Personal License for Prototypes?

Hi there, are there any free options for companies that make over 200k annually wehre they can try Unity3D for non-production, non-commercial, proof of concept work?

thanks

 

AFAIK you can request a trial key from Unity support. What are you doing if you think its not business related and should be free? even proof of concept work is pretty much always business related unless you are evaluating software or services.

 

As @Ostwind pointed out, you can contact Unity to see if they have any options. But, really if you doing it for company it is commercial use. It may not be a commercial product, but you would be using it as tool to the benefit of the business.

 

Unfortunately no. I looked into it at one stage to try and sell my company on using Unity for some 3D visualization stuff. I didn't go as far as contacting support.

Basically its hard to sell a 3D visualization tool to a company outside of traditional 3D visualization without first building something in it that they would use. Its a chicken egg problem, you can't convince the company to buy something until they can see something built in Unity. But you can't build anything in Unity until you have bought Unity.

Unity's pro licensing pricing is a hard sell for an unknown.

Honestly, this is the one section where Unreal's pricing might do better for you. Unreal's licensing basically means products given away for free or used internally don't cost any money.

If you prefer Unity (which is safe to assume since you are asking here), you can even do a bait and switch. Build the proof of concept in Unreal, then switch over to Unity once you have stakeholder buy in and funding.

 

Yeah I know. However even if you are attempting to sell something you are essentially using it for your business. It does not matter if it results in a sale or a contract.

 

I suspect the typical approach taken with Unity is a minor violation of the license. Create demo or example tool with Unity Personal, sell the company on Unity, company buys Pro licenses to continue using it. I'm not suggesting this, but I know how selling higher ups on expensive licensing usually works.

 

thank you, everyone, for your responses and time taken to give feedback, much appreciated.