Confusion on Altium Designer pricing - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / general

author: mrtn
author_rank: Contributor
timestamp: April 23, 2014, 12:48:20 pm
content: I bought an academic license because I work at an educational institution. It was about USD 500 for the version that will disable itself entirely a year from now (outstanding)Some day I will no longer be working at this educational institution and I would like to possibly continue using Altium Designer. I have heard the $9k figure and around $1750 for subscription. Does this mean I have to pay $9k regardless? Or can I go the subscription route and pay $1750 a year? The latter would be possible. $9k might as well be $90k. I think I know the answer.I do independent consulting but $9k is half of my yearly income from my moonlighting career.Much thanks.

author: 8086
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 23, 2014, 12:52:57 pm
content: You can get the educational licence while not being in education?Huh. Never knew that.

author: mrtn
author_rank: Contributor
timestamp: April 23, 2014, 12:59:08 pm
content: You seem to have missed the first sentence of what I wrote.

author: 8086
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 23, 2014, 01:01:51 pm
content: You said you work there, not that you study there...

author: sacherjj
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: April 23, 2014, 01:06:48 pm
content: Altium Pricing is a fixed price, plus first year of maintenance. Then each year, you can choose to continue paying maintenance. Many software packages are going to this. Making it cheaper to keep you paying support, than just buying it every couple years.

author: mrtn
author_rank: Contributor
timestamp: April 23, 2014, 01:07:25 pm
content: My role is in education and research and my use of Altium is supporting such activities. I don't suppose they would allow a person with any random educational link to get the educational license.

author: mrtn
author_rank: Contributor
timestamp: April 23, 2014, 01:09:36 pm
content: Quote from: sacherjj on April 23, 2014, 01:06:48 pmI suppose if I could mentally amortize the cost over several years then it would be a reasonable proposition. Though I am a strong supporter of Dave's lower-cost Altium ideas (as long as it doesn't suck.)

author: EEVblog
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: April 23, 2014, 01:34:29 pm
content: You have to pay the $9K at first, and then either chose to pay nothing more and never get any update (even bug fixes last I checked), that's called a "perpetual license". Or you pay an additional few $K each year for a "subscription" that keeps you updated with whatever they release in that time.Altium coped a lot of flack at one point for not releasing anything in the year people paid subscription, so their money was wasted.Also, without paying subscription you don't get access to libraries now, but I could be wrong about that?Also, if you start subscription and then stop, and then want to take it up again in order to get some new release you like, you have to pay a big penalty, or the full amount again. They do everything they can to lock you into a subscription.It's funny, I can remember Nick Martin standing up in the front of the entire company when they slashed the price by 70% or something ($12K down to $3K?) and said "We are burning our bridges, there is no way we can go back to high priced software". Now they are just creeping back up and up again

author: mrtn
author_rank: Contributor
timestamp: April 23, 2014, 01:48:06 pm
content: Quote from: EEVblog on April 23, 2014, 01:34:29 pmYeah I can't disagree. I guess there's not much else to say that hasn't been said. The numbers won't make sense for me.Thanks.

author: Mechatrommer
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 23, 2014, 02:47:06 pm
content: Quote from: sacherjj on April 23, 2014, 01:06:48 pmlet say (with round off figures) i buy $9K AD13 today and pay $1K yearly maintenance after that. say 5 years from now, AD14 comes out. can i use my AD13 license to activate AD14, ie i dont have to pay $9K again for AD14?

author: Selectech
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: April 23, 2014, 05:21:53 pm
content: Nick Martin got the boot so the new suits just do what they can to enlarge their bonuses. They don't really care about the users.

author: Kjelt
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 23, 2014, 05:58:54 pm
content: $9k instead of $500I would start looking for any university in this world where you can become a student for <$1k administrative fee a year, that must not be so hard to find in these economic troublesome times in some poorer countries.Or sponsor a real EE student if he orders/buys it for you, knowing students they won't mind for an extra couple of hundred $, must be hundreds of volunteers

author: AndyC_772
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 23, 2014, 08:04:54 pm
content: Have you looked into Cadence instead? I pay a fraction of that for Orcad PCB Designer.

