Do you really think cubase pro is the cheaper program ? wow…
I think the point Romanos is making is that different products from the same company can have vastly different price structures depending on their function and user base. That’s where the apples-to-oranges objection comes in when comparing Dorico to Cubase. They’re just not the same product.
Neither of the Apple devices Romanos referenced is “cheap.” But given the choice, even if both were free, I’d rather have an iPad than a Mac for my needs—and I do, in fact.
I added to my last post, but yes, Dan has the idea. And frankly, cost doesn’t even necessarily equate to “value”. Cubase is of very little value to me now, but Dorico is of enormous value.
If Dorico isn’t of value to you and you disagree with the price structure, don’t buy it. Problem solved.
I made no claims about the cost of cubase pro. Tbh, I don’t much care what cubase pro costs. It is irrelevant to me. I don’t expect cubase to be the same price just because it is sold by Steinberg, in the same way that I can go to a Toyota dealer and buy a “cheap” corolla for 25k or deck out a van at the 4th trim level for 55k. I’m not mad at toyota for selling two cars of different price.
Thank you, I got this. But I still do not get why Dorico must have a different pricing model than the other products (cubase,wavelab, nuendo). And I think People have the right to point this out. It is not the Money itself, I can afford this easily. But I have the same Feeling as the op and some else. It does not feel right for us. And it would be nice if other people who disagree make this in a manner that at least respect different point of views.
cheers
add: to make it clear: I do not talk about the price, but the different update pricing model.
What I would like to know is Dorico 3 for Catalina a paid release as I was one of those who bought Dorico 2 at the end of May 2019
I am learning the software but like to keep current regarding features although I may not need them at this present time.
I understand that software is costly and that updates are usually free between . releases so how long could I expect to get these
updates without paying further upgrade price for a new os version.
Regards
This has generally been the case on this forum, and I hope it continues.
Sometimes in our enthusiasm we get a little carried away, admittedly…
I think it’s easy for us to forget that while their scheme is a bit different from other Steinberg products, it is actually on par with other software of its kind. So there is a market parity, even if there isn’t a Steinberg parity. That is undoubtedly part of the difficulty for people who are used to other Steinberg release cycles.
I am just outside the free update window having bought D2 90 days ago. Not a happy bunny, although I accept all the points above. Like bad memories of Sibelius…
Since the 2.x updates for Dorico were all free, it seems the c. $100 upgrade price from 2.0 et al. to 3.0 was entirely reasonable and not so different from the Cubase charge for a whole number upgrade.
I do Dorico, Cubase Pro, Sibelius, and Finale as a single user. I also have some experience with mass deployment in lab or classroom situations (which I will not go into here).
Dorico and Sibelius cost about the same for me to keep up to date as an individual.
Finale is only slightly less expensive (from a retail perspective…many of us get much better deals than the inital retail pricing), as they haven’t done as many paid upgrades lately; however, when they do I’ve noticed the prices might vary depending on the size and scope of the upgrade.
Bottom line, if we’re looking at retail prices (not counting specials/sales/promos/etc.), and if we exclude the costs of hardware and/or OS upgrades that might be needed as well, I have NOT noticed much difference in the costs involved in keeping all of these apps up to date.
OS and recommended Hardware upgrades sometimes come into play as well. I have some systems sitting around that run Finale quite well, struggle a bit with Sibelius, and while they’ll ‘function’ with Dorico, I wouldn’t recommend trying it on longer scores/projects without at least maxing out the RAM (or just go ahead and get a new Computer). Still, at the end of the day…taking all the ‘years’ of service into account…I don’t think the current Dorico upgrade pricing or time schedules unreasonable, nor to be all that different from the competition.
It’s probably more like a toll road which never seems to be paid for. But I’m not complaining, just sayin’ that’s their business model.
90 days is more than three times the 28 day grace period. You are not “just outside” the grace period.
Clefmark - Dorico 3 is a paid upgrade for anybody that activated Dorico 1 or Dorico 2 before the 8th of August. If you’ve already switched to Catalina, you’re advised NOT to install Dorico 3 - it’s not yet ready for Catalina.
A compatibility update will probably be free when Catalina is released (like last release)
This has been quite an eye-opener of a thread.
I get that people are very grateful to Steinberg for making Dorico. That’s as it should be
But I don’t understand the resistance to the idea that maybe 4 weeks grace is just maybe a bit on the short and stingy side?
I’ve had decades of experience with this exact issue from a software developer / vendor point of view.
Short grace periods cause 2 things
- They cause ill-feeling in the customers.
- They cause cashflow problems as people put off buying until they are sure they won’t have to pay again.
Neither of these things are desirable for the provider, let alone the customer.
The arguments so far have been
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It doesn’t matter as it only affects new customers who recently bought, and once everyone has bought this problem will go away. Sorry but the only reasonable response to that is a facepalm. No sane vendor wants their initial feeling they establish with customers to be one of disappointment or feeling gouged.
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Steinberg has to make money. Well sure of course. At what expense? I think if you asked everyone who bought Dorico 2 5 - 26 weeks ago how they feel about having to pay for an upgrade, I don’t think you would overall get a positive response. In fact I’ve seen some, and they are not positive. How much does it cost Steinberg to be stingy (in terms of good-will) and how much does it really cost to be generous (in terms of the additional people who would qualify for a free update due to recent purchase). And how much does it cost Steinberg to have people deferring purchase?
