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Comment by dr_faustus | Hacker News Reader

Serif's Affinity suite has probably the greatest value for money in the whole software industry. I mean 119 bucks ONE-TIME for three pretty comprehensive graphics apps which are polished and get constant updates is very hard to beat.

For people making their living with graphical work (designers, photographers, etc.) Adobe is probably still the way to go (even if just to keep using the muscle memory). However for the many people who only need something like Photoshop or InDesign a couple of times a year, Affinity is just great.

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I have developed new muscles with dedication and effort, I had Adobe logo in front of me all the while, I was falling down and crying with pain but one look at Adobe logo would make me get up and get going with newly found vigor - just to kick Adobe's bucket and to embrace loving comfort of Affinity Suite.

Nah.. it was pretty easy to jump. Life is beautiful.

I used Photoshop and Illustrator for years and years (going back to 1990's) and switched to Affinity about 2 years ago. There's a lot of little details that are different--say, when you grab a resize handle, does aspect ratio stay locked or do you have to hold down shift?--but I found that it wasn't tough to retrain. Most things are where you'd expect. It's certainly not like Gimp or Inkscape, where absolutely everything is different and it feels impossible to get anything done.

In addition to it not being a subscription, I also love this bit from the App Store's Privacy section:

   Data Not Collected
   The developer does not collect any data from this app.

After I post this, I'm off to buy the desktop and iPad versions.

I tried to buy a certain type of simple app a couple of weeks ago, and while there were dozens of options available, not one didn't Hoover up everything it could about me.

Really? You need to know my name, location, and track me across apps for a card game? No sale.

Edit: Purchased. Thanks, Affinity. Go stick your head in a pig, Adobe.

The Universal Licence gets you all three apps on all platforms now. Incredible deal.

Just so you know, that's not true. After all, they need to collect your email to login for the perpetual license. At the very least, this needs a "Data Linked To You - Contact Info" card.

Generally speaking, 'App Privacy' cards are lies. Apple does not check them, you need to do it yourself. Here is the Privacy Policy: https://affinity.serif.com/en-gb/privacy/

In the EULA (quoted from Affinity Photo 2 for MacOS), you further agree to, among other terms:

> *Consent to Use of Data* > > a. 16. You agree that Serif and its affiliates may use any information you give to use as part of product support and other services provided to you, if any, related to Serif Software solely to improve products or to provide customised services or technologies to you and will not disclose this information in a form that personally identifies you.

Seconded.

As an infrequent image editor/designer/publisher I'm just casual enough that there is no way to justify an Adobe subscription (even if I'd want to have one).

Affinity occupy a wonderful niche for people like me in that they provide comprehensive, professional, and bullshit-free software options. It's an incredible value for this day and age and I love using their software. I have zero complaints about the company or their products.

Upgrading when they have a release like this is a no-brainer. Even if I don't really need the upgrade I'm eager to support them for doing such a fine job.

And that includes all platforms (Mac, iPad and Windows). Really great value.

Not really all platforms is it though. Linux not supported at all

That's not the context of the GP's statement. They're referring to the Universal License being offered by Serif, which provides you a "buy once use anywhere" on all of their supported platforms, not that they support all platforms.

As a Linux user myself and a former (and upcoming again) studio sysadmin, it's disappointing Serif doesn't offer native Linux support. But let's not twist the discussion here.

All supported platforms, as in you don't have to pay a separate license fee to run it on one of the other platforms they support.

Yeah, I'm not happy having to keep a copy of Windows for graphics software either, but that's a different issue. If you only have Linux or some toaster running NetBSD, then it's pretty simple: don't buy it.

Amazingly there's people moaning at them about the price in their Twitter announcement.

$119 is only affordable if you're got a high-income job, which billions of people on planet Earth don't.

$119 perpetual is an insanely good price for three absolutely fantastic applications. What are you smoking? What's a fair price to you? $10?

On one side you've got people complaining about these anti-consumer software subscriptions from the likes of adobe. Then on the other side you've got people like yourself that are for some reason complaining that there's still a company offering fantastic software on par with Illustrator for a fantastic perpetual price.

Affinity Designer is £35 right now. That's insane.

The mind boggles.

You haven't been to poorer countries where the equivalent of $10 is a lot, so good luck getting a market for $119 software there.

The same price gets you Creative Cloud for 2 months. What exactly is the point you think you're making? Because people earn different amounts in different countries is not a revelation to anybody here, nor to Serif.

The poorer countries where the equivalent of $10 is a lot are probably not part of the market anyway, considering that having a computer is a prerequisite to benefitting from this software. Anyone who can save enough for a computer can probably save $119, even if that's not cheap by any means.

$119 for getting 'professional software' which potentially can add $119/month to the household income.

These are not selfie correction software.

I've been to Cambodia and Mozambique. I'm not sure what the point is you're trying to make.

In those circumstances, you're not even going to be able to afford the hardware to run it. There's no point to be made along this line.

Cynically: why would one want a market there then?

If one could sell software there in such a way that only people in that market could buy it at that price, the answer is obvious... software has effectively zero marginal cost per copy.

So if you could practically limit your market at a specified price in such a way that that offer doesn't spread to other markets, then every copy you sell in such places is still beneficial to you.

There are less cynical answers to the question, but you asked cynically.

