Parallels price increase

[Dr_Charles_Forbin]

Anyone else pissed off about the price of Parallels increasing? I worked on Fusion for years but I swapped to Parallels two years ago when VMware dropped support for fusion. Each time incurred a Windows re-buy. All these promises of Parallels just weren’t there. I’m debating going back to VMWare. Anyone have luck with Open Box?

 

[dumastudetto]

A 20% to 25% price increase across annual subscriptions is certainly steep. This is what happens though when a bigger company (Corel) acquires a smaller one (Parallels). They are a public company so under constant pressure to increase revenues and profits across their product divisions.

I also use Backblaze, and since they sold out... prices have started increasing steadily over there too.

 

[BigMcGuire]

Just got this as of 6 mins ago (via email).

​ We are writing to tell you about an upcoming change to your subscription of Parallels Desktop for Mac. On 10/12/2022 your yearly price will be increasing to $109.99 (plus taxes as applicable)."​

I used to use VMWare Fusion back in the day but I found Parallels to be a bit faster. Parallels is expensive but <shrug> it has worked fairly well for me.

Like @dumastudetto - I've noticed the price increases and decided that 2TB iCloud + a 4TB hard drive locally was good enough for me and left Backblaze.

My subscription renewal is coming up. Not sure how easy it is to convert.

I have an intel MBP and an arm MBP and Parallels on Arm is so amazing that I'll probably stick with that.

 

[Dr_Charles_Forbin]

I got that same mail a couple of days ago. I converted from VMware to parallels and it was a royal pain. I have to eat the cost - I was just happy on VMWare and only bailed on it because it was going to freeware and support would be iffy.

 

[Boyd01]

Have not gotten the notice yet, but my Pro subscription is good until the end of June 2023. Not happy about a price increase, but am not going to change everything just to save twenty bucks. Wasn't happy about the BackBlaze increase either but again, offsite backups are important to me so I just rolled with it. A 4tb disk is certainly no substitute for that (but I have multiple local backups on big disks also).

I got the Pro version of Parallels two years ago. According to the government inflation calculator that would be about $115 in today's dollars. So I don't know that we can blame this all on corporate greed.

 

[Dr_Charles_Forbin]

I think part of my problem really is that I don’t use it. I have some legacy windows stuff but I can honestly say I haven’t used it in a while. So now it’s like I’m paying $170 for something I haven’t used all year but need access to.

 

[maflynn]

I just bought the license last month, so I'm ok for a little while. My issue is that I'm willing to pay for the license, but the windows software that I need doesn't run on ARM windows

There's really no reason for me to keep paying parallels if this doesn't change

 

[LeeW]

I am good for another 7 months but to be fair it's a 'nice to have' rather than a must-have. I will decide in 7 months whether it is worth my while.

 

[usagora]

I got that same mail a couple of days ago. I converted from VMware to parallels and it was a royal pain. I have to eat the cost - I was just happy on VMWare and only bailed on it because it was going to freeware and support would be iffy.

Sure, that's the downside to subscriptions. However, if you use it as part of making your living, then $100 or so per YEAR is insanely cheap. The software we use at work costs about $250 per MONTH to license.

 

[whodiini]

My concern is who bought it. Corel. They have a rep of how they do business. They try to monetize their purchases by a) drastically reducing R&D so there are no new features anymore b) move to a subscription model to squeeze every cent c) increase prices as much as possible d) outsource customer support so that it is nearly worthless. As an example, look at Toast Titanium. New version every year, no new features, "upgrade" to maintain compatibility with OS updates. I stopped using it. I expect Parallels to go the same route. Am now looking again at VMware. At least it is free... I use parallels for 2 things: Quicken windows (because the Mac version is awful), and to update firmware on various things. It is more convenient to run these on my mac than on a separate windows laptop....

 

[riccinini]

I'm sick of subscriptions actually

I can't take the mess, can't take the head.
I woulda tried to snooze I guess I got no red.

 

[Lee_Bo]

If you go to VMware’s website, you can get a Fusion license free for personal use.

 

[maflynn]

I'm sick of subscriptions actually

Yeah, because we're not talking about 1 subscription. Its death by a thousand cuts, each utility, application, piece of software on your computer now has a monthly (or annual) fee associated with it.

I threw together a quick and dirty list of what I'm paying and my jaw dropped.

 

[Mrbobb]

Everything is subscription these days... keep the revenue streams coming! Subscription for your car to go faster, subscription to enable your Mercedes seat warmer. We don't own anything, pay up year after year after year. Only original vendor can fix, whom they will tell you "gotta swap the whole $800 motherboard" even though is just a broken connector. There gotta be a consumers' revolt.