As I stated above, I am a  V4 Licensed owner.  I DO NOT WANT the V5 new features; I like V4 just as it is.  I do not want to be forced to make an upgrade to V5. 

Sell V5 as a separate product (Fences PRO?) and leave us V4 users to decide if we need it.

To repeat, frankly, at any price, V5 has nothing I want. In my opinion, it's jumped the shark.

Neil, There appears to be the feeling here that that's not the way SD wants this "Upgrade" to go; rest assured I will stick with V4 until I can't. I won't be alone. Any "bug fixes" V5 offers should be rolled back to V4, as they are the bugs we paid to have fixed.

 

This can become a problem for some who decide not to update.  If M$ tweak something in windows this MAY break something in an older version of stardocks software.  To my knowledge i dont remember SD releasing an update for older software that fixes problems produced by windows updates. These fixes have mostly come in the way of a new release version. THATS A PROBLEM!  In some respects we'd be penalised for something we didnt do wrong or break! 

 

You are not being forced to update YET!

"New with Fences 5 is Chameleon™". If Chameleon™ is as wonderful as it's claimed to be, it should have been released as a separate product.  Fences organize and cleans up desktop clutter; it does it well.  As described, Chameleon makes the desktop less visually distracting. If everything I don't want to see is rolled up or completely hidden, why would I care? If not a separate product, Chameleon could have been offered as an optional Enhancement to Fences. You have to ask yourself why it wasn't.

Hopefully, but to paraphrase Nostradamus, "The nuances of V4 being un-fixable, the reptile of many colors will rise from the pit that is V5 and fences will..." the rest being illegible. But not to worry, he is famous for predicting good things... right?

Not really - unless one think this sounds good: He is said to have predicted John F Kennedy's assassination, the 9/11 terror attacks and even the start of the coronavirus pandemic, as per interpretations of his writings - and - for 2023, he predicted an economic disaster worldwide- “So high will the bushel of wheat rise / That man will be eating his fellow man”, he wrote in one of his quatrains. 

I misunderstood the upgrade. It's not an upgrade from Fences 4.0, but a one-year subscription to Fences 5.0. I canceled the subscription immediately.

 

Not like that. Then there will be no more upgrades.

 

I'm sticking with what I have now. Absolutely NO Saas for me. Other top name software companies have done it and I drop them in a heartbeat. I then find something comparable, try it for several months, then I tell my friends. If a security threat is found later in older software I use, I remove all traces of the software. 

I am an ObjectDesktop (which contents all of the above and more) subscriber since the 2000s, which is all SaaS since the very beginning (the term 'SaaS' wasn't even invented at that time. I don't saw it going anywhere nor 'shrinking the company'.  And 39 $ per year don't kill anyone. You have all (me included) spent money for more stupid things, I guess. 

Let's be real here... the intention is to get people to use the subscription. And to some extent... I get that. It's a steady stream of income you can calculate with as a business.

But c'mon... paying about 30 EUR for an upgrade? Considering the time span between every earlier version of Fences was quite longer than between v4 and v5, this is just a ridiculous price increase. I like new features and big improvements like the next guy, but when the span between new releases decreases even more, you may have the issue of version 6 being released 8 months after v5. The exact v5 where you have paid the about 3x the price to "upgrade to" than usual. I'm totally fine with a price increase... I mean, the prices for everything went up. But this? This just doesn't work for me, it shouldn't work for any customer. And Stardock probably knows that...

Which brings us to the subscription.

First of all... if this were the kind of software I would found a subscription model any useful, I would have been an Object Desktop subscriber years ago - because it has much better value than... this here. But tools like Fences aren't something I would even consider a subscription for, and here is why: the software has one purpose and an outlined feature-set within one version. Stardock almost never added any new features within the same major version. They just fixed bugs and sometimes smaller compatibility issues (while for the bigger one, they usually release a new major version you had to pay for). Bug fixing is very basic product maintenance - something which is included in what I pay for when I buy your product. It was as easy as it gets... you offer something with a clear feature set, I pay for it. I never asked for more, you never gave more. It was as cookie-cutter as it gets concerning new versions and classic software distribution. When you developed something new - which resulted in a new major version number - I, again, had an outlined feature set - and I paid for it.

