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Free upgrades for preferred customers?


danielwalter

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At the risk of posing a coplaint cloaked as a question, I would like to ask if it is possible to get free upgrades (say from Accordance 10 to 11, and then to 12, 13, 14, etc.) for customers that have invested a significant amount of money in the software. I use Accordance quite a bit, and I am very happy with the software, the customer service, and everything. My one complaint is that every other year, there is a $50 upgrade to buy (I started in 2008 with Accordance 7). If anyone else out there agrees or thinks this is possible, please shout out!

 

Daniel

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Everyone likes free stuff. The problem is that few things are truly free at some level or another.

 

The reality is that it costs money to plan, program, test, support and market any new version. The money for that has to come from somewhere. What we have done in recent years is tie the upgrade to our collections. So, even if you purchase the Starter Collection (for which we do give a discount for those upgrading from a previous version), there are a handful of new titles included. 

 

Here's what you won't ever see us do: you won't ever see us limit Accordance's capabilities based on what level of collection you purchase in order to actually fund a supposedly free upgrade. Even the Starter Collection has the same complete functionality as the Ultimate Collection, regardless of whether you upgrade when a new version is released or six months down the road. 

 

Plus keep in mind that we often introduce major new features for free in between numbered upgrades. Our point updates have always been about more than just bug fixes. 

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One more thing...

While we always believe our upgrades are worth the price of upgrading, you're not abandoned if you don't. I just double-checked and we still support Accordance going all the way back to version 6.x and we have installers that will allow you to load it on a pre-PowerPC 68K Mac. So if you want to run Accordance on a 24-year-old PowerBook 140 (I have one, and Accordance runs on it), it's actually possible, though not necessarily recommended.

The point is that you can know that with any upgrade, you can have the confidence that you're not going to be abandoned if you decide to go forward or stay where you are.

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My old G5 died (so it ended up doing me no good), the PPC was not a high priority for Accordance but they did finally upgrade 9.6.6 to 9.6.7 to correct an annoying bug. That was a full 2 years after support for 9 was officially dropped. So Accordance does spend time and effort on the software which is not cheap. I do not like paying for an upgrade but at least Accordance is honest about it. Another company claims it's software is free, a new version comes out and they hypes the heck out of it and if you want to use it in the first few months you have to pay for it, indeed many new features of it's program still end up not free without a significant upgrade fee. Accordance thankfully offers great support and a rather reasonable upgrade price. It would be nice to say buy X and get the upgrade free... but in general it is not like Accordance is making 300% on their products they sell so as to be easily able to absorb costs. Let us look at Apple the Cost for parts and manufacturing an iPhone 6 is about $275.... It gets over here and it is sold for $900, but unless you buy directly from Apple website, your money has to go to retail channels: Verizon is not getting that phone for $275, and they have to make money too. I may grumble about the upgrade cost but I know the programers need to make a living... 

 

-Dan

Edited by Dan Francis
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We all love free stuff, but what I love more than freebies is great software that keeps moving forward!

 

I have spent lots on Accordance and its resources over the last 15+ years. Every penny has been much more than worth it! I don't see how Accordance is able to bring such significant upgrades each couple years at the low price they do. I 'm glad they keep moving forward and we're not left to find another product. Not only must they invest to improve Accordance, they have to keep pace with all of Apple's constant changes.

 

Thank you for keeping us up and running at such reasonable rates!

 

Blessings!

John S. Gilliom

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Oh, and I forgot to mention: I love having such an amazing iOS Bible research tool as iAccord. I enjoy showing others how much they can do for free on an iPhone! Plus I get to carry 1000's of dollars of resources in my pocket!

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And dont forget that with 10, you were able to use it on both mac AND windows which MS (for Office) and Adobe dont (for CS). I am happy that the upgrade is slightly less than for new people especially as there is a growing trend for annual subscriptions which i dont like.

 

Plus IOS is free!

 

;o)

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You're lucky it's accordance. Other bible software is a LOT more for upgrades...lol...this is a bargain.

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On the whole I think the Accordance upgrade path is good value for money.

Just so long as they don't follow Adobe and Microsoft in adopting a subscription-based model!

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I agree that with the support provided and with the quality of the product the upgrades are a good value. While the upgrades aren't free, sometimes there are sales that apply to the collections that you can watch out for. (I didn't get the upgrade when v 11 first came out, but I was able to get it during a sale at the end of last year). They also mention that they have some discounts available and you could see if you are eligible for any of those.

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Accordance has many products that the competitors offer for a considerably higher price, in addition to some products that only one (and not necessarily the one You'd choose) or no competitor offers.

When I originally became an Accordance customer, I calculated that even with the upgrade costs I'd be able to run Accordance for about 12 years and I would save a little with just one series that I bought, compared to a competitor that I had already used for a long time. Since then I have realized more and more benefits with Accordance and discovered what the competitors really are like with all their drawbacks, and shifted to prefer to invest in Accordance and purchased three more sets and several individual modules. If talking about price and quality, Accordance beats the competition. If I would have realized and discovered things sooner than I did I would have invested more in Accordance and a bit less in the competitor - however I've used a considerable amount of time for choosing between different titles under many topics during the past 3 years so doing all this in a better way would have required even more from me and in the long run that would have impacted my studies even more. Many times my studies have suffered from using time for choosing books.

I should have made my changes in purchasing-strategies early on, and not get as many sets in the competing software and perhaps not get an equivalent to Accordance Collections with it on Nov. 20. 2012 shortly after they had offered a new version, and definitely not as many new titles in the competing software because they charge A LOT for those. Instead I should have converted bigger sums of money to US$ while the currency exchange was favourable and leave it unused for a longer time.

The only thing that currently makes my purchases expensive, is the non-favourable currency-exchange rate. I use a small local currency and I've been making the purchases with a debit card without Foreign Exchange fee added by the bank. I don't know how this will impact things in the future. Accordance may get lower costs for paying royalties to European publishers and to some photographers.

Edited by Unix
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