Rhino Prices in 3rd developing countries

Its worthy to note that McNeel isn’t subscription based, has no annual maintenance & includes unlimited support with all products.

10 Likes

I was so offended by this conversation…just make your own software or buy software as the developer sets its price or use an alternative product…you made me feel like you were begging…you deserve it why didn’t you make your own software…you are talking to developers who Hard work… Please give them respect and communicate with them by messages. They may have given you a cheap copy. And do not consider that it is really yours, but rather it is sympathy from them . Do not consider the use of stolen copies of software as a threat, but it leaves a bad impression of your behavior

I live in Switzerland, which can be considered a rich country. A mediocre PC starts around 1500CHF (about 1600€) and can easily go up to 9-12’000CHF (13K €) it’s by the way the same stuff you get for about 995€, right? It’s about 3 months of work for a default Swiss salary. maybe the companies already do respect country salaries, but they charge more for first-world country people than the rest of the world, because we’re all considered financially rich. (which is a completely wrong image of us Swiss people, btw) also I started with Rhino so long ago because it was affordable compared to 9k and 12k annual licences of concurrence products like 3Design. at the time it costed about 800 CHF and I had a salary of 300CHF/month…

If you want to make money by selling 3d drawing services, you need to invest, like in every other business. You wouldn’t open a restaurant and borrow the tables from your neighbour every day, would you?
So you shouldn’t sell 3d services, if you don’t own a 3d software…

The pricetag is always a problem if your investment is never going to return. That may be true for professionals in the poorest coutries on this planet, but it may also be true for casual CAD user within the richest countries. And yes you can run Rhino on a deprecated hardware, which is worth a fraction of what is mentioned here. But what people forget is, that a PC gives you more value than a CAD program. I can completely understand the concerns.
Just imagine a world where Switzerland or the USA are the poorest countries. As a martian software company, McNeel charges $15000 a seat. Sounds a bit cynical if McNeels staff answers, hey but you get no annual fees, and the support is free. Just saying…

1 Like

According to Google, the minimum hourly rate in Switzerland is between CHF 19 and CHF 24 depending on the Canton. Compare that to the 311,5 EUR or CHF 303 minimum monthly salary in Bulgaria for the same year 2020, or CHF 1,76 per hour. Minimum salary in my country Bulgaria at that time was approximately 10,8-13,6 times lower than that in Switzerland.
Dozen eggs cost CHF 6,18 in Switzerland and between CHF 3,80-6,00 in Bulgaria.

I see your point, and there is definitely something wrong how resources are distributed globally. however, spending capacity cannot be brought down to an egg.
Main costs here that literally take away a third of the salary each are renting and taxes. ( like the 24chf are already 8chf/hour) Also social security takes away 7.5% of your salary, when you work for your own company (like myself) its 15%. insurance is about 600chf/month, (even if I still have to pay my own medical treatments up to 2500chf) which is 20chf per day plus treatment if necessary. two hours and a half of your work each day are gone just for insurance as well. so in the end you have about 6.80chf*4,5h, which is 30chf per day. Eating in town near work costs about 15-20chf. then a dozen of eggs per day and we have nothing left but the knowledge that our neighbour eats as well, althought he can’t walk. I gladly give all my money for this knowledge.

Yes, we are rich, but in a very different way than what people think. if we lose our jobs, we still can eat and send our children to school and I am extremely grateful for that. However, not every Swiss is rich at all, because when you make money, you are obliged to give back a huge portion for social purposes. 900$ is a LOT of money for us as well.

I didn’t mean to be respectless towards people living in less lucky countries. I meant to say that an investment is always necessary to win something afterwards (like I said, my salary at the time was 300chf per month and licence was 800chf or so and the pc was about 1700chf. It took me about two years to afford it and this was 2007, so absolutely no guarantee that 3d production would become important for jewelry production.
blaming developpers for living in first world countries and wanting to make their salary is as respectless as blaming people for living in poor countries.

you are right, but on the other hand we in the first world are faced by low price concurrence like fivver or some russian services on linkedin. I don’t understand how you can buy a software for 900$, spend 4 hours doing the drawing and then sell it for 5 dollars and complain that you can’t pay the 900$ update, but ask the software to be less expensive.

Even if I made myself being hated with this post, my main point was that not everyone can or cannot afford paid software just because he or she is living in a specific country. The entire world is connected nowadays and if I can sell 3d drawings to arabs, egypt people can sell 3d drawings to the same people for the same price.

The day I have too much work, I’ll gladly post it in this forum and I’ll gladly pay someone from whatever country swiss prices to do the drawings without taking any margin.

While I understand your point, that does not change the fact that there is a huge difference in the living standard, which is a direct result of the 10-13 times higher income. Price difference of food and rent is negligible compared to the income. A basic salary in Bulgaria is barely enough to pay a rented home and electricity bills, leaving nearly zero money for food or having a car. This is why the majority of drivers here own 20-30 years old 2nd hand cars imported from West Europe.

