GUANGZHOU, China — (BUSINESS WIRE) — June 16, 2015 — Ever feel incapable of choosing an item because there are so many choices out there? In today’s software industry, the frustration can be more severe because there are not only many options on the market, but also multiple ways to pay for a product. Take Adobe as an example, the traditional payment is to pay for a perpetual license, and then rental came up which allows users to pay as they go. Which payment is easier on the budget?

It is hard to say one is more expensive than the other if time is not taken into consideration. A subscription policy is more of renting a program; users can decide to pay monthly, quarterly or yearly. There is no doubt that the upfront cost is lower, but the situation will be different if the renting takes 5 years or even longer. Perpetual licensing may require higher cost from the beginning, but it eliminates repeated pay.

Some CAD software providers will not issue new perpetual licenses after Jan 31, 2016. For users who already hold perpetual licenses, new upgrades must be purchased separately and support is not included. Therefore, users can only either choose a perpetual license plus a maintenance subscription or a desktop subscription in the future. To get a clearer idea about what kind of impact the change will bring, the below picture can help better illustrate.

To figure out how users think of the change, ZWSOFT conducted a survey on CAD trends that includes the preference of the two payments. According to the results from almost 1,500 CAD users, almost 80% of the interviewees would like to choose perpetual licensing instead of rental, and the top collected reasons are long-term cost and extra payment for unnecessary functions. Less than 20% of the users think rental can help them keep up with the integrated updates and latest functions. Judging from the results, most CAD users prefer perpetual licensing because they don’t want to pay more in the long run.

Ralph Grabowski, a renowned CAD expert, quoted a brief calculation in his blog showing that annual subscription of some CAD software becomes more expensive (than perpetual) after 2 years and 5.5 months, and monthly subscription becomes more expensive (than annual) after 8 months. For details, please go to http://www.worldcadaccess.com/blog/2015/01/this-is-how-much-more-youll-be-paying-for-autodesk-software.html.

For customers, the emergence of subscription means another choice. If the cost of subscription is still too heavy on their budget, there are more cost-effective CAD programs like ZWCAD+ that are not only easy for the budget but also can satisfy all design needs. Besides, with so many other CAD programs available in the market, users can always choose what works best for their budget and their projects. To help you get a concrete idea about the specific prices of other CAD software compared with ZWCAD, ZWSOFT developed a business value tool to help you make your own calculation: http://www.zwsoft.com/zwcad/Business_Value_Tool/.

ZWCAD Design will continue to provide perpetual licenses and dedicate itself to providing better CAD solutions for you and your business.

About ZWCAD Design

ZWCAD Design Co., Ltd. is an international CAD software provider through its network of over 300 partners in 80+ countries and regions. Its product ZWCAD+ is used by CAD designers across the AEC and MCAD industries.

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