My "upgrade" cost is FULL price!?!?

DxO PhotoLab
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21

I have bought it for years, i have version 7 and they give 18% in black friday 2025 upgrade price

How cheap is that

Nik is 15% off

Sure up to 50% off… But basically nothing for loyal customers

I really feel like dxo does not appreciate returning customers

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22

Here’s another way to look at it, though. If you have PL 5, test PL 6 and feel it’s just a little better than PL 5 and not worth the upgrade cost, and think PL 7 still isn’t worth the upgrade, but now you’re ready to upgrade to PL 8, you’ve come out ahead financially waiting until now and buying a new full version at Black Friday pricing compared to paying for either PL 6 or PL 7 and PL 8 upgrades.

I get that you don’t like the lack of loyalty love in getting shut out from upgrade pricing going from PL 5 to PL 8, but it’s been this way for years, and DxO has decided this is a better way for them to go.

Topaz Labs is much more generous about its upgrade policy as well as bundling upgrades pre-release and at Black Friday, but Topaz Labs also tends to abandon apps after a few years without cross-upgrading. Every company has to decide how to get the bucks.

1 Like
23

does PL8 really add enough from PL7 to be worth the upgrade for you? that’s the only question that really matter, and it’s probably the reason why many skip 1 upgrade and why DxO only give discount to last 2 version.

for the price, C1 is more expensive, so it comes down to your needs. or you can get pureraw and mix it with any other software.

24

I feel your pain, as a user of DxO Photolab 5 Elite. Nevertheless, despite improvements in PL 8, I think I’ll stick with my current version, which does what I need it to do and avoids the learning curve needed to master new features. That said, after skipping upgrades for 6 and 7, it seems reasonable to treat me as a new customer, and they’re still ahead of Adobe.

25

It may not be unreasonable to limit the upgrade price to licensed users of the previous 2 versions, but DxO seems to be “running cheap” in this respect. I’ve been a fan of DxO since switching from Adobe products with PL 5 when it was released in 2021. But I didn’t find subsequent versions very compelling, and I was happy to continue with PL 5. Nevertheless, it stopped working in 2024 when I upgraded to Mac Sequoia, While I don’t expect indefinite support for new OSs, 5 years strikes me as more reasonable than 3 years, particularly given the price being asked. Moreover, there was no update path from PL 5 to PL 8. So I was obliged to pay full price for an upgrade that I didn’t really need or want. In terms of costs, I would have been better off maintaining my LightRoom license despite the monthly subscription (so much for the “perpetual licence” :). Less than a year later, and I’m now struggling with the upgrade cost for PL 9, should I wish to take advantage of new features, like AI masking or improved de-noising. Don’t get me wrong, I’m a huge fan, but prospective buyers should understand that talk of a “perpetual license” may be more marketing than real.

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26

Not to place blame but the perpetuity of the license did still fulfil the promise.

And the information about its system requirements was also available for customers.

And if the common procedures such as backing up your system before an update would have been done with Time Machine, for example, rolling back to previous macOS would have been as simple as clicking.

And you would have been back where you left off.

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27

I make nightly Time-Machine back-ups. Unfortunately, I needed MacOS Sequoia for some work-related software, and OS upgrades are unavoidable in the modern world. Hence my comment about the duration of new OS support at 3 years. So rolling back wasn’t really the challenge. It was the rationale for rolling back, in that they only offered 3y of new OS support, which was mentioned no where at the time I made my initial purchase of PL5. My point was that the “perpetual license” promise is more about marketing than reality, and prospective buyers should be aware.

PS: I readily acknowledge that no one can expect indefinite support for new OSs, but 3y does strike me as being on the short side

28

I agree with AKS. When you’re in a production environment with specialised software, you often can’t just do system updates. I’ve already told Apple this when they expect the first solution to even the smallest problem to be updating to the latest system. That’s often just not possible.
If DXO adheres to Apple’s programming guidelines, it shouldn’t be a problem to provide support for five years.

29

Doesn’t Mac OS have some sort of “compatibility mode” to run applications designed for previous OS versions?

30

You’re possibly thinking of Rosetta. That’s for chipsets, not OS versions

31

I know Rosetta!

No, I was referring to some option like “execute this app making it believe the OS is still Sonoma/Ventura/whatever”.

Like for Windows, where you can run old problematic apps in Win 95/98/NT/XP mode to “cheat” them. It works well for old apps that refuse to run because they have a weird way of checking OS version, or that rely on specific older libraries.

Anyway, apart from rare exceptions, I would expect an app to run flawlessy on a newer version of the OS (while of course the opposite doesn’t necessarily have to be true).

32

There would be problems because APIs get deprecated or changed and the app would have to contain conditional code that gets executed, depending on the API version.

I started writing my keywording app in July 2019, so that would have been under Mojave. I have had to revisit some early code and users have had to update the app as some of the newer OS versions have been introduced. At present I can build for macOS from 14.2 to 26

33

We are also talking about ongoing updates for older versions of paid apps. I think this should be guaranteed and that work should not only continue on the latest version.
There are many examples of apps that have been updated for several years in parallel with the latest version in order to run on newer systems.