Here is the catch:
If you are able to save 5-10% of your salary in Switzerland, that still gives you 10-13 times more money compared to saving 5-10% of the salary in Bulgaria, eventually giving you a much greater ability to buy stuff such like PC, CAD programs, clothes, cars, electronics of any kind, going on vacations etc. Having that said, a real situation is that you need to save 5% of your income for about one year in Switzerland to be able to buy Rhino 7 or 8.
However, saving 5% of your income in Bulgaria will let you buy Rhino after… 10-13 years of tedious waiting (basically waiting until Rhino 14). Not to mention that the inflation will eat up half of those money by the time you finally save the full amount to buy the most recent Rhino, so those 10-13 years could easily expand to 20-26 years of savings (Rhino 20 may be available at that time). :smiley:
The same goes to buying PC and anything else.

Many people from Western European countries also take advantage of the cheaper medical services in Bulgaria and other less developed countries, so that they don’t need to spend a huge amount of money in their own country. For example, plenty of people from Germany, UK, Finland etc come on a vacation in Bulgaria (Sunny beach, Sozopol, Golden sands, Varna etc) and combine that with visiting local dentists due to the more affordable prices. Even Silvester Stalone made all of his teeth in Bulgaria instead in the United States.

2 Likes

I absolutely understand and I’d be the first to change it if I could. I honestly have a hard time to see on a daily basis how people put money over well-being of others.

Mainly because medical prices are rigged like hell here, because people need medical attention. and your country has an excellent reputation for the quality of your dentist services, beside the fact that people are not completely ruined for a decade if you have much problems with many teeth.
You make it sound like that’s a negative thing. I guess that augmented the dentists prices slightly and also the number of dentists in Bulgaria. Hopefully also more education possibilities and even better qualification. Therefor tax payers. Guess that’s the first step to bring wealth to your country and make our dentists here gain less money and paying less taxes. Feels like a good thing for equality.

2 Likes

Ha-ha, no, my intention was to give you a good example of how people from more rich countries are able to combine their much higher income with affordable medical services in other countries, eventually leaving more money for stuff like buying new PC, CAD programs etc. :slight_smile: The price of rented apartments and dentist care here became about twice as high in the recent 3-4 years due to the higher demand from foreign people, while the net income is just 20% higher if we count it in rough numbers (however, inflation since last year, as a result of the war in Ukraine, is between 50-100%, so basically the income here is considerably lower now).

As I mentioned above, the key element to keep in mind is that allocating just 5% of the income in Switzerland results into 10-13 times higher savings compared to allocating 5% of the income in Bulgaria. This alone makes a huge difference, because what takes a year of savings to buy in Switzerland requires 10-13 years in Bulgaria (in case that there is a zero inflation over all those years, which is impossible).

1 Like

It is a philosophical dilemma, about universal pricing vs universal income. I started my career in Iraq around the period of 2003. At that time the country’s economy was hammered with 13 years of international sanctions. People weren’t able to afford food or basic medications and pirated software was the norm even in government systems.

Suddenly, A flood opened with a lot of quick infrastructure contracts led by US army corps when a multi-million psuedo-design-jobs were offered. At that time the society wasn’t ready to invest in software. Instead they convinced US companies to start installing the ¢12 versions of AutoCAD 2004.
Their only excuse, there is no functioning VISA/Mastercard infrastructure for us to purchase it legally.

Such a hypocritical world.

2 Likes

Just an idea:
a good start would be to give out e.g. Rhino 5 for free like Adobe does with Photoshop CS2. It’s still usable, you can learn Rhino functions from it at your rythm, but when you want to work with it every day, there’s still a good motivation to upgrade to 7.

I’m glad you had the strength to get out of these difficult situations. Very impressive. :index_pointing_at_the_viewer: :clap:

5 Likes

Rhino 5 is almost as good as Rhino 7, if we don’t count the lack of SubD, faster viewport display and some very minor improvements in Rhino 7, therefore very few people who have access to a free Rhino 5 would consider upgrading to the latest version. Considering that Rhino 7 currently sells for 1000 USD/EUR (or 995, to be more precise) plus VAT, a more sensible option for “McNeel” would be to offer older Rhino versions with a nice discount, for example 600 USD/EUR for Rhino 5 and 800 USD/EUR for Rhino 6. After all, the developers put hard work on the program and this is what they do for living. Rhino can’t be totally free.

5 Likes

hm, I might be wrong here, but I’m pretty sure between 5 and 6 where major architectural changes that made rhino much more stable. Forum support is easier accessible for newer versions and I would not want to return to 5 uding rhino on a daily basis. Your idea goes in the same direction and seems consistent with buying a rh5 licence less expensive and then upgrade would come about the same price as buying a rh7 seat from the beginning. Interesting idea, that I like a lot, just a little less extreme than mine. I’d like to add that this strategy made Adobe become leader in their fields. not sure this would work nowadays again.

