Triggerwarning: I want subscription-based licensing!

Rhino
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I know the Rhino userbase is extremely adamant that subscription is evil. I’m absolutely not saying McNeel should switch over exclusively to a subscription model - but I feel having one alongside the classic lifetime-license would benefit many users, use-cases and McNeel. Yes I hear you all screaming “but offering this alongside is the gateway-drug to subscription-only models, just look at Adobe/Autocad/etc.” - but there is no actual causality between having one and the other being discontinued. Both is a business-decision, and i dont think McNeel is the kind of company who would force people into a new model against their will.

I wanna make a case for subscription licensing nonetheless. Hear my case: I am in between Jobs. My last employer had licenses, my next employer will buy one for me. Until i start my new Job in 3 month i want to do private, non-commercial Projects. Obviously it doesn’t make any sense for me to buy a 1k license for just that time. Now why can’t I just rent one…?

I would very gladly pay a monthly fee until i am employed again, so i can do my little Projects. Quite obviously McNeel has the infrastructure to do time-based licenses (Evaluation). I really don’t get why we can’t buy e.g. additional 90-day licenses for 90 bucks or a 30 day license for 30 bucks at a time.

I have read all the clamoring “Rhino isn’t a hobbyist-software, if you really need it you buy it, the price is so low compared to other CAD” etc. and while that all might be true, in the end it still means all those people who feel they cant justify the price for whatever reason, end up turning to another solution and not buying from McNeel altogether.

To me it looks like this is a lot of missed business opportunity on McNeels part, not just in sales, but in customer-retention and user-feedback as well. And in the end it also means less money to develop Rhino.

And yes, i have obviously used the Evaluation-version. And yes 90 days is generous (it could be shorter if you could just subscribe). But some Projects take longer, even private ones. And no, I don’t wanna pirate Rhino. I wanna pay for it. Monthly!

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Hello- my guess is the resources needed to ramp up such a system would make success relatively unlikely from a business standpoint, but I am the first to admit that is so far from being in my bailiwick that it counts as useless speculation…
In the meantime, take a community college class - - and then take advantage of educational pricing.

-Pascal

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I get your point, that it would mean some investment on the user-management and payment processes at McNeel and that the return on the investment is uncertain.

But no offense: The fact, that you - as a McNeel employee - recommend people enroll in community college classes to circumvent the overly rigid pricing scheme of Rhino, just goes to show that there is something seriously wrong with said pricing scheme.

Also there i no such thing as community college where i live. But thanks for the suggestion!

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short answer every time this comes up-

BELIEVE! — Ted Lasso - red carpet scene Roy Kent, my man

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compared to every other pro level cad system we have been, are, and will continue to be the best value in the biz by a large margin.

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I do not see how that follows…

-Pascal

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Quite honestly - the reactions i’m getting from McNeel employees just within moments of posting a well meant input make me wonder if I misjudged the company all these years.

To just react with a meme to a topic that - yes indeed - has come up repeatedly is not really nice. That fact that this topic has been coming up again and again since years should mean you hopefully thought about it and have a better answer than this?

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I know that. And i wrote it as well. Doesn’t change that fact that having to fork over 1k for software is not low-threshold, while 30 bucks a month is.

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Hello - I think it’s fine to make the suggestion - nothing is ever for ever - but at the same time you should not, I think, on this subject, get your hopes up. It has been discussed at length -and for the moment at least, there is no prospect of such a system as far as I know.

-Pascal

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it was a joke… sorry it landed poorly.

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Well, because “sign up for community college to get our product at 1/5 of the price” is a bit of a controversial thing to say from a sales-perspective. If that is the official recommendation of McNeel, you could as well just start to sell non-transferrable licenses at 200 bucks a piece. But that would be a very bad deal for you and would feel wrong for the quality of the product!

But I’d obviously buy one! :slight_smile:

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All good - I was a bit taken aback by being served with that gif tbh. But I have since recovered. :slight_smile:

It really is just something i wanted to bring up again, because i feel it could actually benefit Mc Neel & Rhino - and i want the Rhino to live long and happy! But i understand its not in the strategy / on the roadmap for now.

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I think @Santaklon is making a valid point. Even though I absolutely hate subscription based models and do not want to see perpetual licenses disappear, I see a value in it for others’ needs.
Just throwing up a idealist solution for new users/customers in the air: a subscription based system that deducts from the perpetual license price. When you reached the perpetual license price, you own the license. This would still need the option to just plain up buy the license at a discounted price for people just wanting that perpetual license.
But I can see how this quickly could become a big thing to implement.

