Carbon Copy Cloner now a paid app (V 3.5.0)

[henryseiden]

Looks like Bombich has caved to commercial interests. As of 3.5, versions are paid. They no longer apparently accept donations, nor can you remove the ads on previous versions or donate to continue development.

I was OK with the donor-ware concept in the past, sent them a few bucks, and don't know how I feel paying for (virtually) the same app with simply a Mountain Lion qualification. The ads were never really gone with a donation, though. $26 is a bit steep. Yes, there is an early adopter discount...

Haven't fully digested their posted EULA. Who knows what it will be for future development, paid versions. More onerous? Hope not! One thing I found onerous is the statement about information collection in the EULA. A link to it referenced above. Recommended reading.

When you take an app everybody knows as donor-ware and simply make it pay-ware there will be a lot more questions than if it came out as paid to begin with. That may hurt them.

I like the app, and so may continue with it. It looks to be costing considerably more than the donation price ($30-40) I gave them a while ago, but has grown up to be a more useful product for many, including me.

Why don't they sell this in Mac App Store and cut the price some more? The timing of the move and the lack of AppStore support are concerns.

Cost-wise, performance-wise do you think that it still remains competitive or as good a value?

 

[torana355]

I use Super Duper which is already a paid app anyway.

 

[maflynn]

I was OK with the donor-ware concept in the past, sent them a few bucks, and don't know how I feel paying for (virtually) the same app with simply a Mountain Lion qualification. The ads were never really gone with a donation, though. $26 is a bit steep. Yes, there is an early adopter discount...

I think its a highly polished app, and its only fair that the developer has the opportunity to make money on his work. By the way, its not the same app as time machine, its much faster, and more flexible and provide a bootable image.

Time Machine, you have virtually no options to change or set, and it does not produce a bootable image. Plus in my past experience its much much slower then CCC

 

[henryseiden]

I think its a highly polished app, and its only fair that the developer has the opportunity to make money on his work. By the way, its not the same app as time machine, its much faster, and more flexible and provide a bootable image.

NO problem with the commercial desires of Bombich Software. They are certainly welcome to achieve a commercial success to go along with the past successes of the software and acceptance by the Mac community. The program's stats say that I used the program 749 times (don't know how many machines it surveys of the three in use) and completed 515 operations with it.

Time Machine while no charge, is not free since it was originally supplied with OS X, although it seems support for it is waning and being replaced with (ugh!) iCloud support.

Bombich has been silent on a number of questions that seem obvious to me in this transition. Maybe you have some other questions. My questions as a loyal user/contributor of the Donor-ware version:

1. Is there an improvement in the new software, or just a Mountain Lion OS X fix/validation/certification in English language versions?
2. Will the EULA take into account at no charge for future upgrades (suspect not). The current license agreement as posted is mute on the question of upgrade versions.
3. Should CCC be evaluated in the same way as a commercial product compared with the donor-ware product prior to version 3.5?
4. Do new user licensing agreements (e.g., info gathering defined in the EULA, machine use restrictions) make this a different product, or change its usefulness to you, the user?
5. Will the old versions (<3.5) continue to even work?
6. Will there be a new paid version for earlier Macs- those unable to upgrade to ML, or those that run only on early OS X versions?

 

[maflynn]

Did you read the FAQ, which I believe address some of your concerns such as the older version continuing to work, it just won't be certified for ML.

 

[davcolley]

One of the best

This is one of the best apps I own.

 

[smartalic34]

I understand their reasoning to switch from donation-ware to commercial product, but CCC is not worth $40, let alone $30, in my opinion. Oh well, I'm sure Bombich figured they would lose some users with this switch. (I am upgrading to ML, but using App Store credit.)

The cost/benefit decision is something that every user has to make for himself/herself.

 

[Weaselboy]

I think its a highly polished app, and its only fair that the developer has the opportunity to make money on his work. By the way, its not the same app as time machine, its much faster, and more flexible and provide a bootable image.

Time Machine, you have virtually no options to change or set, and it does not produce a bootable image. Plus in my past experience its much much slower then CCC

I agree with everything you said, and as someone who has donated (twice) to CCC, I applaud Mike giving us free registration for the new paid version.

I have no problem with the dev. making money for his work. That said, I think CCC will have a tough time commanding $39.95 US for it. I see the value for a nerd like me who does a lot tinkering and can really use a tool like CCC... so I would pay, but I'm just not sure if there are enough users like me to really make any serious money with this. I guess we will see.

I suppose another way to look at it is if he sells say three copies, he is $120 ahead of where he was yesterday giving it away for free.

 

[CylonGlitch]

I just recently paid / donated with the previous version; I wonder if he is going to cut this off? I mean I did send him money, very recently and now will I get the ML version as claimed in the FAQ? I don't know. In the last week (approximately) I downloaded it from his website; it was not the paid version (obviously this transition just happened). He then changed to a pay model and the free version isn't available anymore. AFTER he did that, I paid (I don't know when he changed, so I don't know for sure I paid before or after the switch over, but for sake of argument assume it was after the switch over). Now I find out that it is a pay system; and he is giving free upgrades to those who previously paid.

I can see his point; look, I paid AFTER he switched to a paid model so no upgrade for me. BUT it isn't like I knew about it, I just so happened to have needed it and had used it in the past, and had money in my Paypal account that I felt justified on paying for it.

That being said, it's a great little piece of software and I think it's worth the money. So even if I don't the the legacy license I'll likely buy it anyway.

 

[flynz4]

I've donated and I will not hesitate to buy it either. It is good software and he deserves to be paid.

Unlike others, I personally do not care about making bootable backups... so I do use TM for my local backups. I like the TM user interface, and I like the way I can upgrade my computers and restore from TM.

