CCleaner Pro+ Outdated Licensing Model

[Thomas_AT]

I just wanted to upgrade to the Pro+ Version as I've been a long term user of Speccy, Recuva and Defraggler.
However, when I proceed to checkout of Pro+ it says that it's a 1year license. OK, fair enough. But I don't want it to auto-renew. Then the price increases by 10€ to a total of 40€. Yet the license seems to expire after year.
That's the point where I started to lose interest. I mean 30€ initial licensing and e.g. 12€ per year afterwards would be a fair deal. CCleaner isn't getting that many updates that would justify 40€ each year... However, what killed it for me is the licensing per machine. In 2019? Microsoft/App Store anyone?

@Pirifom I would really like to purchase your product, but that licensing model is really early 2000 style... Also the fact that there's a 4 paged thread for the subscription model is proof enough of that I'm not alone with this point of view...

 

[hazelnut]

8 hours ago, Nicon said:

What would you consider a fare price to 3000 or so employees?

Piriform doesn't have 3000 employees.

[Andavari]

Most software nowadays is like that, a 1 year subscription.

[Dave CCleaner]

On 13/05/2019 at 20:50, Nicon said:

What would you consider a fare price to 3000 or so employees?

... or are you asking what the volume licence price would be for a company with 3,000 employees to purchase CCleaner?

[Thomas_AT]

Since it seems like there was an update to the pricing/licensing I purchased on Thursday. (Basically, deselecting subscripions didn't increase price by 10€ again and more importantly, licensing isn't limited to 1 machine anymore.)

@Andavari As a software vendor you have to make a tough choice on the licensing model:

• Real Subscription Model - low monthly or yearly fee (e.g. Office 365)
• Major Relases with upgrade path = V14 costs e.g. 30€ and the upgrade to V15 50% off => 15€ (old versions only receive essential support, like Parallels Desktop)
• Major Releases without upgrade path but limited support for older Versions (like Office 2013, 2016 standalones receive only bugfixes, no new features)
• Stupid cloud based model to justify annual subscriptions with 100% renewal price (RealVNC went down that road).
• Purchase of current release with free upgrades for 12 month (Piriform) - common, but renewal is often discounted. E.g. even on Antivirus the extension for another year is 30-50% off.

Of course, these choices highly depend on the amount of potential customers - in case of Piriform every Windows user. So, the customer base is not a problem for Piriform. What is, is the question if the amount of paying customers would double if the price would get reduced 50%. Or, in software market, where production cost is not related to amount of units sold: Dumping the price to afraction of the current license and almost everyone buys the software. For the latter of course, it needs to become some really essential tool. (Ín case of CCleaner I would try to greatly expand the "Tools-Section"... there's a lot of potential, e.g. scripts to deal with common sync-issues (OneDrive/GDrive Reset for example), trigger Windows 10 clean shutdown [basically a "shutdown -s -t 0"] and so on of which most are simple command-lines, registry settings or GPOs.)
 

[nukecad]

You seem to have missed a major point here, you are not being charged for updates of CCleaner.

CCleaner updates are free to everyone, as long as you download/install them yourself.
And CC informs you when there is an update available to download.

When you buy a pro licence it gives you:

• Automatic updates of ccleaner itself. (It does it for you instead of you having to click a few buttons, big deal).
• The ability to automatically update other apps. (If the particular app is hosted on filehippo).
• The ability to schedule cleaning.
• The ability to clean multiple user accounts.
• Extended options for real time monitoring.
• Permission to use CCleaner in a business environment.
• Priority support from Piriform by email, for a year.

If you don't need those features then you don't need a paid for licence.
Everything else is exactly the same whether you have the Free or Paid for version.

PS. No one here is an employee of Piriform, unless their username ends with 'Piriform' or 'CCleaner' (eg. 'Dave CCleaner' above).
The rest of us are just users, who are willing to help out other users for free.

[Andavari]

6 hours ago, Thomas_AT said:

 

@Andavari As a software vendor you have to make a tough choice on the licensing model

I'm not a software vendor, just a regular user of the software that volunteers as a moderator. All I did was point out the that most software is a 1 year subscription nowadays, as that obviously allows companies to keep money flowing in versus one-time life-time subscriptions that could essentially bankrupt them in short order.