WHAT happened to pricing?!

    Um...pardon my ignorance here, but what happened to the monthly pricing model for subscription?!


    $76/month after tax for Enscape for one seat, fixed license? That's pretty a steep increase for the monthly subscription vs the yearly/monthly fee.


    When I read the initial email notification about this, it read like the monthly fee was going to be $39.90/month- they obviously meant the annual subscription if you divide 12, which is "monthly." I loathe this type of marketing/sales jargon and am very frustrated with the Enscape team on how this was handled.

  • Tim

    Changed the title of the thread from “WTF happened to pricing?!” to “WHAT happened to pricing?!”.

    Wow, this is ridiculous. I understand that billing monthly adds administrational overhead, yet this seems way exaggerated. We're already paying yearly so this won't concern us but I can totally understand why this might upset users.

    Here's what support response was:


    "Thank you for your message!


    From time-to-time, we reevaluate our pricing. We have been fortunate that we have been able to keep our prices steady since October 2019. Meanwhile, Enscape has made significant new investments, including staff, so we could bring you the best possible product with the best possible service.
    We reevaluated our prices in detail and the benefits of monthly fixed licenses did not align with the price point we set before. We believe the value that you receive through the flexibility of the monthly license needs to be reflected in the price. Please note that the price for the Fixed-Seat Yearly licenses stayed nearly the same and you might want to consider changing to a yearly subscription instead.


    The email did list the various billing periods for each license type. The reason we listed the price per month, was to show how the prices compared for each subscription.


    I'm afraid the only exception I can offer you at this point, if you no longer wish to continue to use Enscape, is to cancel your license retroactively and cancel May's invoice. However, I'm afraid we cannot adjust the pricing. Please confirm by 05/05/2021 if you wish to cancel your subscription. "


    - - - -


    I didn't request for my subscription to be cancelled or to get special pricing for what I thought was fair. I have asked for my latest payment to be credited towards a new annual subscription. To make matters worse, support is across the world in another time zone and these responses are a day delayed.


    And to clarify, I adamantly disagree that a monthly price should be 43% MORE expensive just because it allows for customer flexibility. More-so, it feels like I'm being forced into an annual subscription. Which I will obviously now do, because the monthly fee is outrageous vs the render software competition. I'll stand by that the info graphic provided in the email (see attached)- which support also included in the email above- is misleading for users like me who were simply monthly fixed seat. I'm an office of....ONE. Not some huge architectural firm- I have quite a few SaaS recurring monthly software subscriptions...these things add up. Speaking of which...my AUTOCAD LT subscription is cheap than this.

    Thank you everyone for the Feedback - this is also something I have shared with our Sales & Licensing group as additional feedback.


    For now, there will probably not be any further adjustments to the monthly prices - While I can understand the frustration, the points still stand that we've grown a lot as a team and thus are also able to provide higher quality updates (in form of new Assets, Service updates, Releases, Previews) in less time overall, more frequently, which is just one reason we went for this price increase as well.

    Quote from Tim

    To make matters worse, support is across the world in another time zone and these responses are a day delayed.

    For a while, we also now have support available around the globe so that you should always get an answer within an acceptable timeframe of 1-2 days tops.


    There isn't anything else I can add for the current moment - if our Sales & Licensing department gets back to me with a further statement I'll let you know though.

    Agree with previous post, you hitted the targets that needed a low price licesne

    most of all you increased price without increasing function and still have issues about changing light in batch rendering and a limit of 72dpi

    get dangerously close to price of other render solutions


    best regards

    Quote from Luca Troian

    Agree with previous post, you hitted the targets that needed a low price licesne

    most of all you increased price without increasing function and still have issues about changing light in batch rendering and a limit of 72dpi

    get dangerously close to price of other render solutions


    best regards

    Luca- I think you've mentioned DPI elsewhere in the forum if I remember correctly. DPI and resolution are not the same. DPI is a measure for physical print, not digital media. 8192 x 8192 is the max resolution output from Escape and is plenty high. Not sure how you've come to seeing a 72dpi limit. But that's another discussion I suppose.