I use CCC to make a backup of my media files to a set of drives that I rotate to my work office as a 3rd extra copy of my media (primarily Aperture library, Aperture vault, and home camcorder movies). I agree that the backup is fast and efficient.

My primary backup continues to be Crashplan+ which gives me automatic secure backup to the cloud.

/Jim

 

[robgendreau]

Maybe this will revive SuperDuper, which, although it still works, seems to be in a state of stasis....

 

[Qaanol]

Can either CCC or SuperDuper make an exact bit-for-bit backup of an iPhone, such that restoring from the backup makes the phone boot and run exactly as it did at the time the backup was created? Because I would definitely pay $30 for that (especially if it backs up and restores the firmware seamlessly).

 

[Weaselboy]

Can either CCC or SuperDuper make an exact bit-for-bit backup of an iPhone, such that restoring from the backup makes the phone boot and run exactly as it did at the time the backup was created? Because I would definitely pay $30 for that (especially if it backs up and restores the firmware seamlessly).

No, they are both OS X only.

 

[posguy99]

Why don't they sell this in Mac App Store and cut the price some more? The timing of the move and the lack of AppStore support are concerns.

Because as they point out, applications that do what CCC does, cannot be in the App Store in the first place.

Certainly App Store support shouldn't be a driver... given app (A) and (B) with feature parity, and (A) is MAS and (B) is not, I'm *much* more likely to buy (B). In fact, unless it's a feature I *have* to have, I'm still more likely to buy (B) even if there is no feature parity.

 

[ReddestDream]

Cost . . .

First, let me say that I love this program, and, after years of using it as donationware, I paid for the new version with no hesitation.

That being said, I think their intended (non-sale) price of $39.95 is a bit high. While it is a specialty program (most users will just use Time Machine), I think for its target audience, those who want more piece of mind and flexibilty that TM can offer, the price should just stay at the sale price of $29.95 (close to SuperDuper at $27.95). Any sales should be at $19.95 and any version upgrades should be no more than $10 for previous customers.

Believe it or not, a $10 price drop can make a big difference.

Between this and Winclone (both of which used to be free!), I've spent $50 on Mac backup software, which seems like a lot in a post-App Store world . . .

 

[minifridge1138]

Man... I've been using CCC for a long time.

I think it is worth $, given the amount of trouble it has saved me in the past.

But the problem is that it WAS free.

It's very hard to convince a customer to pay for something after they've been getting it for free.

 

[rickdollar]

From virtually free to $30 ($40 in August)? That is going to be a VERY tough sell to the people I "support".

I don't have experience in pricing products so of course my opinion is not worth more than the words I type here, but wouldn't they be more likely to sell to more users at say, $20?

He deserves to make great money from CCC. It's great software. I just think that even fringe users (non-techies) would be happy to purchase it if it wasn't the most expensive utility they've ever encountered.

 

[quasinormal]

Ccc and superduper are definitely worth $30 in my opinion. I bought superduper for the incremental back up feature.

 

[etsi]

Hell, suddenly I downloaded an update and now it asks me money to backup or even restore anything. I didn't receive any warning that I will have to pay after the update.

Is there any similar application better than ccc?

 

[maflynn]

Hell, suddenly I downloaded an update and now it asks me money to backup or even restore anything. I didn't receive any warning that I will have to pay after the update.

Can't you just use the backed up version of CCC?

Is there any similar application better than ccc?

Super-Duper but that's not free either. If you don't feel like shelling out money for either, there is always Time Machine. Not as flexible or powerful as either app but it does a decent job

 

[etsi]

Is super duper better? We compare them as commercial apps now, ccc had one advantage that it was free.

I managed to use a backed up but I'm upset with ccc that didn't warn me that I have to pay. For some reason trial expired immediately.

 

[maflynn]

I think both super-duper and CCC are comparable. Personally I prefer CCC and I'll buy it. As I stated earlier in the thread, the polish and features provided in this app make it a no brainer for me to purchase it. For my needs, its worth the 30 bucks they're charging for it.

I do think the 39.00 is a bit steep for this type of app, I think a price of 19.99 to 29.99 is a better fit, but then I'm no the author.

 

[Weaselboy]

Is super duper better? We compare them as commercial apps now, ccc had one advantage that it was free.

I managed to use a backed up but I'm upset with ccc that didn't warn me that I have to pay. For some reason trial expired immediately.

I have used both SD and CCC and find CCC much better. For example, CCC has fully implemented copying and restoring/creating the new Lion Recovery HD (partition) and I don't see any similar function in SD.

My biggest complaint with SD was the way it scanned the entire drive even if you wanted to just backup one folder, and this made even simple backups take forever. Let me give you an example. In CCC I have a task setup that copies ~/Documents to a USB key when I plug in the thumb drive. In CCC this task scans ~/Documents (280 files) in a few seconds and begins the copy. The same task in SD would begin by scanning every single folder/file on the source drive (580,000 files), taking several minutes each time. I corresponded with the SD dev. (who was very nice and helpful BTW) on this and he confirmed I had things setup properly and this was just how SD worked.

I suppose if you are doing a full disk clone, the issue I mentioned would not matter, but for anything other than a full clone SD was far slower.

 

[flynz4]

I never considered CCC to be a free app. I tried it, liked it, and paid for it.

From the overall sentiment... it seems that many (if not most) consider "donationware" to be "freeware". Given that... I can't blame the author for making it a paid app.

/Jim

 

[smartalic34]

What are the odds that the old, free version works well with Mountain Lion? Bombich says the new version is ML-certified, but who's to say the old version isn't compatible?...