable. This is how businesses make decisions.
As a person I would never pay Autodesk even a single cent out of principle, but as a business owner I would have no problem paying whatever they ask as long as I get more out of it. Emotions and feelings are bad foundation for business decisions, only hard and cold numbers matter.Are you seriously saying it's better to pay more for the same exact same subscription, because "business"?For some businesses, the cost of service interruption can be much more than these $100. Autodesk knows this, and since they are B2B shop first and foremost, they can easily get away with such practices.
As mentioned above, the same line of reasoning is often used by other service providers, which, once onboarded with, can be hard to suffer service interruptions of, and so people pay up. Imagine how some gen Z'er would fare without an Internet service for a day!