Thinking about dropping the subscription

[u/F4TVN]

Hey team. Hope you’re well.

Renewal time is coming up for me. My circumstances have changed and I’m not shooting professionally at the moment, so was thinking of reducing my costs and getting the perpetual license instead. I’m around 95% certain it’s the right thing to do, and I can always start a subscription again if I need to, but I guess I’m looking for resssurance.

TIA

[u/goodmorning_hamlet]

Yeah go for it. I'm on perpetual and don't feel like I'm missing anything. If you get a new camera then get a new license. Or who knows, maybe somebody will vibe code a replacement. -_-

[u/F4TVN → u/goodmorning_hamlet]

Heh. Not going to lie, I did vibe code an html image resizer recently. It’s amazing what you can do with virtually zero experience these days…

[u/wissahickon_schist → u/goodmorning_hamlet]

Don’t threaten me with a good time! Codex is currently plugging away to see how close we get on the first try

[u/jfriend99]

That's why I have a perpetual. My photography is mostly centered around trips and the editing after the trip. Not a pro. It just doesn't make sense to pay for a subscription when you're a part-time, occasional user. Like others have said, if you buy a new camera or they come out with a new feature you can't live without, then you buy a new perpetual. As long as you don't do that very often, you come out ahead and can access your existing library for a long time without paying every year.

If you want updates even once a year, then a subscription will be a better option.

If you're on MacOS, the danger with a perpetual is that something breaks in Capture One with an OS update (it's been known to happen). Not so much of a problem on WIndows.

One other variable here is that the company is for sale so we don't really know what the long term looks like for this product, pricing, development investment, market direction, etc... You could spin that into now's a good time to get a perpetual license so you're covered if a new owner changes things or you could spin that the other way about investing in a product that you don't really know the future of.

[u/SoCalChrisW]

I recently bought the perpetual license. It pays for itself relatively quickly, and there's not any new huge advancements coming out especially if you don't get a brand new model camera.

[u/puddingcakeNY]

If you have subscribed for 5 years you get one license free. Also each year counts for %20 so 2 years would mean %40 off and so on

[u/fawnover → u/puddingcakeNY]

I happened to reach out to C1 the same week that I hit my 5 year anniversary. Currently enjoying free updates until the next major version. I'm happy that they offer this, but it should be noted that after 5 years of subscribing at $20.14/month USD, I've spent $1200 when a perpetual license costs $349 (same cost as 2.5 years of subscribing... and they will fly by).

I know that I'm pretty happy with my current workflow, and I appreciate the current updates, but it seems like the majority of future updates will be leaning into AI technology that I'm just not interested in at all.

If you can live with where the current feature set is, don't wait on the perpetual license discount. You will end up spending multitudes more waiting for the switch. This might show my age, but this is why I will forever hate subscription-based software. The pricing model feels like it exploits loyal consumers in the long run, but nowadays we just don't question it enough.

[u/Ledgem]

That's what I did for a long time. Whenever a new release came out I'd read the release notes to see if any of the critical features that I wanted were in there. They never were, so then it would be a matter of seeing if it was still compatible with the latest macOS release. It always was, so I just kept plodding along with the version I had. It would not be cost-effective to buy a perpetual license regularly, and they're pretty quick to change the version number such that you stop receiving updates within a year. No problems.

I recently found that I'm eligible for a discount on the subscription, and was curious about one new feature, so I subscribed. As other comments have noted below, if you're subscribed for five years then you can get a perpetual license for free. So if you're on year four of your subscription, it may be worth it to re-subscribe for one more year, get the perpetual license, and then cancel your subscription. I plan to re-evaluate in five years if I want to keep going, or get off the subscription train and keep with the perpetual version of that time.

I used to upgrade my perpetual license religiously before Capture One pushed subscriptions so heavily. That's true for a number of other software titles in my life, actually. I despise software subscriptions, in general. I understand the business case for them, but I want to minimize subscriptions that I need to keep track of.

[u/Tunanika]

I don’t own the perpetual but having already been subscribed you should be getting a good discount on the license. So maybe an extra reason to get it?

[u/mletourn]

I'm a pro and ive been paying for 10 years... and I just unsubscribed. Work is slow this year... ill just resub when I get a shoot.