I’m going to start off by saying that, in my day job, I work for an Autodesk VAR (Value Added Reseller) and a large part of our income is derived from subscriptions, so my opinion here is probably somewhat biased. However, I did spend over twenty years on the other side of the fence, trying to decide whether or not I should pay annual subscription fees for software that I’d already purchased. On the surface it sounds like a scam, and I regularly field phone calls from clients who see subscriptions as just that but I think there’s more to the concept than most folks realize.

For starters, when you are under subscription on your software, you get additional support services from publishers like Autodesk or Eagle Point. Is that really important? Absolutely! The truth is that CAD systems have become so large and complex that even the most experienced users can’t claim to make regular use of all their components. Let me put this into perspective for you: I’ve been working in the civil engineering field for the better part of 25 years, using CAD as my primary tool set and I am paid to teach and write about modern civil CAD systems, like Civil 3D and InfraWorks. You would think that I must know everything there is to know about them at this point, right? Nope. The systems are just too complex, with multiple modules for specific tasks that are only regularly used by specific industries. I am familiar with most of them but I don’t have the time to learn –and remember- every aspect of each module. That’s where you need technical support; people who are experts in the specific tasks that you only use occasionally.

The only way to guarantee yourself access to them, and avoid countless hours of trying to struggle through on your own- is to keep your CAD system under subscription.

The other major benefit of subscription is regular updates to your CAD software. Most major publishers have moved to a yearly release cycle for their systems and if you have to pay the entire purchase price for a new package every year, you’re going to take a major hit to your bank account! Now, you may think you can get ahead of the curve and skip a few updates to save a few bucks, and there are a lot of firms that try. There are two major obstacles in your path along that route though: first, technology is advancing so quickly that skipping CAD updates leaves you behind the curve in an extremely competitive market and that can lose you clients and projects. Secondly, the truth is that you actually save a good bit of cash by staying on subscription versus having to pay full price for periodic upgrades. Generally speaking, annual software subscriptions run around 20% of the full purchase price of a single seat license of most CAD systems. A little quick math tells you that you would need to keep working on your current version of the software for at least five years, before you even broke even. There is no way that you can be competitive in the modern design world using 5+ year old software.

The last thing to consider is the learning curve that skipping software updates entails. Upgrading across a single release can be accomplished companywide in less than a day, and training done in an hour or two. That time frame increases exponentially with each release you skip. If you jump five releases, you’re looking at training your staff from scratch and losing drastic amounts of productivity while they learn an entirely new system. That concept is like taking a professional football team and telling them that this year: we’re going to become ice skaters! You can do it, I guess, but it’s not gonna be pretty.

So, to sum up: keep your software under subscription because it will save you time, money and aggravation over the long run.