    - -


    While I think Enscape HAS improved, I definitely saw this price increase and some higher marketing push happening with the release of V3.0. Revised branding, logo, etc. I agree it's catching up in pricing to it's competition. I find value in Enscape for sure, I'm just mostly disappointed in the "value" I was forced into by having to subscribe for a year vs just happily continuing monthly as I was. As a consumer, I prefer to be kept loyal to a product naturally by me finding value in the product. Not artificially by means of pricing schemes. Now I feel a bit trapped, which is unfortunate given then current state of the rendering software industry as it's really starting to take large strides in performance and capability.


    This, of course, is a massive heated discussion over on the SketchUp forums as well when they switched over to subscription pricing...leaving users to find and seek out "deals" and promos for multi-year subscriptions, etc. It's a bad experience for the end-user.


    As another use mentioned, Trimble now bundles V-RAY into the SketchUp Studio license, which is a clear indicator of things to come. Hoping to see it trickle down to the Pro license eventually. And of course there's TwinMotion (Epic) with it's recent acquisition of Quixel, which offers a considerable value in terms of assets included.


    Of course, Enscape pricing looks like chump change compared to the Lumion Pro 11 cost...lol


    --


    And an update for anyone still reading...Enscape customer service applied my previous monthly invoice as a credit towards a yearly annual license. Took a few emails back and forth but to their credit they did come through in the end.

    Tim I think you made some great points in your last post and completely agree with overall sentiment that you are bringing to this conversation. I worry that enscape is on its path to becoming a "adobe or auto-desk corporation" by hiring suits and not programmers, content creators, or forum moderators(Damien you do a great job even if I don't agree sometimes). Switching to these kinds of subscription models has a huge adobe/autodesk vibe to them. I don't understand why(probably $$$$) after all the push back and negative press other programs get, more developers/suits decide go down the same path.


    I hadn't thought about the v3.0the way you did until you brought it up. Overall v3.0 has brought many more hiccups and hindrances than positives in my opinion. Enscape is still a super useful tool and I prefer it over other extremely expensive rendering programs like Lumion. That being said, even though they are expensive, I do see the value in other comparable programs because of the tools and content they bring to the table. From the last release and the current dev agenda for the next release, which I see as kind of lackluster, I hope these price increases aren't more frequent. If they are to become more frequent I have the expectation that comparable upgrades to features/content come with them, not just rebranding and UI changes.

    Aargh! I am still waiting for a better interactive video editor and a fix to this "on the fly, irreversible" visual settings adjustment before I upgrade to 3.0. Enscape is a pleasure to use, but I sure do wish they were more in tune to feedback here than chasing slick new graphics and whatever administrative overheads they're adding to their org. I would feel better about pricing changes if I saw more substantive results.

    Quote from andybot

    I would feel better about pricing changes if I saw more substantive results.

    This... 1000% this.


    To clarify my opinion on this, if I saw that production and workflow requests were being worked on, I would stop looking for other alternatives. Currently, I believe we have hit the ceiling of what we can expect in terms of productivity enhancements.


    Recent changes have actually hurt production workflows. Future upgrades will likely do the same. I am currently using 2.9 and am not in a hurry to upgrade.


    I am, unfortunately (yet again) going to be looking around. With faster cards, other more capable rendering software can likely now compete in terms of productivity.


    Regarding Lumion. I recently tested it and I am NOT impressed with the image quality, especially when rendering for Post work (material ID, object ID, lack of exr). Enscape's quality seems FAR superior in terms of image for that workflow.