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for the people in the United States, there are few credit cards that can give you 0% interest for up to 21 months. you can finance your Rhino commercial license and pay $50 each month, then you will end up owning the software forever.

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Thats a very US thing to suggest indeed - i would never buy something cant afford. And i could actually afford a license, but dont see how i could justify the price given the circumstances. Also I dont want to be paying 50 bucks a month for a software without getting the updates. That is the big bonus point of subscriptions…

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Well but that would still mean you don’t get the newest version - that would be one of the main incentives for people to go with a subscription I think.

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I do think that a Hire Purchase style option does sound very appealing, before people were forced by sheer ludicrous pricing into leasing a car.

I am absolutely against subscription in any shape, ever. I find it astoundingly distasteful. Regardless of its wide-spread use, the idea of subscribing to software is just dreadful. To me, it just feels like poor forward thinking, except for the guarantee of cash flow for a year or two at any time.

It’s very hard to gauge the use, but I have seen with renderers, 3D CAD packages, and other add-ons, that there are topics on forums where people would rather just pack it in, and export thier workflow to Blender/Cycles, rather than suffer eternal slavery to a subscription.

My issue is also that these services are fighting to see who can absolutely squeeze the consumer to the absolute death. Like cars, once “leasing” becomes your only option, they just hike the price as far as can be possible because people view monthlies in a different way to annual costs.

I’m sure many inside sources, would disagree given they know what thier results are. However, I was so close to buying a renderer, and I missed out by a single day, before they changed the entire model to a subscription only service, without even so much as an indie-option (like Autodesk was seemingly(?) somewhat forced into). Walked away, and didn’t really look back.

I can take this viewpoint, as I am only doing 3D as a hobby, but I also think if pursuing the big bucks from large companies, at the sacrifice of many “second-class” users, is your concern; I think that just leaves a bad taste.

I do think having a Hire Purchase option would be great for me, and I wouldn’t hesitate to move to Rhino 8 if that were the case. If it is a bit extra over Rhino 7, and I could spread the cost over an arbitrary period; then great. But in reality, this cannot come without interest charges, which is fine to some extent.

But general subscription is just the slippery slope to corperate greed, and becoming a faceless entity with hardly any customer-facing accountability or service. It seems a massive shame that I’ve seen so many excellent hobby artists just get pushed out over the years.

Creative arts should be accessible to all within reason, and Rhino has an increasingly unique and seemingly relaxed position there.

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Depends on.how you define updates? Bug fixes and usability improvements? You are entitled to get them as a part of the company’s commitment to support your product as you bought your current release.
If updates are needed for new features? Then you can you determine these features applies to your workflow.if they do. There is a license upgrade cost. That is substantially lower than a purchase of a full price.

For subscription based companies there are less and less reasons to be innovative (otherthan slapping AI terms over their products for marketing) since they have a consistent cash flow so they can please their board of directors and the stock market reacts favorably for them since there are less surprises. (This quarter we increased the number of active subscribers by 10%)

Also going subscription will definitely affect your cost for perpetual license. For example chaos introduced the subscription model last year. I own a license for V-Ray 5 and I always upgraded mine in the past few years. Until now. They upgrade price was bumped from $350 to $860 which is high enough to convince me to switch to a subscription model.

For the case of mcneel,
1- they are not a publically traded company (thankfully), no outside forces pushing the platform to weird position.
2- they have a solid reputation of delivering good products.
3- The growth happens through increased user base.

With all of these bigger players chasing the dreams of digital twins, metaverse and Data/AI dominance. Rhino will shine as one of the only products that is actually works without these gimmicks or half baked stuff.

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The Subscription model is not about the customer, its about shareholders and cashflow predictions.

The idea of being able to rent a software that you are proficient in for a short time is great, but that does have prerequisite of knowing what you are doing to make it efficient.

We can do that because our sales are by user recommendations, not millions of dollars in advertising.

The value for a student license is exceptional, seeing as it can be used commercially and never expires.

These options still don’t quite fit for developing countries, where buying a personal edu license is still a hardship, the best available option is for their school to purchase lab licenses (30 for 1k that do not expire or require renewal)

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Folks… to be clear. As the current organization stands, It’s simply not going to happen.

The only way it would ever change is if we get a majority of our users demanding it, yet every time this comes up we get told very clearly to stay the course. So we don’t, and have zero plan to change that.

I was joking above with a meme that didn’t land funny like I’d hoped, but the fact is, sometimes “No” is a complete sentence.

In this case, for this topic, at this time, the actual complete answer (with zero intended disrespect,) is in fact “No”.

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