Solidworks - required subscription service?

I am looking at getting Solidworks Standard to do freelance work with. Does anyone know if the $1200 (or whatever it is… not sure exact number) a year subscription is something they make you buy? Is it optional or even necessary? I really don’t want to have to pay that on top of the $3995 licensing the software itself. They really don’t make it very attractive for freelancing.

Brad

they do not make you buy it, but without it you get NO technical support, not updates and when all your clients move to vs 2016 you will still be stuck on 2015 which may or may not be an issue. When i owned 2 seats of SW i paid for it to ensure i didn’t loose out on projects that client made it a requirement to be working in the same version… cost of business and i made sure when money came in a percentage went aside for this expense.

Having it provided at my corporate gig, it is quite nice to always have the latest and greatest, especially with the nice improvements they make each year (EG conics, improved surfacing features a little bit every year). But yeah, haven’t bought a personal copy yet for the same reason.

If you don’t purchase the subscription services right away i believe you are entilted to 2-3 months of full techincal support through your reseller, as part of the end user condition agreement. Might of been changed/updated, basically allows you to fully test drive the software/services incase you find it unusable. Same idea as 90 days to return retail purchases if appicable in your province/state.

They really don’t make it very attractive for freelancing.

What software company makes anything attractive for freelancing – it’s part of the cost of being in business. I don’t like either because I don’t need support, only updates but I can’t get the updates without paying for support that I don’t need. You may not need all of the updates but you will need to update to the new version every year to stay compatible with any client that is up to date.

I’m starting to like the subscription model for software because is spreads my costs out and keeps me up to date. Autodesk is doing this with all or most all of the their packages, even allowing monthly rental if that make more sense.