You do realize that to use Photoshop and all the other adobe products it costs $50 a month? Aka 600 a year and you don’t get to keep it. Plus if you stop paying you don’t get to keep the software?
So? We knew that going in. What is it about “free for life” you dont understand?
Wow paying for Photoshop now AI bundles… same price too.
Perhaps the price of the upgrade program is going to exceed the budgets of many followers. Please reconsider price points.
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I recently purchased Denoise AI, Sharpen AI and Mask Ai. After having a bunch of issues using them as plugins to Lightroom, your own tech support tells me that yes, there is an issue and they are working of the fix. These products were advertised as plugins to Adobe but in fact are not. Now, you tell me that if and when you fix it, I’ll have to pay for what I purchased and did not get. In all honesty, they aren’t worth it. Good luck and I’ll keep the versions I have and paid for, but not anything further.
It seems as though there are 2 schools of thought. Some who understand that development costs money, and those who feel their trust was betrayed. I happen to sit in both schools. I understand that it costs money to develop software. On the other hand, one of the huge selling points your sales force used out in the field was the free lifetime upgrades in the software. I can’t remember how many times this was pointed out, but it made the original cost of the software a lot easier to swallow. The selling point was “free lifetime upgrades” NOT “free until Topaz realizes this is a bad idea upgrades”. I have been using Topaz software for years. I truly think the 49 for one program for a year and the 99 for all is very steep. If you want to charge that for the new purchasers of the software, make sure to include that in the agreement. My agreement was free lifetime upgrades. If that was not included, I would not have purchased the software initially. The idea of grandfathering in the original users is a good one. To have a sliding scale of charges to users who were offered free lifetime upgrades would also be an idea. If you have been using the software for more than 5 years, you continue getting free upgrades, 3-5 years, your upgrades will be 20 for one, max of 35 and 1-3 years 25 for one max of 50. Something along those lines. At least then you would be giving something to those of us who were pulled in to purchase with a promise that you now have to break.
This is not going to be a popular move, and with more software coming out, and other software doing a pretty good job doing what you are doing, you will likely lose a good number of users. I know I do not see myself paying 99 for upgrades every year. This is really disappointing as I have been talking Topaz up a lot in my facebook group for beginning photographers and on a couple photo groups I belong to as well. I will still show the results, and maybe you will get new users that can pay the upgrade fees for me… Disappointed.
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Sorry, I have to ask. You didn’t find out about your observed defects during the 30-day free trial?
You do realize photoshop used to be that way though. And then they changed their model. You could keep on using the old version as long as you want just like topaz.
Also no program topaz offers was ever 400.
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Actually, the original plug-ins totalled $499 when they were offered. If you didn’t get them on a sale, you paid a lot for those and they’re not even available anymore. When Studio came out, it was free to anyone that owned the plug-ins, probably because we paid so much for them.
As I am not a pro photographer I can not justify paying $99/yr. I felt the products were over priced in the first place but paid the initial price for them because of the free upgrades.
Topaz is now just becoming another con company that tells you they want you to own your product with no subscription. Then charge you for upgrades every year, they tell you don’t need to upgrade if you choose not to but as soon as other host software is updated or the OS is updated the app most likely won’t work and you are forced to pay for the upgrade.
I would not have paid the original prices if it were not for the free upgrades because frankly most of the Topaz AI range is not that great at the moment but I expected it to get better with time.
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While I understand from a business standpoint the reasoning for this change, the only reason I have purchased all of your products is because of the promise of free updates. A different update model I wouldn’t have been able to justify the price. This feels a bit like a bait and switch. I’d feel a bit better if the ‘grace’ period was extended until 2021 and the upgrade cost was only $20-30 for all products.
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I do not think you have a choice - you have to charge. And those of us who buy your products must realise that, unless you can generate income, there will be no future product development. You, Topaz, do need to take a clear and disciplined software development approach: What constitutes an upgrade, a new version and a new product. I appreciate your honesty - you messed up but you have also 'fessed up 
This is a radical change in the product definition and I would like to have the option to get my money back.
