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Changes To Onshape's Plans
jon_hirschtick
Onshape Employees Posts: 91 
Today we announced some changes to Onshape’s Free and Professional Plans. Here’s a rundown of the changes and why we are making them.
NEW: Removal Of Storage Limits
We’ve completely removed Document storage counting and storage limits from Onshape’s Free Plan. We found that these calculations of storage, so familiar in the old file-based world, simply do not make sense in a modern database architecture with built-in version control like Onshape. We also found that working within the storage limits encouraged non-optimal modeling practices, that storage calculations reduced Onshape performance (ugh!) and that Free Plan users were hitting both the Private and the Public storage limits. Finally, maintaining and debugging the code that implemented storage calculations and limits was taking real R&D time -- time that we can better use for new CAD features.
NEW: 21-day Free Trial of Onshape Pro
We’re excited to announce a new 21-day free trial of Onshape’s Professional Plan with unlimited storage and an unlimited Document count. In the past, CAD users who wanted to evaluate Onshape for their companies were using our Free Plan, which restricted the amount of private storage as well as the number of private Documents they could work with. Many users complained about the gymnastics of managing public and private data to stay under the storage limits.
In the new Onshape Professional Trial, those limits are gone. For new Professional users putting Onshape to the test with their own projects, this will make it significantly easier to conduct an in-depth evaluation.
NEW: Unlimited Public Storage in Free Plan
For public and open source CAD users - as mentioned earlier, Onshape is removing the 5 GB limit on Public Documents in our Free Plan. You can now use as much Onshape public data storage as you’d like.
NEW: Private Editing Removed From Free Plan
Onshape’s Free Plan will no longer include any Private Document creation or editing (Free Plan users can continue to view Private Documents). Although this news may disappoint some users, the purpose of our Free Plan has always been focused on meeting the needs of hobbyists, makers and open source designers. Existing Free Plan users may continue to edit their private data until December 15, 2016, and at any time, activate a 21-day trial of our Professional Plan (which now provides unlimited Private storage and editing).
NEW: Price Change for New Pro Users Paying Monthly
We have also adjusted our price for new monthly customers on the Professional Plan. Pro subscriptions will remain at $100/month if you purchase or renew annually, but will increase to $125/month for new customers who pay monthly. For our current paid customers, whether monthly or annual, there will be no price changes. You will be grandfathered in at the $100/month rate and can add new users at the same cost.
Lastly, I’d like to invite you to learn more about Onshape’s Enterprise Plan with some fantastic new features coming in the future to help manage larger design teams, including new enterprise-class Administration Tools, Policies and Controls, and Reporting and Analytics.
Thank You,
Jon
Comments
What about the education plan, does that stay the same?
Twitter: @onshapetricks & @babart1977
If a user was to go Pro for 3-4 months and then come off pro back to a Free account, what if any penalty would acquire? Would the data that was created under the Pro plan continue to be Private (viewable only) documents?
Thanks.
Wade
1. After downgrade from Pro, will I be able to download my data?
1a. Will you introduce native file for download?
2. How about sharing files with Free account user?
projektowanieproduktow.wordpress.com
If you downgrade from Pro to our Free Plan, you will be able to access and download your data in any format that we support for export. This includes many neutral and industry standard formats including; Parasolid, ACIS, STEP, IGES, DXF, DWG, STL, and others. As for native data, we do write out SolidWorks native part files, .sldprt (geometry without features).
We currently do not have plans to introduce a native Onshape file download.
As a Professional Subscriber, you can share private data with users on Onshape Free Plan. These Free Plan users will be able to view, export and download the data if granted permission. Free Plan users will not be able to edit private data.
Example. I do a CAD job for someone on my Pro plan then transfer ownership to them on their Free plan when finished.
Twitter: @onshapetricks & @babart1977
But I'm about to retire and have to use to cheaper CAD. Even though one day I might get a business running and can afford a pro CAD.
What I actually intended to propose was that you charged by the actual time and storage being used. But until you change the policy I will just finish my privat project before 15th of Desember.
Good luck
Tore
I and was hoping you would in come with some type of smaller plan pricing structure, as $100us 130au now that jumps to 2k with the new pricing a year that's a big hike may as well well invest in a Autodesk product for that type of money as I dont need all the features.
I guess can probably use sketchup pro or fusion for this stuff anyway.
Good luck.
I would never publish something that isn't finished, that would be rude to everyone and arrogant of me, but if I have no choice I guess I have to find another way to learn this art
I feel betrayed by this change, and bitter from wasting countless hours learning Onshape.