    EDIT: The roadmap for 3.1 seems to indicate a refocussing (hopefully) away from UI and toward production and workflow enhancements. See below


    Enscape 3.1 Roadmap

    renderwiz, Your comparison between Enscape and Lumions output I think is completely spot on. Everyone's list of features they'd to see is obviously different and even though I don't find a need for it, there has a been a huge push to get pano batch renderings lately. Enscape seems to have taken note but nothing concrete has happened as of yet regarding it. From my observations it seems a lot of people haven't even upgraded to 3.0 because of the issues and productivity changes that came along with it. That being said there are other alternatives coming to the market that pose a threat to Enscapes market share and if the overall lack features and updates doesn't justify the price increases/subscription method there is no need to stick with this program. Brand loyalty is nonexistent in the visualization world. As soon as a new program with better tools, higher quality outputs, and/or smoother workflow pops up everyone is going to switch, even if there is a learning curve.

    Quote from renderwiz

    Currently, I believe we have hit the ceiling of what we can expect in terms of productivity enhancements.

    Enscape has always hung their hat on the software being "simple" to use- and it definitely is. But I'm at a point now where I am starting to want some more granular/advanced toolsets- hopefully while keeping the overall use experience pretty friendly. IMO the dark horse here is Unreal Engine. Epic has the market pull and financial backing to take the industry by the reigns pretty quickly. TwinMotion must have taken the wind out of Lumion's sails, IMO. Just as Enscape probably took a bite out of VRay- which is why we now see a realtime engine built into Vray as well now


    Quote from Tearch

    That being said there are other alternatives coming to the market that pose a threat to Enscapes market share and if the overall lack features and updates doesn't justify the price increases/subscription method there is no need to stick with this program. Brand loyalty is nonexistent in the visualization world. As soon as a new program with better tools, higher quality outputs, and/or smoother workflow pops up everyone is going to switch, even if there is a learning curve.


    Vray now providing a game-engine realtime solution along with their software suite is basically all you need to know where this tech is heading. I watched the Vray 5 for SketchUp release webinar and kept thinking " Enscape has been doing this...and much better, for way longer." But Vray still has the edge for really getting fine detailed on textures, reflections, etc. Again, different tools always progressing with the tech. I definitely downloaded my 30 day trial of Vray5 for SketchUp this week to give it a whirl. Still really enjoy enscape for my workflow, but it's important to always be trying new software and learning.

    You guys increased prices by 43% whilst your biggest competition Twinmotion is giving it out for free to all Rhino users........you are not giving us much choice to stick around here.....


    Demian Gutberlet The one thing I recommend to people is the flexibility of month-to-month subscriptions, this is huge for small practices, young architects, and sole practitioners.


    Please do not become another Autodesk......

    $900 (floating license) a year is insane. what will be the price in 2022?


    vray charges $700 for their entire collection of 15 programs. not sure what you people were thinking but fire the big-brains who thought this was smart.


    I liked Enscape when it was just a small company. I was happy to pay when you guys first started out, Ive been using your program since the beginning. You guys are no longer the underdog, just another company looking to suck the blood out of its customers. I would love to vent my frustrations completely but ill just leave it at this....

    Canceling subscription.

    What will you be using?

    This is remarkable , same happened to me basically got the monthly subscription and it went from 47.91 EUR to 73.93 EUR in four months and they told me from customer support that they recomend the anual suscription now to me . They changed the priceright after i got the licence . I mean shouldnt at least kept our contract for a year rather than forcefully move us to an anual subscription with a price hike . It should have been made for new customers and to the old customers at least keept the pricing for some time , it feals very bad because i loved the company and the software they where like the under dog and friendly and then the pull this typical large company BS with greedy pricing tactics .


    Below are my details for me first and last invoice .



    Dear Jeronimo,

    your invoice INV00149710 is available:

    Invoice Due Date: 17/02/2021

    Account Balance: 47.91 EUR

    Please remit payment within your payment term.

    Your payment term is: Due Upon Receipt

    You can also view your invoices in the License Center.


    Kind regards,


    Your Enscape Team



    Dear Jeronimo,
    Your invoice INV00178097 is available:

    Invoice Due Date: 06/17/2021
    Account Balance: 73.93 EUR
    Please remit payment within your payment term.
    Your payment term is: Due Upon Receipt

    You can also view your invoices in the     License Center.

    Kind regards,
    Your Enscape Team