Jan 17

Jan 17 Thoughts on Capture One’s Licensing Plans

When I started this blog, many years ago, one of my goals with it was to try to be as positive as possible. At the time, I found that much of the discussion around photography online was negative, and I wanted to do my best to be the opposite of that. I’ve undoubtedly failed many times over the years, but I still try to keep my posts as positive whenever possible. So, with that in mind, I want you to understand how much I would rather not write this post. I’ve been putting it off since before Christmas, trying to find some way to temper my frustration, but I just have to get it over with, and so here it goes.

I’m pretty fed up with Capture One. The company, not the software. You may not have even heard about this, but before Christmas, they sent out an email to existing customers warning them that they were planning to change the licensing model for perpetual licences next year.

The initial email, essentially, said that (paraphrasing) Capture One Pro is moving to what the company calls a "more flexible and frequent release cycle" and it is introducing changes to the way licensing works. As a result, there will not be a Capture One 24. After 1st February 2023, new perpetual licence purchases will not receive any feature updates. This means that any updates containing new features and functionality will not be included in your licence purchase. However, bug fixes and optimisations will be included until a new paid version is released. Subscription licence holders will not be affected by these changes. There will also no longer be upgrade pricing.

There was quite a bit of backlash to this as you might expect, and the official support documentation around this has since been re-written in an attempt to clarify, although it still leaves many questions open.

Here’s what the official documentation says:

After 1st February 2023, new perpetual licence purchases will not include any feature updates (16.x)

This means that any updates containing new features and functionality will not be included in your licence purchase. However, bug fixes and optimisations will be included(16.x.x) until a new paid version is released (16.x).

They will also no longer have upgrade pricing as such, but promise to replace it with a loyalty programme, the details of which have yet to be announced.

So in a nutshell, starting in 2023, if you have a perpetual licence, you will no longer get any new features. Currently, point releases generally feature new features of some kind, but in the future this will solely be for subscription users. New features will be continually rolled out to subscribers, much like Adobe does with Lightroom, but perpetual licences won’t get any of those features until they choose to buy a whole new licence of Capture One. The yet to be clarified “Loyalty Programme” should offer a discount, but the details of this has yet to be made known. It is unclear how much of a discount this will offer, or if it will match current upgrade pricing, and how often you can use it.

[UPDATE] They’ve just added details of the Loyalty programme. I’ll update this post with more thoughts once I’ve analysed it.

To all intents and purposes, the way I see it, perpetual licences are dead. They may still exist in name, but if you want to stay up-to-date, then you really need to switch to subscription. However, there is a problem with that too. But more on that in a second.

When Capture One 23 was released, I wrote about my frustration at Capture One’s pricing, that the subscription was more expensive than the upgrade but was essentially the same thing. I argued that they need to differentiate, and I guess that this certainly does that, but I had thought that reducing the subscription price to something more reasonable was the way to go, not try to make the perpetual licence as unpalatable as possible.

The even more annoying thing is that they sent out these notices after the upgrade cycle to 23 had probably run its initial course, leaving many to feel duped. Even though these changes won’t take place to next year—people felt they would have switched to a subscription or just not upgraded had they known). Not only that, but there’s no mention of this anywhere on the home page or if you currently go to buy capture one. It’s buried in a knowledge base article.

Clearly this move is designed to push people to subscription, which is a bit ironic considering Capture One for years capitalised off the anti-adobe subscription demographic. So, the simple solution then is to just switch to a subscription. But even that process isn’t straightforward.

If you go to switch to a subscription, you get, in very small writing, the following warning:

Please note, switching to a subscription will deactivate your existing licence key.

Wait, what?

So if you subscribe to Capture One 23 for example having bought Capture One 22, you then lose your existing perpetual licence. Therefore, if you stop subscribing in the future, you can’t even revert to the last perpetual licence that you had.

It’s unclear if you can buy a subscription separately from “upgrading” existing licences. The process is the same and the prices are the same and to be honest, I would rather not test it and lose my existing licence.

[Update] - Since they announced the details of the new loyalty programme (a day after I had written this) they now say that you can keep your existing existing perpetual licence. See the end of the article for more details.

I’m pretty understanding of a company making decisions to protect the health of the business, even when others are generally angry. I always do my best to see all sides in these kinds of situations, and I can even understand the push to subscriptions, and the removal of feature updates from the perpetual licences. Likewise, I don’t like these moves, but I can understand them from a purely business perspective. But I’m finding it really hard to find any reason to justify deactivating previous licences. I wonder if this is even legal. In my opinion, this is something an accountant at a struggling or failing firm would insist on, not a company that cares to love its users. It’s just not acceptable.

(And yes, I know this isn’t new, but in the light of using people to subscribe it takes on a different light, in my opinion).

I still like Capture One the software. But it’s getting very hard to recommend it now. Adobe has been on fire recently with its Lightroom updates, and all the new masking and AI features are much better than anything currently in Capture One. I still prefer how some camera’s files look in Capture One, but it’s getting to the point where it’s not enough to justify the significant expense, especially given all the improvements recently in Lightroom.

I didn’t upgrade to Capture One 23 and I don’t intend to now after this move. I still like aspects of the software, as I said, but I’m using Lightroom that much more now since all the changes of the past year. It really pains me to write this as I really did love Capture One, but until this, all shakes out, I won’t be upgrading any more. I understand that there are still plenty of people who need Capture One or prefer the software, even despite these moves, and I completely understand and respect that. Having said that, I can’t currently recommend it given the somewhat questionable business decisions at the company, at least until there is more clarity, or they change the subscription so that it doesn’t deactivate previous licences.

Update - Details of Loyalty Program Released

Capture One has decided to post details of their “Loyalty Program” early in an attempt to calm some of the dissent, but to be honest, it still leaves several unanswered questions.

You can read all about it on their website, but there are a couple of key components:

A Discount off the price of a perpetual licence if you’re a subscriber. The discount depends on how long you have subscribed to Capture One for. For more than 12 months, you get 20% and there are various tiers up to those who have subscribed for more than 5 years, who can get a free perpetual licence.
If you have a perpetual licence, you can get up to 40% off a new licence depending on how long ago you last “upgraded”. To get the 40% you need to have upgraded less than 12 months ago. This will mean the cost for an upgrade is more or less the same as it currently is, however, the current upgrade doesn’t have a time limit. I would also be remiss if I didn’t point out that the usual cycle between major versions if currently around 12 months, meaning if you are upgrading when they put out an x.x release, you probably won’t be able to get this maximum discount. If you upgrade between 12 and 23 months, you get a 20% discount.
If you switch to a subscription, you can get up to 40% off the first year of a subscription, again depending on how long it's been since you have last upgraded.
They now state that getting a subscription means you keep your existing licence, so at least there’s that. Although the “licence will be deactivated” is still on the upgrade page.

So, this may help alleviate some of the concerns for people, although judging by the comments, maybe not. It still seems unnecessarily messy to me.

The one question that I do have, though, is whether or not you can upgrade between major point releases. They haven’t really been clear on this. Will there only be set points within a release cycle when you can get new features, or will you be able to upgrade at any point and get whatever features have been released until then? It’s not 100% clear.

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