As a small business person the best way to get me to pay the professional fee is to provide sufficient value that I become invested in the tool set. Without private storage in the free version I cannot draw early ideas for new inventions because they are not patented. I will never become invested in the tool set and you will never obtain my professional fee revenue. Once I have a bunch of drawings that have commercial value in the free area then I would pay the upgrade path to professional to continue adding to the drawings for that project. If my project grows in scope then soon after I upgrade to profession I could end up needing 10 more seats for my collaborating engineers. This multiplier is a critical revenue enabler you will loose with the pricing model change.
With no private storage I will never make the initial investment because when first starting most projects I am not confident they will yield a profit but I still have to consider them private until I reach a stage where I make a decision to continue investment, open source or abandon them. This pricing change will force me to continue to use my desktop CAD which is already paid for. Then when one of my projects takes off the company will end up buying our collaborating engineers licenses for my desktop cad because it would be too costly to port the accumulated work to OnShape.
Thanks Joe Ellsworth
206-601-2985
joee@BayesAnalytic.com
And with the price increase to the pro version that puts it out of bounds for me as well.
If you are a Pro Plan Subscriber, you can assign ownership of your Private Document to a Free Plan user. That Free Plan user will have view-only access to that document. If that Free Plan user then upgrades to Onshape's Professional or Enterprise Plan, they will have full access to that Document and will be able to edit, share, and transfer its ownership. So, I think it will work in the way you desire.
Darren
When I saw the email, I was hopping they had added a pricing tier in between free and pro that reflected what I needed; instead they pretty much made Onshape useless for me. I'm a single user working on private designs that may someday make money. I have no need of the whole collaboration suite of features, maybe vital to a big company, useless to me. All I needed was the same 5 or 10 private documents with a little more storage space and I'd be happy to pay for that increase in space, but not $100-$125 for something that obviously isn't a cost issue when they give 5gb+ for public docs.
As it is, I already bought a Fusion 360 license at much less cost. I only pay $40 a month for access to the entire suite of Adobe products. Here they gave me a choice between paying nothing or a lot and now even the nothing isn't worth it. Disable the collaboration, BOM, etc on the free and start-up tiers, make that enterprise only. Give another 100mb/private per $10/month on a start-up tier and I would have happily paid. That's all I would have needed.
OnShape is fighting an uphill battle moving engineers off traditional desktop CAD. They do have a unique value proposition but their long term success will be measured by maximizing adoption. A portion of those that use the product will upgrade to professionals so maximizing those who invest in learning and using the tool set is critical.
OnShape's recent decision to eliminate any private storage documents will dramatically curtail adoption at the worst possible time in the project life cycle and this will prevent future potential professional users from ever adopting the product.
The best way to get me to pay the professional fee is to provide sufficient value that I become invested in the tool set. Without private storage in the free version I cannot draw early ideas for new inventions because they are not patented. Since I cannot draw those ideas in OnShape I will never become invested in the tool set and you will never obtain my professional fee revenue.
Once I have designed bunch of models that have commercial value in the free area then I would pay the upgrade path to professional to continue adding to the drawings for that project. If my project grows in scope, then soon after I upgrade to professional I would end up needing 10 more seats for my collaborating engineers. This multiplier is a critical revenue enabler you will lose with the pricing model change.
With no private storage, I will never make the initial investment. When first starting most projects I am not confident they will yield a profit but I still must consider them private until I reach a stage where I decide to continue investment, open source or abandon them.
I am a professional engineer who recently started modeling in OnShape to use their animation feature. I am working on new technology for low energy atmospheric water generation. Once we have revenue or investment the professional fee is easy to pay. Until then I pay everything out of pocket so the $1200 per year is a big hit. You do not want to drive people in similar stages away from OnShape because this is when I am willing to invest time to learn your product to assist in my marketing. Once I have funding then I can just as easily pay for solid works where I know there is pool of pre-trained labor.
They key for OnShape is to entice me to draw everything in the startup phase in OnShape so it is causes less disruption once we are funded to keep using it.
Even if this idea doesn't end up making money or obtaining investment you can bet that I will have a future job with another company. If I take 2 years of onShape skills with me then you can bet I will advocate for it's adoption at my next employer. If I have spent the last 2 years working on Alibre then I will advocate for it. I would assert it is in OnShapes best interest to have engineers like me advocate for them.
I don't think my situation is unique. I think the same decision process will be multiplied across all the entrepreneurial engineers across the nation and this is a large enough number of lost users to really hurt OnShapes stock holders.