author: sacherjj
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: April 23, 2014, 08:16:06 pm
content: Quote from: Mechatrommer on April 23, 2014, 02:47:06 pmIf you pay the $9 and continue to pay $1750 or whatever it is, then you keep getting upgrades and updates. The issue with not doing that is you may run into a bug on a feature that you didn't use before and you might have to roll backwards until it works, if you don't have support.But if you pay $9k today, you get AD14. It had been out for months.

author: Mechatrommer
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 23, 2014, 08:28:50 pm
content: Quote from: sacherjj on April 23, 2014, 08:16:06 pmok, maybe its my bad example, let me ask again... if i pay $9K today and get perpetual license for AD14. and i become a good boy in the future to pay $1790 yearly, not a single month i miss, i patch updates and all etc.... and then 10 years from now AD15 will be out. the 10mil question is.... do i have to pay $9K again (or whatever the market value is during that time) for AD15 perpetual license? to be able to patch update for AD15? i hope that clear.

author: sacherjj
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: April 23, 2014, 08:34:41 pm
content: Quote from: Mechatrommer on April 23, 2014, 08:28:50 pmYes, the perpetual support entitles you to all future updates. Both minor and major versions. It is a subscription for the software. If you choose to not continue paying the subscription, you have a perpetual license for everything up till the latest that was available when your subscription ended.

author: Mechatrommer
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 23, 2014, 09:11:09 pm
content: ok thanks. as i understand it, i only pay $9K once for ad14,15,16,20 and beyond so long i pay continuous yearly subscription fee.

author: sacherjj
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: April 23, 2014, 09:20:21 pm
content: Quote from: Mechatrommer on April 23, 2014, 09:11:09 pmCorrect. And part of the $9k is the first year subscription.

author: EEVblog
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: April 24, 2014, 02:56:39 am
content: Quote from: Selectech on April 23, 2014, 05:21:53 pmTo be fair, Nick Martin never cared about the users real needs eitherhe was the industry master in telling you what you needed...and that was why the company got such a bad rep over the last decade or more.The new management is more focussed on the user and their actual real world needs, hence the focus on "core" product again, they have been quite open about this.The increasing pricing of the product is another separate issue.

author: corax
author_rank: Contributor
timestamp: April 24, 2014, 04:12:14 am
content: Quote from: EEVblog on April 23, 2014, 01:34:29 pmI thought that was the idea too, but we let our subscriptions lapse back in December, and I can still access/download all of the component/footprint/etc. content in their vault.Not getting updates though, and not allowed back into the bug tracking area of their live.altium.com website until the subscription is made current.

author: miguelvp
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 25, 2014, 04:55:34 am
content: Quote from: mrtn on April 23, 2014, 01:07:25 pmEducational prices used to be available to not only students but also (reads: specially) to staff and faculty. Meaning you could be the janitor and still qualify AFAIK.When I used to work as staff at UNI doing research (many moons ago when I was an IEEE and SPIE member as well) educational prices were available for all staff, faculty and students. Actually I was also part of the software purchasing committee. I don't recall how much we paid for allegro (Cadence) if anything, could have been free at the time, for example the cost per seat for a student for all the M$ software was only $10. I believe Cadence still have an educational track for only for qualified Universities. We used Allegro to develop a 3GHz capable token ring fiber optic network for medical imaging with in house build hardware and software back in 93. I do believe we used a VMEBus and a 68000 based system, not sure if we were using OS9 or lynxOS but some kind of real time OS, it's 20 years ago so I don't really remember.Allegro as far as I know, is still the leader if you want to do anything in the GHz arena. At least on the higher bandwidth part of things.I miss being able to buy cheap software/hardware, I miss spring time with sun dresses all around, but I was single then, not anymore, but I really don't miss the measly paycheckI do recall one day someone walking with a bunch of tubes filled with dual ported 4ns VRAM (64MB worth of it) asking, "guess what I'm holding in here?" His answer was "a Ferrari Testarossa" and we got it for free from a research project for Toshiba IIRC. We got major breaks on pricing for hardware as well. They pretty much threw equipment, software and grants our way to persuade students to use their tech. I would think that's still the case but i'm not sure.I do miss academia, flexible hours, free education, awesome hardware, cheap software and cool projects, long vacations, University research provides a fraction of overhead compared to the private industry and vendors keep on pushing their hardware/software for peanuts. Only reason I left, the private industry paid triple. Having been published helped a lot on jumping from academia to the "real" world.But if you are still in academia, take advantage of the cheap software, heck take advantage of the free credits you can get while being paid for doing so.Sad thing is that US Universities were a great way to retain all the talent from all around the world within the US, now they pretty much encourage them to get back to their original countries.I'll dare to say that Universities are the best assets for any country, if you can keep them after they graduate.

