Well, we know they announced it much too early.
But we knew it can’t come before other things would happen.
Like we still wait for the servers in Europe.
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In the past FMI/Claris was never talking about what 's coming up, all was secret. They were criticized for that. Now they are much more transparent. Claris Studio has been demonstrated a few times, this project is research and development before our eyes. Those who saw these demos know they are on something quite big. As some know, innovation is not easy. And on top of that, Claris was able to add more power to the good old FileMaker.
Douglas has been transparent during the demos he has done, no bullshit from his mouth.
Claris should be praised for the New Claris.
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Claris had put in place a very reasonably priced single-user upgrade license since the launch of version 17. This was to mitigate the fact we were no longer offering both FileMaker Pro and FileMaker Pro Advanced versions and was never intended to be retained indefinitely.
We now have reconciled it to the correct pricing.
We encourage our customers who wish to keep up with the most current version to switch to our annual volume license plans, starting from 5 users at 990USD (or equivalent in local currency) for a 1-year term.
$990 per year for only five users (I only have ONE user!) who can only be in a single company?
No thank you.
Lost sale. Again.
--
Yes, FMS is an incredible product.
However, given BOTH its high cost for a measly number of users AND the immense restrictions on how it can be used (one client only), I believe it will always be a niche product.
I would jump wholeheartedly into FMP/S ... IF any of the three items below were met:
- Given high cost, remove restrictions on use. Let me use this product how I want with as many clients as needed, etc.. (stop focusing on (transparent) restrictions to boost license counts.)
OR
- Reduce the cost immensely (maybe $99/year for everything) and keep the usage restrictions.
OR
- Remove the entire user-based fee model and just charge a flat fee, like a one-time $5,000 for unlimited everything (number of users, usage, etc.).
But, both the high cost for just a few users AND the incredible restrictions on use make it a no-go for me and any new clients.
As these pricing/usage issues (for us) have been going on for a long time, and that we now no longer believe anything at FileMaker/Claris will change, we have now moved all our FMP applications to open source with unlimited users, unlimited usage...that is, no restrictions or costs other than our own development cost.
(And no further payments to FileMaker/Claris for current or future projects.)
Specifically, MariaDB (free) plus JS framework (free) is what we are using now. Very usable.
Thank you.
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@RosemaryTietge , thanks for chiming in and providing the answer to the question.
One question remains though: what about developers that can't justify buying a 5 licenses plan, that develops for their customers ? The only solution for them is to buy a single license, but upgrade price increased a lot.
What about a single license with maintenance available that would keep the license up to date ?
Thanks
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Well, I would assume they will soon use the free tier, once it is available.
But otherwise, you can get a license with getting the training bundle from RCC.
Perhaps some of them can also consider the Claris Partner program.
I've said before that I do not see the upgrade of the single license as a product designed to be purchased every year. But since it seems some of us want to use that product not only to keep their license up to date, but rather to avoid it being out of date at all times (meaning not skipping any new version), I will attempt to compare 2 offers from Claris that I would not have compared otherwise.
The single-user upgrade is priced at $356USD, while membership of the Claris Partner program (members have to renew every year to remain members) is priced at $499USD, i.e. an annual difference of $143USD, for which program members get the following, among other things (from the link shared above):
Claris Partners receive a 5-user annual license of the FileMaker Platform. In addition, Claris Partners may purchase additional Not-For-Resale software for internal use at a 50% discount. And finally, CP partners may resell FileMaker software. See the CP Purchasing Tutorial for more information.
Everyone makes their own choice. As far as I'm concerned, obtaining an up-to-date license every year with the entire platform even before Connect and Studio were introduced, in itself, excluding any other element of the program, means that I don't hesitate to pay the additional difference and would never consider buying a single license, even a perpetual one, priced at $594USD without upgrades, themselves priced at $356USD.
From where I stand, this is a much better offering than the training bundle @MonkeybreadSoftware mentioned. But everyone can make their own decisions about this. I'm simply sharing information that could be overlooked by some.
I recognize that some people feel they only need FileMaker Pro software and that access to the other products of the platform (server, connect, studio) is of no interest to them. I've got nothing to say on that subject except that, for me, it's like paying for a bicycle when I can pay just a little more and get a car (even if there are car components I don't need), something that makes the bicycle very unappealing, but I can understand why some people may see it as an "upsell" that leaves them cold. As I said before, everyone can make their own decisions with the information available to them, I am simply sharing information and telling people about where I stand concerning my own choices.