34

Rosetta allows Apple Silicon to have backward compatibility with Intel chips, which isn’t the issue here. It’s incompatibility with the updated OS, in my case running on the same computer. I’m not trying to come across as angry, but I think this harping on the “perpetual license” is disingenuous. If you’re going to keep your OS up-to-date, as most of us need to do to ensure security fixes, bug fixes, etc, DxO offers 3 years of new OS support, which will end up costing you more than a LightRoom subscription, which prospective buyers should understand in advance. At the very least, they should make this clear in their publicity e.g. “support for this software will expire in…”, after which time they will not even open a new ticket for problems, as I discovered only when I attempted to open a ticket when PL 5 started to “freeze”.

35

I got the point, and I was surprised as a Windows user, since on Windows you can run almost ANY app released since…. 1995, even on the latest OS version. Backwards compatibility is always assured, unless the developer really did some weird stuff.

Another chip in Mac OS suppsed superiority’s armour, I would say.

I would blame this on Apple, rather than on DxO actually… Not DxO fault if Apple releases a new OS version that kills apps released the previous year…

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36

It’s not marketing. Its real. Dont mix / confuse about upgrade path / price. Its two (2) different thing.

You’re happy with PL5 as you write. And in the meantime its ‘just works’ as perpetual license. Great! You happy!

In the DxO support page (PL) its even described how the:
Why is my upgrade price the same as the new license pricing?
“Our upgrade pricing policy is designed to reward customers who regularly upgrade their DxO software. Since you own an older version of our software, the pricing to upgrade to each version you ‘skipped’ would add up to more than the cost of a new license. We, therefore, offer the new license pricing instead.”

Anyhow - may see the other side. I don’t want to defend DxO and theirs strategy. Just share some of my experience. Its going long. I work in the past in some software business, with a few ‘perpetual licence’ stuffs (price ranges between 1500EUR - 100 000EUR), all in ‘niche’ markets (think about video, multimedia, signage) and corporate market.

I think for perpetual licences the upgrade (method/pricing) model usually raise some issues in customers, and also in companies (like DxO). Especially in the cases if few release upgrade ‘skipped’. Also the ‘niche’ market is not easy - and i think photo editor software is also is ‘niche’ market.

  • For companies (like DxO) need to draw a line what versions can be supported, how long, and so on.
  • Not unusual the one-two version back.
  • And the old problem: how many version you goes back? Customers like to go back to v1.0. Why not? The common sense can be differ for each user.
  • Not unusual upgrade price is the ‘skipped’ upgrade prices → So, like in 2-3 year not unusual to get ‘full price’ in the end.
  • That’s also a point why usually main release in each year (to made simpler for users)
  • Some software the ‘support’ (what include new releases) is like 25-50% (at least).
  • For some company if they main business to equipment (like sell cameras, think about Phase One - C1) and also offer software for them, the software upgrade price is less important as they earn a money on equipment.
  • License key management some cases is a pain. Just think about customers lost (stolen) notebooks, they wipe/replace machines, and so on. Without uninstall / licence release. Happen a lot.
  • Hard to support anything over 5 year - when you also has 4 release in the meantime.
  • May some infrastructure changed behind it - just think about Lr v5, v6 - Map feature not work for long time as servers for that not exist anymore.
  • Most users usually use the lastest or before 1. So less issue whit upgrade prices / method.
  • The real problems started when 3-5 release upgrade ‘skipped’.
  • Some users don’t look forward about to upgrade every year. As for them their version is okay. And they not upgrade, like: “We fine, its fulfill our needs, just works”. You cant convince them, even if you do the best demo, highlighting features.
  • Okay, its happen. They happy to pay the antivirus, firewall, and all this generic stuffs. But to pay upgrade to ‘niche’ software for some just “no way”. Usually like: ‘we just use once a week, and only one or two employee use it’. But they use it, some case for mission critical business.
  • But when NEW business requirements raised → like: “we need to do some more shining animation” → Then the until ‘the old release works fine’ change in the blink of the eye. For DxO may this thing the ‘AI masking’ - when user start to think: i can save a lot of time in masking.
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37

Ahemm, read → My "upgrade" cost is FULL price!?!? - #25 by AKS

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38

Dear DXO team, I wanted to upgrade from 7 to 9 on Black Friday, but the discount was only €20, so I lost interest… I guess your sales are going great and you don’t need my money at all… I think there are many people like me, and because of your managers’ misguided policy, you are losing more than you are gaining. I will continue to work with the old version, especially since there are not many new features, and soon it will not be necessary at all. Soon AI will eliminate photo editors. That is a fact, by the way…

39

Ditto with that, loyal customer for a number of years

40

Yes. I read it. Still not change what i think. One additional thing: perpetual on supported OS version. And still has an ability to upgrade PL.
May i spent too much time in the developer and sales side of things, and i see a bit differently :wink:

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