Pro Tools Pricing is Changing — The New Avid All Access Plans Explained
Like it or not, Avid refuses to sit still. Pro Tools will continue to change in terms of what, when and how you get it.
Pro Tools users now must get their heads around the new Avid All Access plans, and quickly: upgrades for Pro Tools and Pro Tools|HD users are less expensive until December 31, 2015. From January 1st, these prices go up significantly.
Tony Cariddi completely comprehends the Avid All Access plans — soon you will as well.
With multiple platforms, plans and upgrade paths available, Avid Access means a lot of new info to sort out. Fortunately, you need look no further for your best shot at making sense of it: Tony Cariddi, Marketing Director, Audio, for Avid explains everything you need to know right here.
In 2015, there have been significant developments when it comes to pricing for Pro Tools — Avid introduced flexible licensing in January, along with annual upgrade plans. How were these new payment methods received by Pro Tools users?
Yes, there have been some exciting changes to the price of Pro Tools — for both new and existing users — as well as the overall value that comes with it. Now, if you’re looking at getting into Pro Tools you can own a perpetual license — that’s a license that never expires — for the new low price of $599.
That gets you the latest version, plus the next 12 months of upgrades, and a new bundle of plugins at no extra charge – this is called an Avid All Access Plan. Alternately, if you prefer to test the waters for a limited time, or want to pay for the tools only when you need them, you can get a subscription license—monthly or annually – at prices starting from less than $25 per month.
If you already own a Pro Tools perpetual license, you now also have new low-cost options for staying on top of the latest developments. Starting at $99, Pro Tools users can lock in all upgrades for an entire year with an All Access plan, and keep up to date each year by renewing annually—for just $99.
These pricing changes have been extremely popular, and combined with the additional value we brought to the All Access plans – including a bunch of new feature releases, and an amazing plugin bundle – users are really seeing a lot of value.
After rolling out the pricing platform, what did you realize needed to be adjusted?
We also learned some lessons during the process of rolling out these flexible licensing plans. After listening to customer feedback, it became clear that people wanted to have the flexibility to get back on an All Access plan if their plans expired. And why not? Life is unpredictable – as an artist or aspiring pro mixer or producer, you never know what opportunities are around the corner.
Pro Tools 12.3 is the latest version of Avid’s DAW.
For some, there may be financial reasons for slipping off an annual upgrade plan, so the challenge was to find a balance between rewarding users who stay on a plan, and maintaining an affordable solution for those who decide to upgrade at a later time. That’s why annual renewals for the All Access plans start at $99, and the price for reinstating expired plans is $299.
How did your experiences with customers lead to Avid creating the “All Access” plan?
We wanted to make sure users feel that they’re getting a lot of value, whether they’re buying Pro Tools, or subscribing, or getting on the latest version. Avid All Access is a collection of services that delivers that value through a variety of benefits.
For example, the Annual Upgrade & Support Plan, available for $199, includes all upgrades, plug-in bundle authorization, and a high level of customer support for 12 months. Another All Access plan is the Annual Upgrade Plan, available for $99, which provides upgrades alone for 12 months.
When does all Access pricing kick in? Please take us through the timeline and pricing for the various user groups.
A picture says a thousand words – see this chart:
A major complaint of Pro Tools users is the frequent adjustments they must make to Avid’s business decisions. In the past, frequent and costly upgrades were the target of criticism. Will Pro Tools users now have to make frequent adjustments to pricing plan changes?
We’ve heard similar feedback and understand that pricing fluctuations are disruptive to everyone. With that in mind, we think the current offering offers strong value at a competitive price, so we don’t plan on changing anything at this time.
How is this ongoing evolution of Pro Tools pricing ultimately of benefit to the user?
With the release of Pro Tools 12, we made a fundamental shift in the way customers access their tools and receive updates.
In the past, a major release would include tons of new features and workflows, but it could take the product and engineering teams up to two years to complete. With the speed of technology development today, our industry is producing entire new workflows and formats within that time period.
The previous model left us little room to be agile enough to respond to new market needs. Also, during those long development cycles, customers weren’t receiving any new benefits.
The benefit of All Access upgrade plans and subscription licensing is that we can be much more responsive to what the market wants, and what solutions it needs for emerging challenges. With All Access and subscription licensing, we can design, engineer and deliver individual feature and workflow updates to market much quicker than before. And we can do it in a way that’s more affordable than ever.
Finally, are there other major announcements in store for Pro Tools in 2016, either from a technology or business model standpoint?
