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PA going to Subscription too

Garlu

Senior Member
It seems like Plugin Alliance is moving towards a subscription model (keep also their business model of one time purchases).

$249 for a whole year, accessing all plugins.

Personally, I have spent a LOT of money on PA, buying what I needed, and it's a bit frustrating to see that access now to all in one package for that amount (that sometimes I paid only for 1 plugin!). I guess those $29/plugin offers were also part of the move...

I hope they don't drop any products like Slate did with Relab's LX480 or Scuffham's S-Gear, that creates some problems if I want to open older files (got already LX480 but will have to get Sge

Thoughts?

Garlu
 
It seems like Plugin Alliance is moving towards a subscription model (keep also their business model of one time purchases).

$249 for a whole year, accessing all plugins.

Personally, I have spent a LOT of money on PA, buying what I needed, and it's a bit frustrating to see that access now to all in one package for that amount (that sometimes I paid only for 1 plugin!). I guess those $29/plugin offers were also part of the move...

I hope they don't drop any products like Slate did with Relab's LX480 or Scuffham's S-Gear, that creates some problems if I want to open older files (got already LX480 but will have to get Sge

Thoughts?

Garlu

If you spent a lot of money with PA you should have a discount code sent to you for the subscription
 
I wonder if I should take it, I personally want that new Ampeg sim which already is good for well over 50% of the yearly sub. There are probably a couple more I want to have. I just don't like subscriptions. Last one I bought was the SPL Iron and a week later it was on sale for a lot less (and I bought it with some discount already).
 
I wonder if I should take it, I personally want that new Ampeg sim which already is good for well over 50% of the yearly sub. There are probably a couple more I want to have. I just don't like subscriptions. Last one I bought was the SPL Iron and a week later it was on sale for a lot less (and I bought it with some discount already).

Personally I like subscriptions more than trial periods because you can really get a feel for which plugins stay in your workflow or not. I just ended my Eastwest composer cloud subscription because now I never use their instruments. plugin alliance stuff has been in my work flow a lot to offset some of the weight of UAD plugins that use a lot of DSP....

PA seem to have good deals on the plugins if you want to buy. Not much to lose I think
 
I hope they don't drop any products like Slate did with Relab's LX480 or Scuffham's S-Gear, that creates some problems if I want to open older files (got already LX480 but will have to get Sge

According to the "Plugin Guarantee" policy, you should be safe. I'd screenshot the hell out of that page before committing though.


Thoughts?

Not a fan of subscription plans. If only PA went for a rent-to-own model, I'd join in a heartbeat.
 
Not much to lose I think
I agree. Subscription plans are fine as long as (1) they are an alternative to perpetual licenses rather than the only option, and (2) you keep your existing licenses when you sign up. There's one possible limitation here, though. With a subscription option available, PA's discounts on perpetual licenses might become less frequent and/or less generous.
 
The PA website doesn't mention Gobbler, iLok or any other subscription/license enforcement mechanism. What are they going to use? Does it require a continuous internet connection, or only a brief connection once a month to renew licenses?
 
I have a few PA products and I like them. I’m not a fan of subscriptions though. I’m opting out for now. I don’t really need anything so I guess that’s easy to say. Do the discount codes expire? I didn’t read anything about that in the email (but I haven’t checked the link yet).
 
yep. should be rent to own.

i cannot fathom the idea the poeple are for the subcirption model when the tech is there to have rent to own.
you can demo 100 plugins, choose a few and pay to own. subsribe PA, waves, slate, etc. how many eq/compressors do you need?!
subscription model is just a huge Up your ass give us money. which can lead to no more sales and also plugins to cost 10x more just so companies can justify its prices.

say no to subscription models.
 
The PA website doesn't mention Gobbler, iLok or any other subscription/license enforcement mechanism. What are they going to use? Does it require a continuous internet connection, or only a brief connection once a month to renew licenses?

Up until now there was an authorization using your pluginalliance account...I’m not sure if this means going forward it will check for authorization each time you load up a plug-in. I’ll give it a shot later.

Should be "Rent to Own" method. Meaning all money in the rent could be used to get lifetime software purchase.
Subs can be REALLY felt like a backstabb to people who purchased plugins there...

How is it a backstab? You keep everything you already own and they still have a promotion right now to buy multiple plugins for I think up to 60% off.

Rent to own would be great but I have to wonder if that even makes sense given how many plugins they have and how they continue to add more. Rent to own only makes sense if you select a handful of plugins and pay those off. Otherwise how do you calculate where the monthly costs goes? Which plugins are being paid off first? A subscription model lets you use everything there is and will be. I appreciate that because if I ever quite the subscription I’ll know which plugins I wanted to buy and keep.
 
Up until now there was an authorization using your pluginalliance account...I’m not sure if this means going forward it will check for authorization each time you load up a plug-in. I’ll give it a shot later.



