Subscription vs full payment

Dear Sirs,

I'm wondering if my calculations are right:

If I buy Unity 5.x life time. That means I get all updates for free until Unity 6.x.

So at this moment it will cost 4500$ for Unity pro + IOS pro + android pro.

In subscription it will cost me 2700$ / year.

So if unity 6.x will be released in 2 years. I pay 4500$ vs 5400$
So subscription will cost 900$ more.

At this moment upgrades from 4 to 5 cost 1800$. So probably the updates from 5 to 6 will also cost about 1800 $

A subscription will cost you another 5400 $ that year vs 1800 $

So here comes my question.

Why should we buy a subscription? The full license is so much cheaper.

Even if you bring a new version every year in 3 years your status quo and then you'll save money not buying subscription.
(4500 + 1800 + 1800 vs 2700 +2700+2700)

What is the big + on subscription?

thanks in advance.

 

That, sir, is what everyone is wondering about...

 

If you're a business buying it for a fixed-duration project, or if you can't afford the up-front payment. Otherwise, yeah, a standard purchase is a better long term proposal.

 

Someone sticky this already

Subscription isn't such a good deal if you can afford the upfront cost. You'll probably end up paying less money even if you can borrowed the money with interest.

Compare that to Adobe and Autodesk, where subscription costs are comparable to the full price + upgrade costs. I think those companies figured that once you're on subscription you tend to stay on subscription. So subscription customers are probably more valuable than upgrade customers because they are as good as money in the bank.

 

As you're considering the long term, note that if you include Team License on subscription for more than two years, you're effectively paying for what is otherwise a free upgrade. The Asset Server hasn't been updated in a very long time, and Team License upgrades have (so far) been free to perpetual license upgraders.

Not to rock the boat in either direction, just fleshing out the equation.

 

There obviously needs to be benefit with buying up front to encourage people to do it or everyone would do subscription.

 

I use subscription. And that's because I'm just starting out and don't have money to put into the upfront cost - need to sell my first game and hope to get something out of it for that.

So I guess it's good for people like me.

 

why do people make monthly payments on <car/house/credit card> when simply paying the full amount up front is cheaper?

 

Because in some places you can't even go to the sore without a car. And if you are poor or in some other debt you have no other choice.

Unity subscription doesn't really make sense.
Say you don't have 1500$. You use your credit card and buy Unity. In 2 years you'll pay the loan back by 70-75$/month and then you get to keep Unity. You may choose to pay less or more some months.
If you get the subscription in two years you will have to continue paying or you loose the license. You could eventually cancel after the first year - but by then you'll have put about 900$ that will go to waste.

Add the fact that you can update to the next version on a lower price tag so the next 2 years Credit Card payments maybe in half - and you still get to keep both licenses.

 

Major difference here is that people actually end up owning the car/house/what-have-you, while in Unity's case you're just renting it (EULAs suggesting that users never own the software they buy not withstanding).

Real world analogies from real estate and car dealerships are fine and dandy, but why go that far when there are already software companies that offer both subscription and full purchases with upgrades? I think Unity's subscription prices are on the high side compared to those.

 

Pretty sure Banreaxe was asking a rhetorical question to emphasis that people often buy/rent things on credit when they can't afford them outright.

 

I think you should hold off on buying pro until you need to publish to a distribution service that requires you to have pro. An indie company bought pro for me (right before unity 5... damnit!) because I needed to be able to load the steam plugins in the launcher just to work on the menus haha.

I feel iffy about having pro because the free version is so great and now I am uncertain whether I want to use the free version of 5 when it comes out to check out some new stuff or stick with the pro version of 4 until a new indie sugar daddy can give me an upgrade.

 

You should try contacting their support team, I believe there is a grace period of some time right before Unity 5 was announced where recent purchasers are able to be upgraded to Unity 5.x

And also, yeah I do think the subscriptions are not priced correctly. It's at the point where it's so high you may as well go to the bank and get a loan, and pay that off little by little. You will probably have slightly higher monthly repayment, but in the long long run (Think 2+ years ahead) you end up having spent much less.

 

Thanks but I was exaggerating

I think I activated my license in august or november 2013 lol. But no problems, I've got my sights on a project that's got 5 days of funding left before I convince them that some of that money should be mine.

On topic:

Agreed. The subscription price is so high to own it temporarily that if you really want Unity Pro, just buy it. As long as you can scrape up another $500 a year to keep up with updates, you'll be fine.

 

The current Unity subscription does not make sense. It costs more than the perpetual license when you look at two or three years for a major upgrade cycle. Theoretically, a subscription should cost less than a perpetual license, because you don't own the license after the subscription expires. It backwards to charge a premium for the subscription. The year long lock in is another thing that makes the Unity subscription less appealing.

 

Cash flow. Pay over 12 months instead of upfront cost all at once.

 

Thank you for this thread, I was wondering that myself. Seems like a good way to go would be to earn money with the free edition and then use the income to get the pro edition.

 

I would like to see the ability to buy the pro editions and use some portion of the subscription already paid to discount it's price. Being freelance I go through boom and bust and no matter how tight a contract I still get ripped off from time to time. I will not get a subscription for iOS and Android because if I suffer a ripoff or slow month my bank account gets overdraft fees and my credit rating takes a punch. 150.00USD a month is more than my electricity and water bill put together. Furthermore there are months where I do not need the iOS or Android or Pro editions as I am involved in large sculpture design and execution, digital billboard and related industrial design, video creation and other arts projects not involving a game engine of any sort. So I try to save for the permanent licenses but never quite get there. If I could use the subscription fees towards purchase of a permanent license I would not squirm so much over the costs and having that 150 extra bucks disappear monthly to have absolutely no benefit in real terms from it. I own Pro and will always own the latest Pro but forking over another 3 grand up front without knowing how often they will be used to recoup the investment is not a business decision I can make lightly. I would rather eat than have unused software sitting on my HD that eats the equivalent of several bags of groceries for just remaining idle in a given month. As for a percentage of my games profits..most of the work in Untiy pro the last year has not been games but simulation of various sorts. The royalties argument presented most frequently especially in regards to UE4 vs UT assumes all output from Unity is games. Not so. How to quantify royalties on this work in difficult. Does Unity then take a percentage of my overall contract? my per hour pay rate? charge my clients?


-R

 

If a subscription was cheaper, then you'd only devalue the perpetual license.

The big difference between the two is that you can stop your subscription when you no longer need it - you don't have to subscribe in perpetuity. The idea being that if you're making money then you should hopefully find yourself in a position to buy a perpetual license in the future by way of some clever money management.

I know it's not the same model that exists in other places, nor is it helpful to people who don't intend to make money such as hobby devs, but it's there.

I say this as someone with mixed perpetual + subscription licenses. They're dead handy, but you don't want to live off them forever no matter how cheap they are, not if you have a chance to own it outright.

On the business-end of things it's not unlike renting a house - you pay more to rent than you do to buy, because the person who owns the house wants to make enough money to pay off the mortgage. They know how much the mortgage costs, so they set the rent accordingly. You can always buy the house and own it, and enjoy the privilege and comfort of not having to pay someone rent every month, but that's not for everyone.