I personally feel that subscription model is a good move for Parallels Desktop team. But looking at the price point of the subscription, the whole notion of subscription came crumbling down. Its cost USD99.99 to purchase a perm license and you own it until end of support. Its takes USD6.66 per month for subscription and it work out to be USD79.92 per year. The differences is USD20.07 between perm license and subscription license. The does not make sense part is this, imagine after paying for 1 year, if you decided not to renew the subscription your copy of PD is deemed as expired and not workable. This is logical for subscription based model, but for just USD20.07 difference? Taking a reference from Microsoft Office 365, it cost USD149.99 for a retail copy of office and cost only USD69.99 per year for Office 365 (not to mention the additional perks thrown in like multiple device installation with the same account). The yearly subscription fee work out to be only 47% of the retail copy. Going back to PD subscription, the yearly subscription is 80% of the retail price. This pricing does not make sense to me at all, after paying 80% of the retail price, you are left with nothing at the end of the whole subscription. I urge PD team to relook at the pricing model for subscription, the price had to make sense with lower price tier or additional benefits like multiple machine use.
I've been trying to find info on what happens when a subscription expires and it seems to be conveniently missing. By this post, it appears that if I don't renew a subscription, the software quits working. That's the model that drove me from being a very regular Adobe customer for decades to turning elsewhere. I can accept that I'll no longer get updates, but to simply be locked out??!! That's un-appealing. "From $79.99" turned out to be $99.99 for the type of license I prefer. I was just about to buy, but now I've got reasons for second thoughts and will look again at Fusion.
