Corel Upgrade Policy Altered

Back in early December last year, I wrote about Adobe and Corel Upgrade Policies. Strangely enough Corel announced a new upgrade policy on that very same day and the announcement didn't make much news at the time. This new policy could have an effect on you and I wanted to bring it to your attention so you can make the appropriate buying decisions.

Corel's old policy said you were eligible for upgrades if you owned any previous version of a product. The new policy states that only the most recent two versions of a product are eligible for upgrade pricing. Since most of my readers are CorelDRAW users, that would mean only owners of CorelDRAW X4 and X5 would be eligible to buy the upgrade of the next release of CorelDRAW. A specific question about this policy was recently asked in the coreldraw.com forums and the answer from Corel is that they would offer upgrade pricing to all users "during a transition period".

Those of you using older versions of CorelDRAW will need to make a decision. Do you buy the upgrade during the transition period or do you stay where you are knowing that you will have to buy full price should you want a newer version of CorelDRAW?

I know some of you won't like this policy, but it is impossible for companies to continue to support much older software. I even wrote a post in January, Upgrades Are Required More Often Than Every Ten Years, suggesting that users need to upgrade regularly. Corel has announced the policy and they will give users of older versions a transition period to become current at upgrade pricing. I think that is very fair for both sides.