Pricing/licensing for IntelliJ IDEA 3.0

Here's the new pricing and licensing policy for IntelliJ IDEA 3.0:

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Pricing
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New user price: $499
Upgrade from any version bought prior to Jan 1, 2002: $249 (50% off of the
new user price)
Annual Maintenance & Support Contract: $200

We will have a special offer until Jan 1, 2003:

New user price: $399
Upgrade from any version bought prior to Jan 1, 2002: $199

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Licensing
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A license is still per-user, while the same user can use it on any number of
computers and OSes (but not simultaneously).
Basic license includes only free upgrades to bugfix releases for 30 days
after your purchase and installation and configuration support for 30 days
after your purchase.
Annual maintenance & support contract includes upgrades to all minor
versions and bugfixes we release during the term (1 year), full access to
our online support system and bug tracker. It does not include major
version upgrades, however it will cost 60% off of the new user price when
purchasing upgrades to major versions.
Customers with no maintenance will have an option to purchase upgrades at a
price of 40% off of the new user price.
Those who still have a valid 8-month maintenance subscription will be able
to use it for everything that the Annual Maintenance and Support contract
offers until the 8-months expire. After that you will need to purchase an
Annual Maintenance and Support contract at a $249 price.

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EAP Rewards
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In a couple of days, I will publish a list of about 30 EAP members who will
get free personal licenses for IntelliJ IDEA 3.0 + maintenance & support for
one year as a reward for their valuable contributions to the 3.0 release.

Best regards,

Eugene Belyaev
President
JetBrains, Inc


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48 comments
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Ouch.

I had gotten my company to agree to buy all of the developers licenses to IDEA before this. Granted it was only 10 licenses, but when pricing it out under the old model it resulted in $3200 ($320 was the price for 10+ licenses) for a version that could be upgraded to any major, minor bug fix for 8 months.

Now it will cost either $4000 for a 3.0 license with 30 days of support/upgrades and presumably 3.0.x forever (I can't see that being more than a 3-4 months of upgrades), or $6000 for a year for all minor upgrades and support. This by the way is limited to 3.x versions.

I tried to get them to buy during the EAP period but they wanted to wait until the release. I guess we got screwed. And I'll be looking for a new IDE to purchase. We can't afford to do business with a company that drastically changes the price-to-benefit ratio so dramatically.

I still believe IDEA 3.0 is one of the best IDEs out there, but without the assurance that even simple things like fixes for Mac OS X support are a free upgrade, how can I even think about recommending this product?

Tarun
Synxis Corporation

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Ouch! Those prices look expensive for non-corporate users. My company has been evaluating development IDEs and IDEA is a front-runner, but I was planning to buy a copy for my own personal use, particularly if the company chooses a different one.

At those prices I find it hard to justify buying my own copy. I was hoping there would be a two or three-tier pricing structure: Educational (low cost), Single-user (medium cost), and Corporate (high cost with discounts for multiple/site licenses).

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well, thats what we get for praising them into the heavenlies, like its being done here on the forum and along with every IDEA release announcement elsewhere. Maybe, in order to keep them humble, we should tame ourselves a little...

Seriously, I dont mind the base price, but that 30 day policy, and "support offering" after that seem ridiculous to me. Bug fixes should be free at any time, period.
Apart from that, considering that the next major version usually takes longer than 8 months, and previous to that the EAP is available, I dont feel I am losing much by not having the 8 months upgrade period included in the deal any more.

Christian

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It's a real shame that you aren't offering a personal license any more. I know that you've lost $400 because of it. I would be buying one at $200 and at least one of my colleagues would be, also. But, I just can't afford $400. I guess I'll be using netbeans until the next eap starts. Sorry guys, but you priced yourselves out of a good chunk of your potential market.
John Watson

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"Christian Sell" <christian.sell@netcologne.de> wrote ...

Bug fixes should be free at any time, period.


They are. If you reread their statements, they will provide free bugfix
upgrades.
The support is (I believe) for people that want to call IntelliJ and get
someone
help them to figure out what is the problem they see.
(E.g. using wrong JDK version :)

r.


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If you reread their statements, they will
provide free bugfix upgrades.