Fences never felt like a product that is in a rolling development- and release-cycle, never felt like a product where someone put so much effort into mid-release that I gladly bought the new version just for the great extended support of the last version, Fences never felt like a software I got anything besides what I already paid for, there was no constant flow in new or improved features or anything like that. It was always "new version" <-> "new money". That was fitting for the kind of "useful but not essential" tool it is and this was fitting for the way you developed and released the software for us. It was fair for both sides.

Now you try to change the way you "sell" the software, but without any clear indication that you also change the way you develop and release the software to something more flexible, more speedy and at the end more useful for your customers first. To something with an endless, constant flow of changes, new/improved features, seamless and fast compatibility updates - to basically something that actually would work as "software as a service" in concept. For now, you just slapped a "typical year 2015+ selling/distribution model" on a "typical years pre-2010 development/release model" and this just doesn't work and also doesn't fit together (not to mention: Object Desktop makes it more or less redundant). The way it looks now, this is just nothing more than a faster-than-usual released new major upgrade with a 300% price increase - and this is, at this point, your only argument in favor for a subscription. Honestly, it's not really a good one... A subscription that is only somewhat attractive because the established and only alternative is made as unattractive as it possibly can be just isn't consumer friendly in the slightest. Show us that you are willing to improve the software steady step-by-step instead of paid-major-version-by-paid-major-version and then, only then, we can start to talk about subscriptions.

So, with subscription not an option and no reasonable upgrade option... I'll stay on V4 as long as it works and then... well, thanks for the fish.

I have purchased a Fences 4 Permanent License for 5 users from Ashampoo. How can i upgrade to Fences 5 with a discount? Is there a way to add my licence key to my Stardock account?

while i've been quiet thus far on this, you make a perfect point.  I submitted a bug report AGES ago... so long ago i couldn't tell you when.  (6 months?  more?) about shortcuts not organizing properly.  It was checked/tested/confirmed etc.  Expected it to be fixed at some point in a future version.  this is me ASSUMING its fixed in 5, never made it into 4 i guess.

i've purchased more stardock software than any other.  pretty much a fanboy at this point.  had no intent for that to change anytime soon but i cant really palate the pricing either.  I'm often a victim of my own ocd for latest n greatest, already grabbed the start11 for example.

fences though, straw the broke the camels back.  

I get the increase in costs, its hit everyone across the board due to reasons we certainly wont get into on the internet.  Where I have a problem is when corporations like my auto insurance for example just go up, and my health insurance, and my streaming service subs.  Not because their costs went up persay, but because they don't want their profit margins to go down.  so they pass it down the chain to the average consumer and we feel the squeeze and they feel nothing.

I'm digressing but apple for gods sake, the highest valued publicly traded company in the world. .not millions, not billions, but worth over a trillion dollars... raises their subscription fees during one of the worst times economically in recent history.  its insulting.  like stephen colbert saying he doesn't care if gas is 20 dollars a gallon.  well duh, with that many zeroes on your bank account the cost of almost anything is irrelevant.  aaaaanyhow, mini tirade/rant over. 

thats what this feels like.  I don't doubt stardocks cost have gone up, they're beholden to cost of living raises for employees, energy costs going up, hosting going up... all due to the same reasons.  that being said inflation was to the tune of like 30% i believe.  math isn't adding up.

rest assured, i'll be watching for a change in the pricing and should it become more affordable i'm a guaranteed buy.   I just can not and will not add to the ever increasing list of subs.  personally i'm nickel and dimed to death >.<

something to be said about purchasing and owning something.  I always thought charging for a new "major" release was a reasonable middle ground between lifetime licenses and sub models but the lifetime license cost is too great on this one.  like a previous user said, it feels like strong-arming people into choosing the sub model.

and while i'm here... multiplicity 3 when?