Comment by mthoms
5 years ago
Your perpetual license is for the oldest version available during your subscription period, not the newest.
Old model: Pay $X.XX and get one year of updates.
New model: Pay $X.XX (spread over 12 months) and you can use all new versions UNTIL the subscription ends. At which point, unless you renew, you have to DOWNGRADE to the one year old version.
Let's face it, downgrading such an import tool is not something developers will be comfortable with (especially since JB products occasionally have show-stopping bugs).
Having said that, I'll admit to liking their products (and support). But the model is not as generous as everyone seems to think.
IIRC, the price of 2 year subscription is still cheaper than the 1-year update of the old model. They even offered subscription discount when they were transitioning, so the out-of-pocket is still cheaper than the old model.
So that was the original plan but I believe they changed to the “more reasonable” one after the backlash (so you get the current version + 1 year of updates)
The original plan was that you'd lose access completely. The "more reasonable" one was the 1yr downgrade.