Well keeping on the cynical train. Parts of the world experiencing desperate poverty often not so coincidentally experience substantial inequality with the folks needing a professional tool not being so different economically from better off areas. If 90% of your market has no problem paying why would you not charge full price?

Next how do you keep Jane in Seattle and Bob in Houston from buying the poor market version? You can't really restrict it by language or locale people use all sorts of languages/settings in different parts of the world. Desktop computers don't have location and people could trivially block the app from having access to location AND network data. You don't want your offline software failing for lack of phoning home.

An argument could be made that Jane and Bob could well pirate it too but friction matters. Lots of folks can figure out how to pirate but fewer of them will actually do it if they have to visit the skeevier corners of the net, risk malware, and feel like a criminal instead of clicking on a different locale on your website and feel like they are cleverly getting a good deal. One weird trick to make a substantial portion of your revenue go away.

I would say that compared to software like Adobe that costs $600 a year or $3000 over a 5 year horizon it's already very inclusive.

How about a non-cynical answer. Software does not have effectively zero marginal cost per copy. It does have zero manufacturing cost per copy, however support is quite an expensive on-going cost. When you have a presence in multiple markets, you need localized support for different languages, and that is even more expensive. When you have different costs in different markets, you encourage users in more expensive markets to try and game the system, to minimize their costs. This sets up a potentially adversarial relationship with your users, and is mostly non-productive.

In the end this is a professional software suite, and running a business has some fixed costs. By comparison, Adobe's suite would cost much more per year.

They must have PPP enabled, so price depends on the country. I see "regular price" as 169.99$, but now on sale 40off for $99. It really is great value for the money. I hope they stay on this path. I don't mind paying for the upgrades every couple of years.

There’s always GIMP, Krita, and Inkscape. Imagine if a few million of those billion people worked on them.

I get that people can’t because they have to earn a living, but so do software developers.

These are pro level apps. Honestly can't think of a single bundle of 3 pro level apps that you can license on Windows, iPad and Mac for anywhere near that price.

I bought all 3 apps at 50% discount earlier this year. I paid 9,900 yen for it. The new universal license cost 15,800 yen. That's 50% price increase for me. I don't need apps for other platforms.

I can afford it, and I will probably buy it. But I can't help but compared to what I paid not even a year ago.

I just bought photo a month ago at $50 and was annoyed at first that suddenly I have to pay more if I want the latest version, but then at $100 and I get a universal license to all three products, I’m still way ahead of having an Adobe subscription.

If you only bought a month ago, drop them a line, there's a good chance they'll discount further for you.

The number of people who cannot afford this but also own the required hardware and need the full package of all those licenses is probably not high.

Open source software like Gimp and Linux are free and can be run on your $50 single board computer instead of paying $500 for a laptop that requires a $139 OS license and a $119 software license for Affinity.

While it's certainly nice that those options exist, they are also entirely unsuitable for any kind of professional work. I assume the target user you're thinking of is looking to do some occasional, light-weight editing. And even this user will be frustrated with the irritating UI and workflow of software like (and in particular) The Gimp.

For me, it's close to unusable — and I am someone whose first computer was a TI44/4A. I'm a die-hard terminal shell user. Even Adobe Illustrator didn't really click for me. The Affinity suite made immediate sense.

There's value in usability.

> There's value in usability.

That value costs money. A parent poster posited someone for whom ~$100 was a lot of money. You speak of professional work. I don't think the intersection of these two groups exist. Casual users with no money can use krita gimp darktable and be reasonable satisfied. Demanding professionals even in poorer parts of the world can use the wages earned to easily pay $100.

Is $100 for a universal suite license even that much of a price hike? Affinity v1 was $50 a pop with no universal license option - as in, you had to buy each platform's port of the app separately. I happen to have one foot in every tech ecosystem and bought all three apps, so I wound up spending more on Affinity v1 than I will on v2's universal license.

And, of course, it's still hella cheap compared to subscription-licensing Photoshop, Illustrator, and InDesign over the seven years of updates you got on Affinity v1.

Sales for v1 at $25 were pretty common, but even then if you want two pieces of software on two platforms that's $100 already.

I actually bought all of v1 on sale... so three $25 apps for both Mac and Windows. Plus the iPad versions of Photo and Designer. So that puts me at around $170? IDK, I forgot how much the iPad versions of v1 cost.

People on Twitter are only happy when they're unhappy.

I wonder if people forget the joke in Twitter's name, that those writing are "twits".

You just reminded me of it.

Yes, and I'm one of them. I'm not moaning at them about the price, but I think it's fair to consider what they are actually saying. They are telling users that v1 is now completely unsupported. That means, if you bought v1 last week, you cannot expect any compatibility support moving forward. The bugs that already exist? Those aren't getting taken care of either. People like to point out that they've owned Affinity products for a long time, and therefore have gotten their value out of them. I've owned all of the Affinity products for quite a while, so I've gotten plenty of value from them. I also have a (quite) expensive Adobe subscription. But at the end of the day, Affinity was marketed as the answer to subscription bloat. They aren't the first company to have to walk that back a bit with major version releases. They should have a deprecation plan in place for gradually winding down v1. Stopping all new features but still releasing compatibility and security fixes is incredibly common in software when major versions change. Instead, their answer is to cease all development an support immediately.

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