Flash: Bentley Raises MicroStation Subscription, Adds Exchange Option

Bentley is hiking the price of its MicroStation subscription service, SELECT, by $100 a year to $725 a year. According to Bentley, this increases the cost of the subscription program from 13% to 15% of the software.

To justify the cost, Bentley is pumping up the SELECT program with the "Annual License Exchange," just announced at the BE2006, which allows users to trade in their existing BENTLEY software towards any current software the company offers. Bentley promises to give current price of the software as a trade in value, not what the user may originally have paid for it.

"There's nothing like it in the industry, says Malcolm Walter, Bentley's COO. To help us understand, he uses an example from another industry. Walter has us imagine Porsche allowing an owner who bought a 911 Carerra in 1996 for $63,000 to walk out of a dealer's showroom with a brand new Cayenne, Porsche's hot SUV -- for no additional cost --  instead of allowing the more measly but real world trade in value of $23,000. "Bentley gives you your money back to reinvest in the latest software," he says.

More details in CADinsider follow up.

Comments

[ralphg]

It's a pity Walter didn't use the example of buying a PC in 1985 for $5,000 and buying one today for $500 -- and getting the trade-in value on it!