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if Apple releases a new iPad you have to pay to upgrade. Simple matter of hardware costing money to provide, and software (once it’s written) costing basically actually nothing to provide.
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variations of people should be so happy to have Dorico that money is no object.
If in doubt, take a look around a bunch of other software, its not uncommon to get a year free updates when purchasing. 1 year is quite generous. 6 months is reasonably generous. 3 months is borderline, and 4 weeks is downright stingy and was frankly a shock when I learned it was that short. Many customers hardly even open the software in the first 4 weeks. The likelihood that a customer derived any significant benefit from some software in a period of time diminishes with the duration. 4 weeks is short, have a look around.
Maybe Steinberg should warn people purchasing that there MAY be a release in just over 4 weeks that they would have to pay for. What do you think that kind of openness would do for cashflow prior to a paid upgrade? Nothing good I can assure you.
In the end it’s pointless to argue with people whether they think 4 weeks is short or not. May as well try to argue with me to convince me to like brussells sprouts. It’s an opinion. My opinion is based on 25 years experience dealing with this exact issue (amongst other things) with customers just in case you don’t think my opinion is worth anything. And also dealing with all the issues that come out of these sort of policies.
Several complaints about this exact issue on the FB groups as well over the last couple of days.
This doesn’t even affect me personally, since I purchased same day Dorico 2 was released. Still haven’t used it on a project yet, waiting on some very basic things to be implemented that I need. It seems like if I don’t say how excited I am about Dorico (which I am) at this point, people will disagree with my point about 4 weeks being short. Or some will disagree with anything that could remotely be seen as a criticism of Dorico whether they actually disagree or even think about it or not. It’s great to have such enthusiastic fans, but please can we still use our heads? These are people here voicing opinions (not just me) here on the forum and on FB saying they think 4 weeks is very short.
This suggestion about 4 weeks being short is not a criticism of Dorico. It’s of Steinberg. Sure I’m grateful they made Dorico. But that’s a separate issue.
And in the end, for those who think that someone should pay an additional $100 USD and be happy about it after having had the software only just over 4 weeks, what period do you think WOULD be unacceptably short? 1 day? No grace period at all?
Think about someone who purchased Dorico when 2.0 came out. They got 18 months use out of it before they had to pay $100. Does 18 months (or is it even more?) really equate to 4 weeks?
I think repeating your same arguments over and over again is just as likely to irk people as to convince them.
Ok, Derrek. I think Adrien has got a point. If I had convinced a friend to switch to Dorico say 5 weeks before now, I would feel bad for him 
But the length of the grace period is not a parameter I could have influenced in any way, so I’ll stick with being careful about when those paid updates might come, when I have to convince friends to join us: I certainly don’t want anyone to start working on Dorico with that bad feeling.
In a case such as you mention, I would feel bad for my friend too; but I’ve heard people suggesting that the grace period should be 90 days or six months. No matter how long it is, some will apparently still complain. The safest course is to advise people to wait until a new version comes out and then try the demo. If one wants to play it safe, that seems the most logical way.
I was merely trying to put everything into one post. Most of that post I hadn’t brought up before.
One other thing while we’re kinda skirting this issue.
When I started out in software in the early 90’s I was totally clueless. I wasn’t even a particularly fast learner, but here are some lessons I learned, which relate to how software companies interact with customers.
- When a customer complains about something, several things have happened prior to that.
- they have observed or encountered some issue which caused some disappointment / expectation not to be met
- they have decided to provide feeback
- they took the time to write the feedback and send it through.
- How you feel (as a software vendor / tech support etc) upon receiving this feedback should take into account ALL these things. Sure it’s disappointing to know some feature you worked so hard on and tested so long has broken for someone. But if you have basic respect for your customer as a human and understand the process they went through to get to this point, then some things become clear, so for example
- you accept they are disappointed about something, and human respect requires that you not discount this. No initial blaming the customer out of hand, it’s a sure way to alienate a customer and lose them and all their friends.
- you become grateful that they complained. Yes grateful. They spent some of their life giving you feedback so you can improve something. They can’t get that time back. They are one of the 1% who are actually trying to help you. The other 99% are abandoning your product without telling you and going around complaining to people about it as well, which costs you further sales.
- You consider if something needs to be done about managing the expectations that caused the disappointment.
So, when I’m interviewing someone for helpdesk / tech support these are the sorts of things I sound out. It’s so easy to fall into the trap of thinking customers are idiots, and that they shouldn’t complain about things. Lots of IT / computing companies are really appalling at treating customers with respect. It’s easy to do right once you know what right is.
There are books on this topic, and it’s abundantly clear that Daniel and all the Steinberg staff on this forum and FB groups (who are frankly awesome, it’s very rare to see such commitment and professionalism in product support) know all this as well. I don’t expect other laypeople (e.g. people who don’t have a background in product support) on a community support forum to know them, so I’m just putting it out there for free.
I absolutely agree with Adrien’s point about one complaint constituting less than 1% of the people that actually considered the same complaint but didn’t have time/energy/motivation to bother complaining.
An educational publishing company I work with has a marketing guy who’s extremely “hands-on” - he drives round the country nipping into schools to ask questions of customers he’s gradually built a relationship with. The feedback he gets in person is way more valuable than what comes via the web/post/phone, and quite often many customers have thought the same thing independently but aren’t sufficiently pro-active to chime in via official routes.
That said, I’d like to think that the Dorico team have cultivated a situation whereby users are very proactive about reporting their grievances.