As I mentioned above, the changes between Rhino 5 and Rhino 7 are negligible in terms of NURBS surfacing capabilities, this is why asking questions in the forum about “Sweep 2 rails”, “Patch”, “Network surface”, “Blend surface”, “Match surface”, “Extrude”, “Orient”, “Scale” and many others will result in 99% the same answers. That’s because the majority of those tools saw little to no improvements over the past 11 years since the release of Rhino 5 back in 2012. “Blend surface” was slightly improved since then, but the rest tools will give you virtually the same results.

Also, those poor people who buy Rhino 5 now for a discount price will most likely not upgrade to Rhino 7 any time soon. Most of them may find Rhino 5 good enough for their daily tasks and remain Rhino 5 owners forever. Or, if they ever upgrade after expanding their business in a few years, they will opt to get Rhino 8 or Rhino 9. On top of that, only Rhino 5 supports the VSR plug-in, which makes it more capable for NURBS surfacing than Rhino 7.

1 Like

It’s not wrong what you are saying here in regards of Rhino itself. I only upgraded from 6 to 7 because it looks bad if you can’t open others files as a company. Grasshopper is pretty restricted on 5 and many many plug-ins are not available for 5…

like I said, I compare very much with Photoshop CS2. A free version needs more or less all the basic stuff you need to design something or it’s jsut a useless dummy demo version that tries and tricks users to buy the full version. I don’t think that is constructive. For example I can’t wait for the grasshopper where the c# editor AND shrinkwrap are available…just for this I will buy 8.

In case of success they will end up upgrading instead of pirating in the first place. also it would make the gap of competition smaller between “rich” and “poor” countries as they will end up working with the same tools. If little budget will force people to buy the reduced versions, the competition is not fair either.

If you think the gap between 5 and 7 is too small to motivate peopleto upgrade, make it RH4 then…

I don’t know… without going into details, do you see the idea I’m describing here? Everyone would profit and piracy would pretty much become useless.

Those who pirate Rhino will get the latest version and will never use a free older Rhino such like Rhino 5, no matter if it’s totally legal for free or pirated. They will simply pirate the latest Rhino available. On the other hand, poor people who want to make business with Rhino will gladly pay less for an older version like Rhino 5, because they are probably not big companies and therefore don’t need complex tools like Grasshopper from day one.

Not to mention that they will probably never have to deal with importing Rhino 7 models into their Rhino 5, because the majority of companies across the World use IGES and STEP file formats to transfer their models from one program to another. In the worst case, they will simply ask the customer who sent them a Rhino 7 file to save it as a Rhino 5 file instead. Not a big deal. :slight_smile:

Also, every Rhino comes with a 90-day evaluation period that lets people use the program for free. After those 90 days, Rhino remains available for modeling and learning forever, except for the lack of saving and exporting of files that require a paid license.

Lets not forget that the developers are generous enough to offer a very affordable student license for just 195 Euros. This option alone lets every student buy the latest Rhino and use it as long as he or she is a student. After that period, Rhino could be upgraded for a nice price, too.

2 Likes

Grasshopper is the thing convincing many people to use Rhino and from my point of view kept Rhino in the competition. It’s not more complex than Rhino, rather visualy more comprehensive for many people. That’s at least what I hear from new users and I know many of them as I also educate goldsmith apprentices in Rh jewelry production.

so these people having no money to spend on software would rather pay for a pirated version 7 instead of a free version 5? Although I highly appreciate your oppinion and knowledge, this doesn’t convince me at all.
People cracking software are not the ones using it.

Which is fragile and not at all reliable in rh5. I do remember having a lot of problems with step export in rh5 (like disappeared surfaces. Maybe back in 2013 my skills where too shitty to maka a proper model to export though, I don’t know) and even nowadays there are many chinese companies asking me for the rhino file when stl doesn’t work for them. I can assure you that step is not at all common in my branch.

I know the actual pricing and I think it is very generous and well thought. Since rh4 I’ve happily bought every single version and ditched every software that introduced monthly fees. however, the topic is about developing countries and like you pointed out yourself, in your country it would take about two years to get these 195 euros together and 6 years to have a reduced price rh5 version.

Surely one cannot ask McNeel to be even more generous. However, the “free reduced version and paying upgrade” model in software has become standard for many upcoming software like Sketchup and it seems to work pretty fine measured by their success to gain new users and reduce piracy.

…?

2 Likes

not everyone can crack software. much of cracked software is sold at smaller price than original versions.
there was a post about it on this forum. some site sold the “coorporate” version, which doesn’t exist officially.

With 4 keywords on google (yes, google) you can find a direct link to any kind of pirated game/software. 1st google result. (and don’t even try to pm me about this)
It’s “free”, without need to spend 1 cent. (but maybe you “pay” with the whatever additional script you put in your machine, virus, spyware etc etc that is inside the “activator” :rofl:).
Rhino not excluded.


Back on main argument.
I expect people who use pirated software is because they won’t pay a single cent.
People who pay for pirated/cracked software are surely a very small % … and generally not very brilliant.

1 Like