Ozone 8 to Ozone 9 patch transition? (..& Izotope plugins in general)

[Righty27]

Originally Posted by TheFilterLab

I agree with you regarding the iZotope business model. Seems they update about once a year or so and then abandon the older version. Leaving you hanging if you want to upgrade your DAW/OS and be able to open old sessions. I've gotten pretty selective about which of their products I purchase for that very reason. I recently did the upgrade from PT10 too and ran into some of these same problems. Thankfully, I've never depended on iZotope for anything major. I'm glad I didn't like Neutron and never bought it. I'm sure it would be a mess trying to bring old sessions back to life that are filled with that plugin in. I'm very cautious about which plugins I include in my template for these very reasons.

Like you said stock plugs-ins, Sonnox, and Massey always open and work like they always have for me.There is something nice about having tools that you know and trust that get the job done with out getting "improved" every year or two.

I’m in the same boat re. Izotope - I like their products and clearly every developer will have its own approach to finding the best balance to building a reliable revenue stream through ‘perpetual’ licences, upgrades/updates for OS compatibility, subscriptions, etc.

However, Izotope’s business model does essentially involve yearly updates for their main products with quite expensive upgrade fees being a large portion of prices typically paid for the original product. For those of us who do routinely upgrade Pro Tools versions, costs end up similar to a subscription, which I avoid for plugins. This is in contrast to e.g. Plugin Alliance who appear to rely on continually releasing new, quality products that, combined with their loyalty aspects to get big ‘discounts’ (more typical lower prices nowadays than Izotope), probably achieve their revenues from users who already have too many similar compressors, etc. or from new customers joining the ‘club’.

I have no idea to what extent this approach puts off new customers, or the proportion who do upgrade their Izotope products every, or every other version for example ... or how many go on to purchase more plugins from them.

However, unfortunately in the case of Izotope, they joined my redundant pile of developers for this reason, whereas if upgrade fees were in the more reasonable range of 20-25% of the original cost, these would all be upgraded routinely. The other two developers I have used but now avoid are Waves (similar reasons) and Slate.

For newbies looking to understand their overall costs if this is an issue, it’s worth studying each developer’s business model before buying in ... although goalposts can and do move, as we’ve seen with some of the more ‘forced’ or incentivised subscriptions and Avid themselves with Pro Tools.

[Righty27]

Quick update as I thought it fair to check Izotope's latest pricing.

Their website shows Black Friday offers that include Ozone 9 Standard at $99, however one can log in for loyalty offers, of which I have 12 ... but my Ozone 9 Standard upgrade is $149?!

Whilst the Black Friday price looks good value for new customers, this does appear to resemble the Waves model i.e. low initial cost and essentially pointless upgrade fees (unless one was prepared for the non-discounted level of pricing in the first place).

BTW, I forgot another similar developer: Arturia. They have a price promise related to the contribution of individually purchased VIs towards their V Collection bundle. However, in reality, one can purchase several instruments and only save $50 compared to new customers on the perennial discounted cost (around this time of the year i.e. before the next yearly update) :)