HighDesign on the Mac App Store and the Microsoft Store

[Andrew]

The Mac App Store and the Microsoft Store are convenient places to find software for your Mac or Windows PC. Their icons are easily accessible, the catalogues are wide enough for the average needs, and they offer a good customer experience. We know that many users feel more comfortable purchasing from those stores and have many reasons why they would prefer those channels over the Ilexsoft Store, so we want to improve and expand the channels where you can purchase HighDesign.

The Mac App Store
HighDesign has been on the Mac App Store for more more than eight years and over the time we have expanded our offer to include all three editions, LT, SE and Pro.

With Apple's distribution rules, offering cross-upgrades between different products is very hard if not impossible. As developers, we have some limitations that prevent us from providing an upgrade path from one edition to another. For example, if you purchased HighDesign LT on the Mac App Store, the only way to upgrade to SE or Pro would have been to purchase the new edition at its full price, whereas on the Ilexsoft Store we are able to offer our users the upgrade options by only paying the price difference.

Another limitation of our current distribution is that it does not offer a trial version, making it harder to evaluate the product.

For those reasons, we want to improve our Mac App Store offer in 2024 by providing one product, HighDesign, with in-app purchase options for the various editions and a 30-day trial option.

Read more on the ILEXSOFT blog ▸

[axys]

I've no issue at all with you developing one product for the Mac App Store, on a subscription basis, and the logic is clear, but I sincerely hope that the subscription model doesn't creep to the Ilexsoft Store in due course. SketchUp moved to subscription with lots of promises about development, few if any of which have come to pass. I don't like subscriptions for essential business tools, and I refused to move to the SketchUp subscription, as did many, many others.

[Andrew]

I understand that very well, we observed that same pattern in most of the big companies and had to reluctantly accept subscriptions for some of the tools we use. There are certain situations, especially at the enterprise level, where an automatic subscription is preferable, but overall I have seen a growing dissatisfaction with the subscription-only companies and for very sensible reasons.

We have no plans of replacing the current model with a subscription-only model, HighDesign will continue to be available as a permanent license with optional renewals.

[axys]

Thank you for the reassurance, that's very good to hear.