We were unaware. Do you have references for this so we can take a look?
All your competitors for starters. But you need to run your business the way you need to run it. So do your thing. Trying to be someone you’re not is a recipe for disaster.
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Assuming you paid for the last upgrade that was over 4 years ago now. How long do you expect to get free updates for?
10 years?
Please name these other competitors because it’s always interesting to compare things like price, features etc.
I’m not saying you’re wrong but would like to see some examples to back up your claims.
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This will be my last comment on this.
I won’t name drop. They did not ask to get dragged into this conversation. This is the Realmac forum so it’s all about RM. RM should know who their competitors are.
Innovate faster and it won’t be 4-years between major versions and paydays.
But again, RM must do what they think is best for themselves. The market will decide if RM made the right choice.
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I agree with that, to warrant an upgrade cost there should be innovation, there are so many missed opportunities with upgrades. The persistent problem of RW saving projects with what is in effect a folder/container causes havoc with missing resources with cloud based storage (and cloud based storage is common now), you don’t find that out until you need to recall from the cloud (as your local drive is always intact) when you need to recall such as after a reinstall of OS or move to new mac your project files are corrupted. I learn’t this the hard way, I wasted many hours of rebuilding sites, so now I Zip every project at different stages to overcome this, I don’t have the problem now, but it is a faff and people that are unaware of this will suffer the same fate and keep posting their woes on the forum. I wouldn’t have thought it would be difficult to have an option on the save dialogue or a default to compress the project file on save. This corrupt resources is something that is mentioned on the forum time and time again resources missing etc. Even when resources are missing, they are impossible to identify as they have their own string of identifying gobbledygook. Likewise innovation, a method of enabling a static site to have a two way communication, integrate a flat file PHP or a MySQL database to enable web-based editing of content for a site created in RW that own or 3rd party plugins can tap in to, these are the type of things that warrant an upgrade. I can list loads of more ideas but then I have to become embroiled in this spin, passive aggressive commentary and insistence on taking sides and quite frankly RW has now got to the point with me where I just can’t be bothered with it anymore, it is so uncertain.
This constant passive aggressive bashing of the guy that makes Stacks is depressing, the Ferris Bueller I’m waiting gif the other day from Realmac was unprofessional and cringeworthy because he didn’t respond immediately, any minor issue with Stacks is blown up to make a point that this guy is bad or not pulling his finger out is embarrassing. I’ve had to contact him twice in the past for support and has been great.
The it’s a subscription/not a subscription carry on, when I read the new deal with RWC I felt like I was being taken for a mug. The last upgrade from RW7 to RW8 I was straight in, excited to upgrade, this RWC deal just sounded to me as a buy your existing product again and do the same next year. You’ve bought in to it and invested in add-ons so we can charge you each year for the same interface. Al this nonsense with phrases such as 'putting food on the table" is embarrassing. This isn’t a charity it’s a business, innovate with new features, market the product to get new customers, that’s how a business model should be, not making me stump up money each year to sit back. I know there will come back here that new features will be introduced, to me the worry is when the money is coming in by default the incentive to innovate will drop, let’s work on Squash for the next three months or some other product, we will look at a new feature fro RW in Spring etc.
Innovate with real tangible features a badge etc isn’t one of them, unless the intention is to slowly wean RWC users in to RW Elements with minor Elements features being slowly introduced? Market the product and gain new customers then release a version called RW9/Classic/Whatever. Don’t ask me to buy the same product again each year and definitely don’t ask me to buy the product on the hope and promise new features will be introduced and certainly don’t make me buy a product for the sole purpose of paying for bug fixes.
I’ll happily mention the products that don’t do this, they innovate, market themselves for new customers and provide bug fixes as they occur as they take pride in their products and customers, they are Affinity Designer, Affinity Photo, Affinity Publisher, Tumult Hype, Apple Motion, Cheetah 3D, BlocsApp and as far as I know every 3rd party Stack developer.
I have invested heavily in 3rd party plugins for RW, when I moved from Wordpress to RW/Stacks the Realmac advertising/marketing on the RM website made a big deal about all the features and things that can be done with RW and the 3rd party plugins. Realmac was really keen to utilise this extra functionality for promotion and take my cash then.
Don’t insult me by punishing me to make me pay for something that offers the same functionality as it did a month or two ago.
I used to love this forum, although didn’t post often, I’ve always read everything nearly every day, it was so positive 99% of the time but find it really depressing now, I don’t know the Stacks developers, I’m just a bloke that moved from Wordpress to the exciting world of Realmac and the huge bank of 3rd party developers and community that was promoted on the Realmac website. Just feel now that Realmac support on the forum has turned in to a trying to be over-friendly with sycophantic manner that wasn’t there before, whilst trying to make a passive aggressive bash at anything stacks related, the Rapidweaver I bought in to seems to have turned on itself and is eating its own diseased leg.
With this subscription/not subscription approach, the way it’s made me feel I can see why Stacks is looking at going its own way.
I’ve invested a lot in RW/Stacks, pretty annoyed with Realmac, they way I’ve been treated with being forced to pay for bug fixes (it can be stated differently but that is the truth). Seriously please convince me everything will be alright and my investment in RW and Stacks was wise. It may only seem like a small cost each year for RWC but my god I do hope Affinity apps, Cheetah 3D, Tumult Hype, 3rd party stacks etc don’t adopt this pricing model, over a 5 year period I will be penniless. Then again I’m only a customer/potential recurring future customer, I’m pretty unimportant in the grand scheme of things. It makes me very sad to have written this post.
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You joined the conversation repeatably posting about “competitors” and how they do things differently / better but when asked politely twice for an example you refuse to name a single one.
Very strange.
I hope you can get over your anger at only getting 4 years worth of free updates.
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Blocs and Pinegrow have both outstripped RW in development over the same time period. They have produced more releases and features.
The question was about the dual development of old and new versions, so this doesn’t answer it.
We’re closing this thread now as it appears to be going around in circles.
Please keep in mind we’re a very small team that enjoys building RapidWeaver and helping our customers; we’re doing the best we can 
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