ToneBoosters: New License Transfer Policy

[chk071]

How much would you have paid for it? It's only 39 € new after all.

[J4R1O]

How much would you have paid for it? It's only 39 € new after all.

20-25 €. Yes, I know they're not expensive but I still thought they cost 29 € new.

[Skorpius]

Does that mean they charge a 25 € fee for transferring ONE license, meaning that if you want to transfer, say, four licenses to a certain buyer, you'll have to pay 100 €?

[Rockatansky]

How much would you have paid for it? It's only 39 € new after all.

That's not really the point. If I purchase 5 plugins from them, that's 19+39+39+39+39 = 175€ which could be considered a significant investment. Definitely worth trying to get that back if for some reason I can't or won't use the plugins anymore. Paying 125€ in transfer fees leaves 50€ (roughly 28%) of potential refund that I could get from that investment - if I actually managed to sell all of the plugins at full price. That's 72% instant devaluation upon purchase, and a worse deal for every cent I'd have to sell below original price, which is definitely going to be the case if I want to move them on the second hand market. Who in their right mind is going to purchase a second hand license, which involves waiting maybe days for the transfer to complete, only to save about 5€ against the full price? 10€ discount on the second hand licenses is over 50% off the original 19€, and 26% off the original 39€, leaving me with exactly 0ct of potential money back from my initial 175€ investment. It's just not worth reselling those plugins, and that's exactly what they're counting on. Their 25€ transfer fee, especially for a 19€ product, is absolutely utopian. It's not a 'we have to do some work' fee, it's a 'don't even think about it' discouragement/punishment. Generic IT services by a trained and experienced programmer will cost around 100€ per hour, making their 25€ transfer fee a 15 minute job for a trained programmer. In truth however, it will take support staff without any special training about a minute or two to fill out a database form that took the skilled programmer about 5-10 minutes to throw together.

[Rockatansky]

Does that mean they charge a 25 € fee for transferring ONE license, meaning that if you want to transfer, say, four licenses to a certain buyer, you'll have to pay 100 €?

The page says 'a license' and 'the name of the product', which I would interprete as '25€ per license'.

[revvy]

Wow, transfer fee of > 50%!

[replicant X]

deleted

[escalona]

You can try all of their plugins with basically no restrictions for as long as you want to... it should be enough for you to decide whether the plugin is for you or not.
Their prices are low too and the plugins are far better than most other developers nowadays. I see absolutely nothing wrong with this policy.
How about buying a $2 PluginAlliance plugin here in the forum and then paying a $20 fee for transfer? Waves? IK plugins? buying a brand new car? ...it´s the same story. Make sure you need it/want it before purchasing.

[Burillo]

A developer can be great and still have a stupid transfer policy that's out of sync with the rest of the market and is outright hostile towards the consumer. I don't buy this argument of "extra administration costs" of license transfer. There's only "extra administration costs" if you're Quinto Sardo and keep a giant Excel spreadsheet and do everything manually (and even that guy did it for free!). Any license transfer system that isn't automated is the fault of the developer, and developer alone.

[J4R1O]

How about buying a $2 PluginAlliance plugin here in the forum and then paying a $20 fee for transfer? Waves? IK plugins?

A new (ab)normal, and it sucks.

[Rockatansky]

Make sure you need it/want it before purchasing.

I own most of their plugins. They must have changed the policy after I purchased, I would not have purchased knowing of such a transfer fee. Same reason why I won't purchase from Plugin Alliance. Take Apple's silly Catalina nonsense. If ToneBoosters for some reason decided not to provide an update that lets their plugins run on my new Mac, I would not be able to use what I purchased anymore. So I would want to get rid of the plugins, but I wouldn't be able to. The money I spent on the plugins, maybe just months in advance, would have been lost and gone. And then, are their plugins really that affordable? 39€ for a tape plugin/limiter/EQ/reverb is pretty standard nowadays. I remember Softube's tape being on sale below 40€. I spent less than 39€ on SonarWorks, which competes directly with TB MorphIt. Sure, they're more affordable than FabFilter et al, but there's nothing super cheap about ToneBoosters anymore by today's plugin market standard.

[kmonkey]

Arguing about license transfer fee on a product line which cost sub $50 and is actually amazing value + there's fully functional demo for anyone to try before by. It's not like Jeroen is holding a gun to your head and forcing you to purchase.

KVR at it's best. Priceless..

With usual KVR moral Product experts.

Haha

[J4R1O]

I sold two TB licenses about 2 years ago to and the transfer fee back then was 10 € (a group transfer to same person).

[Burillo]

Arguing about license transfer fee on a product line which cost sub $50 and is actually amazing value + there's fully functional demo for anyone to try before [buy].

plugin cost and quality is entirely irrelevant to transfer fee. bringing it up in this discussion is like if we pointed out that a restaurant with amazing food and great service and reasonable prices has a policy of charging you for straws, and you'd be like "but the food is so great so i don't see what's the problem". yeah, we know it's great. that's not an excuse to charge (especially charge ridiculous prices relative to the plugin cost) for something that really should be common courtesy towards the customer. one does not make up for the other.

[Bodhisan]

Honestly, I can’t believe transfers are even possible. It’s not like they lose their value like a car - the software isn’t used, offering anything less than when it’s bought brand new. It’s perpetually brand new.