Too costly to upgrade

[SLiC]

Could be worse, they could have put the price up!

viewtopic.php?p=8227717

It's simple economics, if the upgrade price is too high, less people upgrade and the company makes less money...

[JHernandez]

I got Bitwig for 299 originally. That was back in Jan of 2018. Then I spent $108 in Sep 2018 and held on to that until I saw fit to use it. Then in Sep 2020 I bought an upgrade at $109, I still haven't used that one.

Not bad imo.

[Tj Shredder]

I got Bitwig for 299 originally. That was back in Jan of 2018. Then I spent $108 in Sep 2018 and held on to that until I saw fit to use it. Then in Sep 2020 I bought an upgrade at $109, I still haven't used that one.

Not bad imo.

If you register it now, you get a free U-he plugin. I should always keep an upgrade from a sale…

[antic604]

If anyone wants the -25% code from the U-He promotion for use on Bitwig license or upgrade please PM me.

[JHernandez]

I got Bitwig for 299 originally. That was back in Jan of 2018. Then I spent $108 in Sep 2018 and held on to that until I saw fit to use it. Then in Sep 2020 I bought an upgrade at $109, I still haven't used that one.

Not bad imo.

If you register it now, you get a free U-he plugin. I should always keep an upgrade from a sale…

If I needed/wanted another u-he plugin that wouldn't be a bad idea.

[anttimaatteri]

Does anyone else find the upgrade price too high?

Here in the UK it's £146.09, which is quite steep, so i've never bothered upgrading, even discounted in their twice yearly sale, I think it's over priced. I have a meagre income and that is my food bill for 2 months.

I have an Ableton live 9 license and although it's far from perfect, I can't justify the upgrade of my Bitwig 1.3 license. I'd love to be learning the Bitwig method of making electronic music but at £150, they can't expect me to open my wallet.

Bring it down to around £80 or lower and i'll upgrade but not before, especially when you only get a year of updates. It's outrageous.

i have a second bitwig studio license on version 1.3.x and i got it for around 250eu for the upgrade from a nektar 8track version at that time.
if i buy an upgrade on sale some day i gwill get an actual version for approx. 375eu. i dont think that this is costly, comparable with ableton live. you should try to get it on an installment plan with paypal or klarna and via jrr which lowers the costs to around 125eu which should be around 100gbp or so. which is on 12month ppal plan not even ten pounds a month

[antic604]

Does anyone else find the upgrade price too high?

No.

1) You don't have to upgrade every year, just when enough features are added that justify the cost.

2) Shop around. You should buy the license or upgrade via audiodeluxe.com or jrrshop.com, which will not only charge you the same number as Bitwig would but in USD and not in GBP (that's like -25% off by itself), but add their own discounts and - in case of audiodeluxe.com - loyalty points.

3) You're supporting a small, relatively new dev team of below 20 staff, who try to push innovative ideas and paradigm on the market, on 3 OS no less and best in class Apple Silicon support - that's gotta be worth something, too?


Because of point 3, I actually buy with them directly and renew every year. But that's me.

[ihearanewworld]

It’s a sad fact of our economic reality that some can’t afford to upgrade, but if making music is a hobby, then I imagine it’s hard to justify spending money on anything. That said - the OP is on 1.3 and says that the upgrade price is too high since you “only” get one year of updates. You’d be getting years of updates coming from 1.3! Tens of thousands of working hours put into developing the software further. The upgrade price is fair in the current market, especially for a smaller business.

[docbot]

It wouldn't be so bad if you got a physical item with it's own CPU but developers rarely even offer a boxed CD and booklet any more. It's all downloads. It's the user who buys the computer, pays for the operating system etc....the developer codes their product, uploads it to a server and waits for people to buy it.

Think about 1000 upgrade sales per year at £150 a pop....yep £150 000 a year. Now think that they're much more likely to sell 10 000+ (I estimate this to be 50 000 +) upgrades so we're now talking well over £1m and counting per year and they don't even have to guarantee the software to be bug free...ever!

No wonder why the software market has been growing at such explosive rates....it's full of lazy "get rich quick" types, whilst the majority of users, such as myself work physical jobs where £150 could be spent on something practical. I think they've lost touch with the realities of finance because they've had it too easy.

Drop the price guys....in half at the very least.

I doubt they sell 50.000 upgrades a year...

[coroknight]

I can't justify the upgrade of my Bitwig 1.3 license.

If you're on 1.3 and the upgrade to 4.0 is still not enough for you then perhaps bitwig isn't for you

[akeia]

129€ (with 25% u-he discount code) for an upgrade (after 3 years). A synth added on top that has a good resale value of maybe 80€. For 49€ "effective" costs the "u-he loves bitwig" promo has been quite a deal.

But I agree that the normal update costs are too high. For 49€ I would update every year.

[antic604]

129€ (with 25% u-he discount code) for an upgrade (after 3 years). A synth added on top...

Really? It was possible to combine the promotions, i.e. use code from U-He to reduce the price of upgrade and still get the free synth with the upgrade? Wow.

[paterpeter]

129€ (with 25% u-he discount code) for an upgrade (after 3 years). A synth added on top...

Really? It was possible to combine the promotions, i.e. use code from U-He to reduce the price of upgrade and still get the free synth with the upgrade? Wow.

You could even do it twice. The Bitwig support confirmed that you can get both Hive and Repro if you buy two upgrades and other users here have offered their discount codes for u-he.

[Benutzername]

I think it really depends on the approach you take on this.

If you just wait long enough until the renewal price matches the new amount of features that you want then it's definitely a good deal, especially when bought in a sale. Other software packages may have advanced several version numbers in the same period and they often charge more when upgrading from earlier versions.

If you look at it as a subscription then you'll definitely be extremely underwhelmed at some point by the amount of new things that you get for your money. To make this work you'll have to plan ahead carefully, don't buy a plan immediately after a larger release, study previous release cycles etc. Spending money just because the plan ran out is the best way to burn your money.

IMHO the best way to look at it is to ignore the 'subscription' aspect of this business model completely. The promised 'machine gun update' promise was never fulfilled anyway. Just treat Bitwig like all other DAWs out there and only buy an update if you feel that it's worth the money. Don't pay for 'maybe we'll deliver something exciting in the next 12 months but don't count on it'.

[Erik_Lucas]

disagree, it's a great deal on the daw market, if not the best. You don't have to upgrade just to have the latest version.

One of the worst in the DAW world.

Your overexaggeration is telling. Even if Bitwig were not that great, it's certainly not "the worst". Personally I think Bitwig is phenomenal; its just the learning curve that's keeping me on my main DAW, but more often than not I wish that I had Bitwig 4 when I had started making music...