author: Kjelt
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 25, 2014, 08:47:34 am
content: Quote from: miguelvp on April 25, 2014, 04:55:34 amThe same is going on here but the saddest thing (i think personally) is that our countries can not find the right PhD students from our midst but that after they graduate their masters (or some unfortunately even before that) they start working in the industry. Getting knowledge immigrants might be a short term answer but not a long term one unless they can stay and integrate 100%.But even then as mentioned in an other topic, the newly hired foreigners are lowering the overall salaries because there is more supply.[start rant]Personally I think the best thing for a country is that excellent engineers are paid more then their average managers and that society seeing them driving fancy cars and having a luxury live might finally bring more students for the technical education. At this moment in our country (and I exaggerate a little bit not much) students can choose a technical study which takes more then 5 years while it should be done in 4 (but the level is so high only 10% makes it in 4 years or so) and then get paid half of when they study for a MBA like study and finish that without problems in 4 years. Then a boatload of high tech industries are still so backward organised that the only way a top-engineer can make a carreer is switching into a technical projectleader or even worse a manager. What the &^*&^ does a country need with a ton of managers? I say long live holacracy [end of rant]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holacracy

author: facumedica
author_rank: Contributor
timestamp: April 25, 2014, 05:21:50 pm
content: Here there's something called ThePirateBaySometimesIt's the only way to go when you are a student

author: DerekG
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: April 29, 2014, 11:40:55 pm
content: Quote from: miguelvp on April 25, 2014, 04:55:34 amThe educational license allows use for "educational & training purposes within the university". It does not allow use for commercial purposes outside of the university.You need an educational email address to receive the license code each year.

author: miguelvp
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 30, 2014, 01:57:45 am
content: Quote from: DerekG on April 29, 2014, 11:40:55 pmYou are 100% correct, I should have stipulated that. Surely if your use is commercial you can pony up the full license so they won't take it from you ten fold for missuse of a license.

author: jeremy
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 30, 2014, 04:11:23 am
content: Quote from: AndyC_772 on April 23, 2014, 08:04:54 pmIf you don't mind sharing, how much do you pay?

author: AndyC_772
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 30, 2014, 06:23:27 am
content: In round numbers, it's about GBP£2000 for the software, and £500 annually for updates and support.

author: Psi
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 30, 2014, 07:53:34 am
content: Maybe have a dedicated PC for altium and hack its RTC so it runs 10x slowerMight need to keep it off-net as well.

author: Kjelt
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 30, 2014, 08:38:33 am
content: Quote from: Psi on April 30, 2014, 07:53:34 amAnd never be able to update anything official anymore since software updates should be digitally signed and will contain the date of issue which should be checked with the system time, if they are any good in writing their software

author: martinets
author_rank: Newbie
timestamp: June 08, 2015, 11:27:42 am
content: Just read this thread- you might want to consider Altium CircuitStudio available  through Newark element 14. It's a scaled down version of Designer and the latest version 1.1 can import Designer files. It's only $3K- better than $9-10K.

author: jmarkwolf
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: June 08, 2015, 11:54:57 am
content: I use Altium at work, have for almost 20 years (it was Protel before it became Altium).Will be retirning in a couple years and there is no way I'll pay upwards of $9K + the yearly, for the consulting I will be doing.I bought Circuit Studio. It is Altium without the "fluff" that I never used anyway.The current first release is a little shy of features (doesn't support PcbDoc format yet) but I'm sure it will be adding features in subsequent releases.Check it out.