Thanks Joe Ellsworth
206-601-2985
joee@BayesAnalytic.com
This is disappointing. I've invested a considerable amount of time helping this community by answering people's questions and writing FeatureScripts for everyone to use - all because I have faith in OS as platform - but obviously OS's dedication to the maker/hobbyist community was just a marketing gimmick until they could start raking in profits from larger corporate interests.
So question is : who is using Onshape ?
Developers need to focus themselves in making professional CAD software not some software for amateurs who want to share and like unfinished product.
Sorry for sounding like a bitter old man but I guess I am a bit of that right now
When Autodesk becomes a better option, you have done something really really wrong.
I can't believe that OnShape really expected the majority of the free tier users to convert to Pro, so I wonder why it was done? 100MB only costs $0.003 per month on Amazon S3. So they decided to charge $120/month to cover a fraction of a cent cost? I just don't understand, but I am sure this is not in the best interest of their hobbyist customers or their future in the small business space.
After spending 100's of hours learning Onshape (transitioning from RhinoCad), watching every web cast and building an extensive private CAD model using almost every Onshape feature, I'm left high and dry being required to pay for editing rights to my private document collection.
No thanks Onshape... that's bait and switch doesn't set well with me or other 'pro-sumers' that have made similar investments onboarding your platform.
Firstly, I love the program, it's great, and I have recommended it to a number of people.
As some of the other commenters have mentioned, I'm happy to pay to access your service, however I design one or two products per year (I have a mechanical engineering degree but work as a manager at a marine electronics reseller) there's no way I can justify the cost to continue using your service, and there's no way I can make our designs public as a small proportion may become money makers for us.
I'll still use Onshape for my personal stuff - designing a deck at home, but for work unfortunately this means battling with a version of Turbocad to do my work stuff <Shudders>
I also have a problem with software companies promoting and selling immature products.
I will continue to use Onshape and make all of my work public. One of my personal objectives is to encourage younger persons to use the wonderful world of mechanical design (CAD/CAM). My way of doing this is to share the knowledge I gained during my many years at the University of Life by publishing in Onshape publicly, completely free designs and drawings.
From now on, for any private designs, I will continue to use Solidworks 2015. I discontinued my subscription to Solidworks recently, simply because I can no longer afford it. The nail in the SW coffin last year is that SW greed changed the long agreed rules with regard to back dating the cost of lapsed licences (sound familiar?). Over the years, I invested around $20,000 AUD in Solidworks, so I may as well continue to use it. Back to exchanging SW files by email with my old clients.
If I was in business, and using 3D CAD routinely, the Professional plan represents very good value, but I simply can't afford that sort of money for my intermittent hobby use. I routinely "share" my finished designs with the community, but I would like to be able to keep my current "work-in-progress" private, as well as any ideas I have that might turn out to have some commercial value to me.
I can understand that there is a real cost in maintaining all of the current Free users, an OnShape needs a sustainable revenue stream to stay in business, but how about the option of a "Lite" subscription for hobbyists who would like to keep some of their data private - for example, a one-time purchase of say $100, or a few dollars a year for 100 MB of private storage?
I did recommend Onshape to everyone, but with the upcoming pricing changes Onshape seems to focus primarily on professionals.
Yes Onshape also has a free plan, but it's not really of good use to makers or hobbyist. You don't want everything to be public.
I wonder if Onshape really needs a free tier. I mean it's not in the smartphone game business ?!? The upcoming free tier isn't good for anything more than viewing.
Something like this would have been an awesome anouncment:
Maker Plan: 5 $
- 5 private Documents
- No in App support only forum
Startup Plan: 20$- 20 private Documents
- 10 in App Help requests
Professionals: 100$- unlimited private Documents
- 100 Help request
Enterprise: ... $For the new plan this Quote really fits perfectly:
I have been an eager supporter of Onshape, promoting it wherever I could, but I now regret that. I also regret the time spent, as clearly I am not at all interesting as a user and forum contributor for Onshape. I can't fathom why Onshape now chooses to alienate a rather big group of users, I am quite sure that at some point they will realize that.
I like Onshape better than the main competitor, but that's partly because I've concentrated on learning Onshape instead. That will change now, and I will no longer promote Onshape anywhwere. The Onshape forums will likely be a less crowded place from now on, as a fair chunk of current Free Plan users will jump ship.
I am so disappointed that I am on the verge of crying, why can't we at least have a reason why Onshape is so convinced that a middle tier plan is out of the question? I make no money on my Onshape work, but a very small part of it could have commercial value some time in the future. Paying for the Pro Plan to protect that slim chance of future value just isn't an option, so this forces me to jump ship. I'm fine with most of my documents being public, but since I will no longer be able to have ANY privacy on Onshape, I will have to stop using it.