I do not know if the Claris Partner program is something @OliverBarrett can consider or not. He mentioned servicing customers on a commercial basis, so my assumption is that there could be a fit. It sure is pricier than the $171 he mentioned in his original post, but it also brings more to the table, at a price point that is lower than the $990 mark. I do not know if it meets him close enough to one of his 3 conditions he mentioned, but I don't know that any software manufaturers having comparable offering(s) to the ones from Claris are meeting him there either.
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The vendor announced a ‘free tier’ with great fanfare quite a while ago and since has nothing to say about it, which is unfortunate and does not instil confidence.
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SQL Server and Oracle both have perpetual license tiers with no games (like user counts, how you use the software, etc.). MariaDB and MySQL are totally free and are extremely powerful. In my testing, where FileMaker wouldn't even complete a GROUP BY query (hung), MariaDB did it in about 1/10th of a second (about 300K records).
My IDEs are about $150/year (after many years of paying), but continue to work even if I don't keep paying the subscription! That's how subscriptinos should work, IMHO. That subscription includes every IDE product the company makes.
So, bottom line ... I have now having migrated to MariaDB and JavaScript and we're in good shape. Again: Incredible power and no vendor shenanigans (for example, price increases, how I am allowed to use the product, who uses the product, how many people use the product, ...). No ongoing costs.
I'll keep my FMP 19 license around, but it won't get used much any longer. 
Thanks for all the replies! 
Right, but talk about restrictions! FDS is not suitable for any actual purpose (or ALLOWED) for anything other than "testing".
The other development platforms (like SQL Server, Oracle) have free developer tools!
Thanks for mentioning.
Tchüss.
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Using a FDS-licensed FMP for anything else than a little bit of testing would be a breach of license.
Someone coined the term ‘licensing hell’ for the realms of SAP and Oracle. Looks like there are more contenders for the title.
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Ja, genau!
The Claris Partner program is very interesting, you get a lot for the price, including a 5 licenses subscription. I will consider a study this offer for sure.
@OliverBarrett the Claris Partner program looks good for you also.
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At this point, it is difficult to compare apples to apples.
@OliverBarrett Chose to build his own dev stack with a SQL backend, JS + IDE, where some (or all) is open source or free with little restrictions. One still has to build a lot of what FM gives you out of the box on a setup like this one.
Also, Microsoft and Oracle may have free developer tools, I would expect the total cost of ownership of similar systems to be higher than with an equivalent system built on FM. But again, this is really getting into a different space altogether than a simple discussion about a licensing update pricing change. I think people have been able to voice their own concerns about how this price increase relates to the space they work in, we even got some additional information from Claris about that change itself. Oliver seems to be at peace with his decision, and others were given an array of offerings to consider.
Each vendor has their own terms for their respective offerings. I don't think describing those as shenanigans is an accurate description of the reality. We all make our own choices; for some of us, the terms are a good fit, while for some others they may not be. No single solution is perfect, everything has constraints in one form or another, even if those are not always the kind we see written in a licensing contract.
FM product pricing is highly competitive to the very, very few products in the same space.
Take QuickBase as a comparison - $35/month/user and very limited deployment options compared to FM. SalesForce? Pull out your wallet and weep.....
Full stack development (free tools) - yeah, except that you need a data base designer, a GUI / CSS expert, a business logic coder, a "glueware" developer, an ER tool, and IDE, expertise in at least one, if not 2 or 3 programming languages - all with typechecking that is a far more onerous and error prone than FM - a hosting method, externally defined backups, no access to iOS mobile sensors (GPS, camera, etc. ), no machine learning, - the list goes on and on.
FileMaker does ALL of that out of the box, and for a acquisition price far less than true competitors, or a development cost (effort and time to value equation) of comparisons like Full Stack development, @ 10% or less that effort/time-to-value cost (1st hand experience dozens of times).
Then you can look at No/Low code environments as "competition"? Virtually NONE (except FM) can get you from low code to PRO code - they all run out of steam. (even with the frustration that a lot of the FM low code methods have to be completely replaced to transition to pro code).
And what other product can - with little to no effort - be deployed on iOS, Web, Mac and Windows?
Oracle pricing is processor based. The more cores, the more cost. AND you are back to a suite of disparate tools with different UIs, different knowledge sets, different experience, and managing a half dozen licenses in order to work.
Additional note: FM perpetual license are perpetual. I have government clients that buy at the start of a program with zero financial process capability to upgrade, and run that version for at least 5 years (the longest one I've had was 14 years (but I paid for the upgrade from 8.5 to 12 out of pocket). That particular program ended last Oct, thank goodness)
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