The main reason why i decided to purchase the products from Topaz labs was the free upgrades. After a few weeks using the product, I come to realize that:
- there are more bugs than initially expected
- bugs that should be very straightforward to fix don’t get fixed that quickly
- the terms and conditions can change radically without any options for the consumer
- it all of a sudden became a lot more expensive than it was yesterday
In that light, I have the feeling that in less than one year I will be left with a bunch of buggy tools and only a couple bad options to move forward: either give up and write it off as a loss or pay $99.99 (or will it be 299.99 in a year?) to get a slightly less buggy version of the tools and then get stuck into the exact situation that I wanted to avoid in the first place (paying recurring fees that are unpredictable and possibly excessive for my use case).
Altogether I am starting to think that maybe I didn’t make a very good purchase.
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No, I’m just a user/moderator so I’m not sensitive to your criticism, I actually thought you meant what you said.
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Statement was read but my understanding is the same update policy will be applied? Where on the web site is the update policy stated, even the link to the product from the download page is not working?
I know you do not claim to have the same functionality as Davinci (I never said you did!), you clearly do not understand the point I and others have made. Your pricing model does not align with such other software. If you compare your pricing to the level of actual functionality being purchased then one can obviously see that software such as Davinci is far far better value. i.e purchase price is the same and the latter has free upgrades for life.
From reading the posts, it would appear many are not happy with the new policy and being on the defensive, by way of some of your replies, can appear not to be conducive to good customer relations. Just a thought for you to consider!
yep i know phil,but that was far a huge upgrade,i will drop them also if they charge a fee every year or month,with everything somenone must monthly pay these days,electricity,water,gas,mortgage,where the prices swing out of the pan,whats more important you can pay for,this,or a graphics program?
For those interested I found the update policy for video enhance AI. Hold onto your hats…a whopping 199 per annum for the upgrades after the first year. So basically 299 to purchase (currently on offer for 99 and 199 but full of issues still) and then after first year 199 per year…ouch! You thought 49.99 per year was bad enough.
Really … Firstly I have nothing to do with customer relations as I am not an employee, secondly I am a user of Topaz products and thirdly I am a moderator here.
I was simply correcting misinformation as, when the page was up, GigaPixel AI for Video, standalone, was priced at $199 and any updates would cost the same again.
it has nothing to do with this announcement.
I am with Eric and Topaz labs on this one.
It is not uncommen that policies are changed in time.
Last year several companies changed their policies to subscription, costing more then the price for the 4 Topaz labs main plug-ins. Furthermore, they keep on working even you don’t buy the new plan, unlike some other major companies who cripple/lock their software if you don’t pay the annual fee.
They did this without notice, so what Topaz is doing is quite decent.
I agree that a lower fee would yield in more sales probably. 50 Dollars for the whole suite and say 20 Dollars for individual plug-ins are IMHO more reasonable.
In current economy it’s not sustainable to keep giving away software, more companies changed to subscription for that reason. So, I am quite happy to hear it’s not going to be a subscription plan strictly per year. It seems you can determin when to upgrade to the new plan any time after the first year expired. That is more decent then most plans where you HAVE to buy the plan every year!
This way we( the customer) can decide when to pay for the plan and when we think the products are mature enough to own.
I’d rather have the 4 main plug-ins as mentioned above really good products then a load of mediocre ones just to generate money to be able to survive.
I like to thank Topaz Labs for their ongoing innovations and for 11 years of free upgrades.
Will you also sue Adobe for going subscription without telling the users?! They really played their customers by not telling after cs6 it would be subscription only…Will you sue other companies going subscription?
Companies can change their policies as they see fit.
I think there is nothing wrong with changing the conditions for the future at any time. But there is something wrong with the attempt of changing the conditions for already sold items. You could even say: “Oh, ehm, we made a mistake. We did not want to sell you a piece of software. Wie originally wanted to sell you a cup of tea. Please return your software. You receive your cup of tea free of charge in nearly no time including a free sort of sugar.” I would for sure wonder if the cup if tea was really what was promised and if that was what I wanted to spend my money on …
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