Hello,
I’m Roshdi from Egypt and i liked Rhinoceros as a 3d CAD software, but when i got to prices
i shocked 
it is € 995 which equal to 18566 LE, my average income about 3500 LE monthly … i do prototype designs and sell it.
so it is very expensive price to me and most of engineers in my country.
so my question is
why you don’t sell your products according to country income level ?
or,
limit the No. of parts for personal and small organizations with a license condition not to resell to other countries,
that will encourage many users to buy not to hack the software.
are there anyone to understand!!
thank you
7 Likes
this is in fact a problem that has nothing to do with Rhino, but rather with global economy. It affects all consumer goods, not only software. Not saying it isn’t a problem, but a solution is difficult. If McNeel has resellers in your area you could ask if you can make an arrangement regarding payment. Include part of the price of Rhino into what you make if that makes sense. What kind of work do you do? Maybe there are cheaper solutions that you could use (or even free ones)
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Thank you for your reply 
, unfortunately i don’t have a reseller in my country, the solution is very easy my dear friend, divide prices into 3 categories then check IP or even give a call before granting a license, say 2 minute confirmation = $100 for the license (1550 LE).
that will add a huge amount of money to McNeel instead of hacking.
when egypt.souq.com (part of Amazon.com) offers windows 10 in a cheap prices, 10th of thousands bought it, they were hacking it before without feeling any guilt because of its high price.
and i do use FreeCAD for the moment but it has many bugs because the lack of centralization.
workbenches are NOT fully integrated with each other.
thank you for you concern.
Note: the idea of high prices in such companies made for prestige goals, to be compared to other competitor software.
If I may add a comment here;
@Roshdi is [in my view] making two very important points. After all, Mcneel is a private company, they decide how to price Rhino, and they can make a pricing system that is more fair… Yes probably it will take a lot more energy, and devising this will not be simple. Yet if a way is found, they would be able to sale so many licenses in low income countries. Give many talented people a chance to succeed, and in the process probably win some awards from international organisations.
And perhaps some high earner users [that often mentions in this forum how cheap rhino is…] perhaps they could pay a bit more
thanks a lot
Akash
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Sounds reasonable, but I’d love to know how much your hardware costs if Rhinos cost is considered significant. I just priced a new machine and Rhino is maximum 1/3 cost of a new machine, much less if the video card spec is bumped up moderately.
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@Ncik That is a great point. How much does the computer cost – and what is the ratio of Rhino? That is something I never thought to consider.
A related question > Can people buy prior versions of Rhino for less money?
If so, where does one go to buy Rhino 5 or 6?
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Yeah I checked Windows 10 on that site, and no those aren’t legitimate(to varying degrees,) Microsoft at present has no programs for cheaper Windows 10 in certain countries. They did offer many ways to get it for free in the past, and the fact is they simply don’t care all that much if individuals pirate it, they just want the world on Windows 10.
Rhino is already quite a bit cheaper than any legitimate competition. It’s a tough subject, it’s entirely questionable if people just don’t believe in paying for software whether trying to make it cheaper yet will do much–you can certainly argue it’s worked for streaming movies and music, but selling Rhino for $5/month isn’t viable…I think–and a lot of “first world” customers aren’t going to be big fans of such price discrimination and may try to exploit it.
“€ 995 which equal to 18566 LE”
Hard to tell if legit, but PCs are on par or less than Rhino cost…most expensive gaming PC is 17999 LE from here…
http://barakacomputer.net/category/18/bundles
Some other google results correlate with this.
If true, that’s amazing. Something weird going on with exchange rates?
For comparison, 995 euro is approx $1500 AUD currently. Locally, gaming PCs start at $1000 and go up to $8000. Rhino capable graphics cards alone start at $500 (4GB) and go to $1700 (8GB).
Actually, Rhino could work just fine on a very basic office PC even without a discrete video card. My current PC has a CPU Core-i5 4460 from 2014. At some point I ran Rhino 6 on it without a graphics card and with 8 GB of DDR3 memory, relying only on the integrated Intel HD 4600. I also used it with GTX 960 2GB and currently use Rhino 7 on the same PC but having 16GB of DDR3 RAM and my video card is GTX 1660Ti that I bought for just 180 Euros brand new. I see no reason to upgrade to a more powerful hardware, because Rhino works perfectly smooth on my current machine.
Another example. Back in 2013 I worked in a company and designed a sports car on a cheap PC with Nvidia GeForce 510 1GB video RAM and 2GB system RAM, which is a decade old already.