How is it a backstab? You keep everything you already own and they still have a promotion right now to buy multiple plugins for I think up to 60% off.

Rent to own would be great but I have to wonder if that even makes sense given how many plugins they have and how they continue to add more. Rent to own only makes sense if you select a handful of plugins and pay those off. Otherwise how do you calculate where the monthly costs goes? Which plugins are being paid off first? A subscription model lets you use everything there is and will be. I appreciate that because if I ever quite the subscription I’ll know which plugins I wanted to buy and keep.

Yes, but let's say you subscribe monthly for 6 months...That's about $150...then you decide you want to buy a plugin...how much is the plugin? They're usually pretty expensive, so you lay out another $100? to be conservative...that's $250 for ONE plugin...and then you still need the sub because you have used their other plugins in sessions already. Subscriptions are good ONLY, if you are committed 100% to using more than 50% of their plugins forever. Personally, because I own the ones I wanted already, there are only 2 new ones that I'd be interested in...the Purple and the FC console. So neither option would be suitable for me, as the buy out are pretty pricey still.
 
Subscription sucks. Writing library music, I may have to make a customization long down the road to license something. I am much less likely to use any rented plugins because then I am beholden to keeping that subscription going if I ever have to alter something.

The whole reason companies are doing this is because they figured out almost nobody is buying plugins at full price - in other words, plugin prices are inflated.

So if you're doing vouchers and big flash sales and people are being picky and choosy, you're maybe getting $100-200 a year out of somebody. Instead, offer the "DEAL OF A LIFETIME" and stop doing flash sales and vouchers. No more introductory sales. Push people toward giving you $200-250 a year perpetually. Boom. Profits!

"But Brian! You can buy 6 plugins and get a 60% discount!" Sure, but price it out. You'll be spending anywhere from $400-600 to get that discount. So unless you REALLY want or need those you're still getting punished for buying.

And that's the bait and switch. They're punishing you for shopping smart and ownership.
 
Yes, but let's say you subscribe monthly for 6 months...That's about $150...then you decide you want to buy a plugin...how much is the plugin? They're usually pretty expensive, so you lay out another $100? to be conservative...that's $250 for ONE plugin...and then you still need the sub because you have used their other plugins in sessions already. Subscriptions are good ONLY, if you are committed 100% to using more than 50% of their plugins forever. Personally, because I own the ones I wanted already, there are only 2 new ones that I'd be interested in...the Purple and the FC console. So neither option would be suitable for me, as the buy out are pretty pricey still.

This is why I can’t get this issue. In this worst case scenario you subscribe for 6 months and only want to buy one plugin, but are then conflicted because you’ve lost access to other plugins you’ve used from them? That’s why the subscription makes sense. If you’re likely to use a bunch of plugins from them that you haven’t already purchased, you now have the ability to. If you’re not interested in that many of their plugins, then you only buy what you need. If you’ve already bought plugins from them, you still own them.

The price of plugins are what they are, and knowing they’re expensive is why subscriptions work for businesses and certain consumers. There are some companies that totally abuse that, no doubt, but in the plugin market, if the choice was to pay $10,000 for a plugin suite like with waves, or do a subscription model at $20 a month, I’d rather the subscription.
 
The problem is a plugin is only worth what people will pay for it. If 95% of people only buy a plugin when it's on a flash sale, that's all the plugin is worth. Everything else is just smoke and mirrors of marketing.

All plugin subscriptions should be rent to own. That way if I take a gamble on a year I will at least have the option to have credit with the company to own something if there's a product I desire.

And as far as I can tell, month to month isn't even available yet.
 
Subscription sucks. Writing library music, I may have to make a customization long down the road to license something. I am much less likely to use any rented plugins because then I am beholden to keeping that subscription going if I ever have to alter something.

The whole reason companies are doing this is because they figured out almost nobody is buying plugins at full price - in other words, plugin prices are inflated.

So if you're doing vouchers and big flash sales and people are being picky and choosy, you're maybe getting $100-200 a year out of somebody. Instead, offer the "DEAL OF A LIFETIME" and stop doing flash sales and vouchers. No more introductory sales. Push people toward giving you $200-250 a year perpetually. Boom. Profits!

"But Brian! You can buy 6 plugins and get a 60% discount!" Sure, but price it out. You'll be spending anywhere from $400-600 to get that discount. So unless you REALLY want or need those you're still getting punished for buying.

And that's the bait and switch. They're punishing you for shopping smart and ownership.

But we were never entitled to sakes prices...what is this belief that companies are required to offer massive sales? Isn’t that just the expectation of a bunch of people used to Black Friday deals and binge spending? This new model maybe getting $100 more from a few users a year is supposed to be massive profit? They already cut the subscription cost for power users by up to 50%. If they did a subscription and stopped reading new product I would be worried, but so long as they continue to offer new stuff there is value in this model as well.
 
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