We’ve revealed the company’s high-level plan with Avid Everywhere. That plan is extremely ambitious and far reaching so there is a LOT of work still to do. You’ll be seeing lots of major and minor announcements throughout 2016 and beyond that move us closer to delivering upon that vision and business framework. I promise you’ll be hearing more from us!
— David Weiss
Chris Shaw
December 14, 2015 at 10:52 am (9 years ago)What if I don’t need All Access and just the upgrades for an HD system? Where’s the chart for that?
Honestly. All avid is doing is making things more confusing while trying really hard to disguise a money grab…
John S.
December 19, 2015 at 5:32 pm (9 years ago)Yeah. I agree. Studio One is looking better and better all the time…
Shane McGill
December 14, 2015 at 4:05 pm (9 years ago)Every news coming from AVID makes me wonder why I kept with them for such a long time. Now it’s just amusing. I guess the asylum runs the insane!
Stuff
December 18, 2015 at 1:38 am (9 years ago)as it runs most nations
Slau
December 14, 2015 at 4:50 pm (9 years ago)I get that Avid is trying to promote the fact that subscriptions start as low as $99 but, for HD users, it’s a bitter pill to swallow every time that’s touted as the price. OK, it’s no secret that it’s $599 for the first year for HD users and $399 for each subsequent year (at least for now). I wish there were an option for no support on the HD upgrade. I mean, I’ve been using PT since 2001 and I don’t need tech support. Further, I have two HD licenses and I’m not likely to spend yet another $599 to bring my second HD license from 11 to 12, especially if I don’t want to pay for yet another tech support charge. Why is there no option for HD users to simply upgrade without support like regular licenses can and why not offer an option to upgrade multiple licenses at a reduced cost—at least without extra tech support charges?
sydneygalbraith
December 14, 2015 at 5:30 pm (9 years ago)Slau, I’d like to assure you on behalf of AVID that you’re going to need tech support from now on. The releases are a buggy mess in my experience thus far. The tech support isn’t helpful, but if they don’t outsource their bug fixes to us users they’re never going to make any profits.
-Sydney
Theron Kaye
December 17, 2015 at 3:28 am (9 years ago)As an experienced programmer I was thinking the same thing, half-baked releases and constant bugginess… I sure hope that does not happen.
A.T.
December 14, 2015 at 7:23 pm (9 years ago)A perpetual license never expires, but is only good for a year and has to be renewed annually? So…it does expire after a year? I work for a school and it’s already a struggle to upgrade software, between budgeting, bids, county approvals, etc. This hassle makes me want to switch to a new DAW.
Ryan J
December 15, 2015 at 3:04 am (9 years ago)No, it doesn’t expire but you get a year of upgrades…
LeeHaz41
December 15, 2015 at 8:06 am (9 years ago)To heck with Protocols and their over complicated and over priced program, the seriously need to simplify the workflow, they could learn a lot from developers from Presonus Studio One…
Dave Neumann
December 16, 2015 at 4:23 am (9 years ago)I’m confused, I have currently installed a 10/11 std co-install as I cross-graded from my old 8LE install. Can I buy a PT 12 std cross-grade (like you used to) Outright software buy? I want to avoid the monthly or yearly payment plan thing !!!
Travis
December 17, 2015 at 6:53 pm (9 years ago)Yes, buy the $99 upgrade and you’ll get the latest version (and 10/11 licences for backwards compatibility) and any new versions that appear for a year. Then you can stop paying and you’ll still have a working version of PT forever, you just won’t get any new updates.
Ted
December 17, 2015 at 8:11 pm (9 years ago)And if you do decide to jump in on a future update, it’s $299. Saying that this plan is about Avid being able to come to market with updates more quickly feels like a big fat lie to me.
Travis
December 17, 2015 at 9:03 pm (9 years ago)Yeah the whole $299 if you fall off the update train thing is totally bizarre to me. Making the updates affordable is the reason I’ve actually bothered to upgrade as it was too much money for too few new features up until recently.
Though I do think since releasing 12 they’ve been putting out updates much more frequently though, and we’re finally getting features that we’ve been asking about for ages. If they can keep this up and get PT back to being a truly competitive DAW then I can certainly see myself continuing my $99 upgrade fee for a couple of years. Hard to judge when you’re unsure of what new features are coming though.
