Pricing - the new pricelevel might be a problem fo Camera Bits

[Stenis]

We seems to live in an era of venture capitalists and subscription business models are being choosen as the way to go for more and more software companies.
For me it was first Capture One that was taken over byb a Swedish/Danish venture capitalist company last year. Shortly after that they imposed a new business model emphazising the subscription model with a loyalty program giving an opportunity to buy a perpetual license with 20% a year subscribed and a pretty raised price.

Than also Camera Bits announced about the same type program, but except any loyalty rebates at all from what I know. I don´t know if the venture guys have taken over Camera Bits too but the pattern looks the same. I once bought PhotoMechanic Plus 6 for around 200 U$ and when I bought the Sony version of Cature One once it costed around 90 U$  - cheap as an upgrade even then. Now I pay I think 217 Euro per year.

I have really loved PM Plus and without it´s high efficiency I would never have been able to build my picture archive that handles about 70 000 pictures today. Once I tried it with Lightroom and gave up because it was too ineffective and cumbersome.

Well this is,how the pricing looks now for me: https://home.camerabits.com/get-photomechanic/

The subscription costs med now 3391:- Swedish Crowns (SEK) per year which is 296U$
A perpetual license I can buy for 5435:- SEK. In general I am of the opinion that software have been comparatively cheap compared to hardware many years but the subscription business model will make it very much expensive seen over time.  .... and if I like most of us have quite a few different softwares and other subsriptions it gets pretty expensive. I have two converters and besides C1 my main converter is DXO Photolab 8 for more than 95% of my pictures.
I just use C1 for tethering av tasks where I need the more competebt layer and masking tools in C1.

[promotion of competitors removed by mods, see below]

I think there will be a user reaction to these rapid increases in prices and the limitations of the user conditions that also have been changed is some cases.In the case of Capture One only the subscribers get the new feateres that gets released during the subscription year.The perpetual licence buyers only get bugfixes and maintenance. No way I will continue to subscribe for Capture One year after year with bothbthese prices and  bad conditions- I will jump to a perpetual license next year after caching in a rebate of 40%. I don´t think I´m alone to do that. I will not either upgrade my PM Plus-license any more. I will continue to use PM Plus 6 as long as I can and never upgrade.

[promotion of competitors removed by mods]

[brendxn]

Subscription models have indeed become a pain, though I seriously doubt they're going anywhere unfortunately.

With Photo Mechanic, the issue is not only the subscription (or the price increase), but also the lack of any new features you're getting for the money. If you review the new features page (https://home.camerabits.com/whats-new-in-photo-mechanic/), you'll see there are only 8 things mentioned. Of the 8, these are somehow worth mentioning:
1. New app icon (...!?)
2. License management improvements
3. Installation
4. Easier to update
5. The option to choose a subscription

So to me - I don't see any real improvements to the actual product. Admittedly it's already an excellent application, but if you're going to charge me a subscription or substantially increase the price, in return I would expect that to be reinvested into the product, and to receive meaningful feature improvements (not just maintenance and bug fixes). Basic things in PM+ like the lack of smart albums, inability to filter on portrait vs landscape photos (I believe), and plenty of room for UI improvements are just a few examples where I'm surprised there have been no updates.

I've had "free" access to the new PM+ for ~6 months now, and I didn't really bother to use it during this time, because as far as I can see - it's the same (with that new icon  ).

Summing up, Photo Mechanic is a great product, but I don't think the subscription model fits for software that is not evolving/improving over time at a reasonable pace. I will also likely switch DAMs once my license stops working, sadly, because there are a lot of things I like about using PM+, but it doesn't seem to be improving enough to justify the new pricing terms.

[CelesteBallinger]

 I totally get what you're saying about the prce hikes and moving to subscription models. More and more folks are looking for alternatives like [promotion of competitors removed by mods], especially since the new pricing ain't really offering good deals. This might be a  good time to think about switching  to software that fits your needs and budget bettter:)

[brendxn]

For now, I've already paid for the app and will continue to use it. Once the time comes where it stops working (or there are exciting improvements in a new release of the product) - I will see what makes sense at that point in time.

[Stenis]

Brendexn, I don´t either feel I´m in a severe hurry because I´m just an old enthusiast (75 in February) but I realize that I don´t have all the time in the world to add metadata to my pictures and still PM Plus is a far more effective tool from what I have seen than [promotion of competitors removed by mods]. [promotion of competitors removed by mods] is very good and outshines PM Plus in many ways BUT for me it is not even close when it comes to productivity as I use them.

There is also one very important issue especially for professionals and it is support for Content Credentials (C2PA). PM Plus is supposed to support C2PA in this new version that is about to be released now if it hasn´t already been.

Still, just Leica seems to have at least one model with C2PA-support but Sony has communicated at least four models will get this support this year both Nikon and Canon are working on the same kind of solutions. It is very important that the whole workflow from camera over RAW-converters and metadataeditors like PM and even [promotion of competitors removed by mods] in a future is not disrupted. The content provenance integrity has to be secured and that takes even software that are C2PA-compatible. Earlier I think just Adobe was able to provide RAW-converters with C2PA-support but now even Capture One 16.5.0 has it that just got released now in the last weeks of October. So these demands are not going away and soon the buyers of pictures will expect professional photographers to be able to deliver C2PA-certified pictures. It is not a coincidence that AP (Associated Press) worked with Sony to develop a C2PA-workflow and I guess both Canon and Nikon are collaboration with other big news agencies. So photographers selling news pictures to these agencies get better to get ready for these demands. One way is to upgrade to RAW-converters and metadata tools that support C2PA.

[Max Lemesh]

I sometimes think about upgrading to subscription from my PM6 license, but then I see that it costs more than my Adobe CC subscription which does include PS, Lightroom and Bridge I just can't justify it, no matter how big of a PM fan I am. Also there is no upgrade path for old users, sadly.

I'd be happy to pay $10 a month now, so I guess it would be a lost revenue from me, until PM6 stops working completely

[brendxn]

Out of curiosity, what makes you think of “upgrading” to a subscription? What benefits in the software are unlocked for you?

[Mick O (Camera Bits)]

This forum is hosted and provided to talk about using Photo Mechanic, workflow, different ways of getting things done. We accept discussion, feedback and even criticism about Photo Mechanic and Camera Bits policies. However,  when it comes to recommending direct competitors, we hope that you understand that we will restrict sharing links and advertisements. We believe that Photo Mechanic is a tool for a wide variety of workflows, but it is not meant to be a tool that does everything a person could possibly need. There are things Photo Mechanic does that no other software can do, and we want to provide those features at a fair price that allows us to continue as a company. We realize and accept that some users may be better served by other software for some tasks, but we must draw the line at promoting certain competitors in this forum.

Mick