In which posting do they say this?
In his first posting, Eugene Belyaev explicitly states that "Basic license includes only free upgrades to bugfix releases for 30 days"

He does later say that "ITN is free for all", but we are talking about bugfixes, not ITN.

Eugene, could you perhaps clarify this? Is it really going to cost Idea users $200 a year for bugfixes?

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You are correct, that post definitely states that bugfix releases have no additional cost.

Thanks.

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It's indeed to expensive for a personal license. I would get one too. :(

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How does this affect educational pricing? I think $99 was quite workable but I think it will be difficult to get more; folks will just grit their teeth and switch to netbeans or eclipse. (Which would be a pity, as IDEA is clearly the best editor out there, but... that's reality.)

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I'm John Watson's colleague... the other half of the $400 lost by Intellij because of the lack of a personally priced edition. The company we work for has licenses for our day gig, but it just doesn't make sense for me to shell out $400 for a personal copy (or after January, $500!) when NetBeans is sitting out there for free with RefactorIt as a plug in. IDEA is better but sometimes free wins out. I'm not making any money with the stuff I do at home. But the more I use IDEA, the more I like it... and the more likely I will be to suggest to all my future employers and colleagues that they use it.

Perhaps Intellij could offer a free "community edition" that is crippled in some not too awful way when the EAP program is not going on? You could limit the number of refactorings to a half dozen (let users pick which) for instance, block off the integration with cvs, etc. Doing that last thing would almost guarantee that no one doing any serious work would be using that edition. But for people who just want to work on personal projects, it would probably be sufficient.

-John Perkins

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I don't agree. The personal license was -- the two times, they were
available -- a special, time-limited offer: a Christmas and an Easter
offer. Maybe waiting a few weeks and you'll get your personal license.

Tom


On Thu, 14 Nov 2002 18:27:46 +0000 (UTC), John Watson
<john@sleazyweasel.com> wrote:

It's a real shame that you aren't offering a personal license any more. I know that you've lost $400 because of it. I would be buying one at $200 and at least one of my colleagues would be, also. But, I just can't afford $400. I guess I'll be using netbeans until the next eap starts. Sorry guys, but you priced yourselves out of a good chunk of your potential market.
John Watson


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If you dont't want to pay a cent then you have to use Eclipse or other free tools. Maybe you can use vi or Notepad, that's very funny for developing. Are you going to pay 3500$ for JBuilder? No? Why? Right! It's not worth the money!

I think 400$ are OK for this tool. Our company will buy serveral licences for the developer.

Michael

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Two days after I downloaded my first copy of IDEA (and instantly ditched JBuilder) I was laid off - so please do something for the unemployed amongst us, those who would love to use IDEA for educational use but cannot afford to - even $99 is too much when there's no money coming in at the end of the month!

PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE make IDEA free this Christmas. If you do, I will personally promise to rant about it everywhere I go!

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How can IntelliJ know that you're unemployed??? And why should they take care about it? They are not the social welfare...
They developed this tool and I think the employees did't develop it for free.
They have to earn money, because the employees at IntelliJ don't want to get laid off...

Michael

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jiveadmin@jetbrains.com (Colin Smith) wrote in
<4957728.1037667456496.JavaMail.jrun@is.intellij.net>:
>
>PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE make IDEA free this Christmas. If you do, I will
>personally promise to rant about it everywhere I go!

In your case I recommend Eclipse until you have saved up enough to buy "the
real thing", or ( even better ) find an employer that is willing to pay the
licence for you. I am sorry you lost your job, but I don't see that
earning you the right to a licence. As Michael pointed out, donating
licences wont excactly increase job security for the folks at JetBrains.
Download Eclipse and get on with life.

-lj

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develop with pleasure, but don't plan on doing much else at these prices. I guess I can try to eat less :(

Seriously, PLEASE do not nickle and dime us like JBuilder does. You pay out the nose for every JBuilder release, it makes no difference how long you've been a customer, you pay BIG. We really need some protection from having 8 major builds a year and us all going broke from upgrades. Is there any reason we couldn't work out a "all the upgrades you want, but no support" price?

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don't worry we can always download the cracks for free. JBuilder cracks usually come out before the actual release ;) It's virtually impossible to stop cracking, so just spend a little less time promoting the tool and start hacking it.

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