author: LabSpokane
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 08, 2015, 04:30:05 pm
content: How long have you had CS? What is the annual maintenance fee?

author: jmarkwolf
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: June 09, 2015, 11:20:31 am
content: Quote from: LabSpokane on June 08, 2015, 04:30:05 pmI bought it a couple months ago.Yearly updates are "currently" $500.

author: LabSpokane
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 09, 2015, 02:30:08 pm
content: Thanks jmark...,Are the files compatible with the full Altium package? i.e. Altium can read them directly?

author: jmarkwolf
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: June 09, 2015, 06:05:47 pm
content: Circuit Studio reads Altium SchDoc (schematic) files, libraries and project files just fine.The current version doesn't read/write Altium PcbDoc's, in favor of it's own format, but I hear "rumours" the next release will read/write PcbDoc's.Be advised the current version of Circuit Studio does not have an integral Gerber Viewer/Editor, but there are a lot of free/inexpensive ones out there. Viewmate seems to be a nice one for free, or $99 depending on desired features.

author: zeino
author_rank: Newbie
timestamp: June 25, 2015, 07:51:32 am
content: Don't want to hijack this thread but I need to share my experience with Altium anywhere I can. I am glad I came here and learned CS is an option other than Altium and I will try it, I was focusing on Eagle. My experience with Altium distributor in Canada:Altium may be a great software but its distributor CAD Microsolutions is totally incompetent in terms of customer services, and their handling of Altium distribution in Canada is horrible as far as I have experienced. It is 9 days that I have requested a a student license and they denied it despite me being a student. All my communications were through university email and I sent them my student ID card with latest sticker, they emailed me first that the card photo is old and I should send new card and later they wrote this:"We have also reviewed your other validation that you have provided and although you are a student at the University of Calgary, you are going for your PhD in Philosophy - is this correct?" In other words they interpreted the PhD in my university webpage as doctorate of Philosophy and as they understood someone studying Philosophy and not Electrical engineering and computer science (so much of logic and understanding) They later emailed me this:"it sounds as if you are going to be using your student license of Altium for commercial purposes. This is also against the requirements of owning a student license of Altium" In other words they predicted that I may do something illegal in future and denied the license. After 9 days and me complaining to Altium of they attitude and discrimination the CAD Microsolution President Darren Gornall which the day before had called me and arrogantly ordered me to listen while he is talking and saying he wants to help me and doing me a favor sent the an email mentioning article 1.25 of Academic use or basically doing the bullying again and reluctantly agreeing with the student license which obviously I declined to accept after 9 days of suffering and harassment.Don't know if Altium agrees with this treatment but being a Monopoly in Canadian market has made CAD microsolution a hazard for Altium society in Canada and the way they treat students is totally unacceptable. I now forced to look at Eagle or Orcad for my hardware implementation of my Thesis (indoor positioning cooperative algorithms) and have very negative bias towards Altium in Canada and CAD microsolutions specifically. I hope the monopoly is ended as soon as possible and Canadians have a choice. I share this with you to be aware of it and report any similar incident. Obviously CAD microsolutions have never dealt with students otherwise the would have known what PhD stands for. Obviously the shouldn't be given the last say in licensing in Canada. They are not competent for this role at least.Who on earth uses an expensive non perpetual license for commercial use when he knows it will end next year. It makes sense as a university thesis with the aim to master a tool before heading to market. The way of reasoning on this is absurd and if hypothetically even a student does that that should be considered a plus for Altium as they will eventually have that students as their future license buyer. Unfortunately, CAD microsolutions are not competent enough to understand Altium stand in the market and are working against it in Canada. It is a shame that they represent Altium.Soon I will build my circuit with Eagle and share it in Linkedin and Educational societies and repeat my story for everyone to know! May CAD microsolutions be ashamed on how they treated students and this particular student. All emails between me and CAD microsolutions are available for anyone interested.

author: DerekG
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: June 25, 2015, 08:07:07 am
content: I have replied to you here:https://www.eevblog.com/forum/altium/bad-experience-with-altium-canada-distributor-cad-microsolution/msg699687/#msg699687