Berington Van Campen
December 17, 2015 at 6:31 pm (9 years ago)It’s just an offensive money-grab, as noted here by others, too. Yeah, $599 for a “perpetual License” that needs another fee every year? They did the same thing with Avid Final Cut Pro for video editing… as Microsoft is doing with their programs… you can’t just buy them and use them til you WANT to upgrade anymore, you have to subscribe, or they abandon you outright. Way to go for “Customer Appreciation day” guys! And they’re saying “all their customers are very excited about it…” Yeah right. Spin, spin. They’re excited alright… about to start a riot, maybe. We can smell BS a long way away, and this is right under our noses! As some have said here… time to look elsewhere, where they appreciate your business and loyalty.
Travis
December 17, 2015 at 6:54 pm (9 years ago)You don’t have to pay the yearly upgrade if you don’t want the latest version. You can just buy a licence, take whatever upgrades are put out for the year and then just stop on whatever version you’re on.
Berington Van Campen
December 18, 2015 at 10:43 am (9 years ago)With all respect, thanks for your reply, Travis. But what they’ve done – & it’s a going trend, so it’s obvious – is make it all very complicated, as noted right here, so people are basically tricked into the subscription, yearly fees, whatever. The offensive part is that they’re saying is “so GREAT, & everyone LOVES it!” Spin, spin… they could work in Washington! It’s not, and they don’t. What IS so wrong with offering a great product, a year or so of upgrades, then a MODEST fee for future upgrades or versions, actually appreciating that we’ve bought their programs in the first place? As it’s going, it’s a big “F-U” to their huge client base. They’ve got the lion’s share of the market & they’re taking huge advantage of it… something like the CEO who bought the pharma company, then increased the single-pill price from $13.50 to over $750! Sorry, it just doesn’t fly.
Patrick Giraudi
December 18, 2015 at 12:27 pm (9 years ago)Avid is such a rip off, this is becoming a rent while our projects are getting less and less budgets. Adobe has a great collection of very powerful softwares and their system is very affordable and simple. HD users are definitely getting it in the rear and I’m not talking surround speakers. They are forcing the Tech Support in the price too. Another question is: How many yearly upgrades are we talking about? One? Two? I have more to say but I gotta go to work if I need to make some money today.
Jonathan Gordon
January 2, 2016 at 12:03 pm (9 years ago)I’m not even attempting to figure it out. At the beginning of last year, I went to the biggest baddest Mac TDM system I could put together – an HD 3 Accel system running PT 10.3.10 on Mountain Lion. Frankly it’s a beast – runs tons of third party plug-ins, and given the mood I’ve seen among my PT 10 and 11 using floormates, is not likely to become obsolete anytime soon. Plus I don’t have to eat my legacy interfaces and control surface.
I also got Logic up and running on my system. My guess is that next time I’m forced to make a jump, it may be away from Pro Tools entirely.
I started with Digidesign when they were making custom chips for Oberheim drum machines, and graduated to Sound Designer, then Sound Designer 2 – eventually Pro Tools. You really cannot have been a Digi/Avid customer longer than I have.
Time and again I have seen them cynically profiteer off their customer base while cutting them off at the knees. By now I expect disloyalty. I’m just going to do what works for my business. And having a stable system with great plug-ins and more DSP than I know what to do with works pretty darn well, as long as there is reasonable compatibility with other studios.
My two cents is don’t even go to 12 (or 11 unless you have that hardware).
JG
darknesscrown
May 18, 2016 at 4:35 pm (8 years ago)“These pricing changes have been extremely popular…”
No they haven’t. This is why I hate Avid. They live in this cocoon of imbecility where everyone thinks everything they do is amazing and innovative and well-worth the price of admission. Even their perpetual license isn’t really “perpetual”, per se. I’m so tired of this business tactic. And I’m pretty tired of Avid strutting around like they are the benchmark for all other DAWs. I’ve used both Pro Tools and Logic equally for the same amount of time (about 15 years). I’m not going to lie, Logic is as good as Pro Tools in almost all areas, and even surpasses it now with 10.2.2. Why would I pay $600 for Pro Tools when I can basically do EVERYTHING Pro Tools can do (and a few other things) for $200???
Avid needs to immediately sell Pro Tools to a developer that cares. They clearly don’t. They’re using it as a cash cow. They haven’t innovated anything in the audio realm since they disbanded Digidesign. Pro Tools even FEELS old and stagnant. I don’t like being charged up the ass for mediocrity. No one does. Pull your heads out of your ass, Avid, and start doing what we tell you to do.
Matt
June 9, 2016 at 10:50 am (8 years ago)Your reign is coming to an end, I assure you. People are fed up. I never liked you from the beginning. Unnecessarily complicated with an ugly, nonsensical, anti user-friendly interface. I love my mbox2 but those days are no longer. Burn, avid, burn.