A brand new PC in my country that has a video card with at least 4GB video RAM costs from 400 Euros and above (PC’s with 2GB of video RAM start from 250 Euros). The major PC retailers offer a leasing scheme between 2 and 5 years with zero percent interest, so if the PC costs about 500 Euros in cash, many people could take it on a leasing and pay less than 21 Euros every month over the next 2 years. This is why basically everybody could afford a PC here. Otherwise, very few could afford to buy in cash.
Also, many people here just buy a 2nd hand PC for dirt cheap prices.
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Hello @Ncik ,
Sorry for being late, a new moderate PC in my country will cost about 3000-6000 LE ($190-$380).
but our markets also sell used well known trends, as ex. my computer is a Dell Optiplex 760 Quad Core 8GB RAM, and i added used Nvidia GC to it, all of that in a very good condition (almost new) imported from western countries cost me only 1300 LE.
it works very good with FreeCAD and Solid Edge 2021 community edition.
Thank you
Hi Jim,
It is legitimate and i use one of them and it is registered by my name (email) at Microsoft getting all updates.
it is OEM license, do you think Amazon.com will sell something illegal at their websites.
I have an official receipt from the seller with added Tax.
Thank you.
Do I think Amazon–sorry, a separate company owned by Amazon–lets scams be run through their websites? You’re joking right?
If I go to Souq and search for Windows 10, and pick only “fulfilled by Souq,” I get 3 different illegitimate copies. Clearly Windows 10 Pro Retail Box shipped on a USB key does not cost…under $60 US. With option 2, selling an “OEM” version without any hardware is not legitimate, if I even believe the packaging is legit, which I don’t, I have the OEM packaging and that looks fake. And the last example looks like it’s selling Windows Server user licenses that aren’t actual Windows keys at all.
I’m from Egypt too and I have a lenovo laptop that costs 7,000 Egyption pound and it equals 450$ and yup, I can’t afford buyin rhino so i’m using evaluation versions
بقولك يا رشدي الناس دي مش هتفهم معاناتنا هنا ففوكك منهم
ههههه … مافيش فايدة مع ان قدامهم فرصة يكسبوا فلوس اكتر من عندهم
بس الطمع يقل ما جمع
شكرا علي مشاركتك يا هندسة
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Hello Jim again,
Just read the comments at the site … they were sceptical like you, but after registering they changed their minds and they said that in the comments.
i know that making Rhino cheap will affect your business down as a reseller but i’m talking about my country not yours.
this is new OEM not a used one with assigned HW, it is Windows 10 Pro, if you really checked 
forget about Win10 and let us stick to the main subject.
regards
Some comments say they think it was legit because it seemed to “work?” What does that prove? It proves the key is technically valid, not that it was legally obtained! These scammers will go so far as to set up fake “registration” sites!
Yes, selling “OEM” Windows without buying some hardware with it is NOT ALLOWED. Even if it was a real OEM copy, which costs far more than that and the packaging looks fake, it would still not be legit to do.
And the prices simply don’t pass the smell test. Windows costs more than $100 US, I don’t think even the biggest OEM builders get it for much less than that. Microsoft DOES NOT have any program to get Windows 10 for significantly less money in different countries–look it up, it’s something they actually did in the past, though usually just for educational buyers. Why would you think these prices could possibly be real? When I buy something here in Canada made by Americans(actually almost regardless of where it comes from,) I would normally expect it to cost a little bit MORE than in the U.S., on top of the exchange rate–and in other countries the price difference is usually worse–not half or two thirds less.
Well the fact that in some countries it’s not even possible to buy a real legal copy of Windows is indicative of the challenges with this topic.
There are three types of Rhino licenses:
Commercial
Evaluation
Educational
a 4th type for Low income users will be fair and just. and just as with the Educational license it will not be upgradable indefinitely, but will allow people to get their business going for some time!
Autodesk has been doing it with their F360… so it’s not an unheard of approach. but rather something that is assured to be profitable to the company in the long run.
Akash
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How do you define “Low income users?”
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That a very good question to debate and consider.
It is possible to look at this from a few different angles.
One way it can be defined is by one’s average monthly earning comparing to the cost of a commercial license.
For example [from my field of jewellery] a pro goldsmith in Switzerland can charge 120 Swiss francs per hour, so one day working can be seen as roughly equivalent to a commercial licence.
But if one is not making the cost of a commercial license in a full month work [or 2 or 3 month…]. then they should [in my eyes] qualify to a low income license.
Akash