Introducing Flex: A New Pay-As-You-Go Option for Customers

[Tiana_Y]

Hi Everyone, 

The transition to named user was a great opportunity for us to better understand what customers need from their subscriptions, and after receiving a lot of customer feedback, we are officially announcing Flex!

On September 24, 2021, we will be launching Flex, a new pay-as-you-go option to match a customer’s cost with their usage.

• Customers will be able to purchase tokens for their occasional users, who can access top products at a daily rate.
• A dedicated subscription is best for frequent users, especially if customers have discounted subscriptions through trade-in offers.
• Managing Flex alongside subscription is easy with tools such as default assignments and token usage reporting to monitor spend.

If you wish to learn more about Flex please watch our Youtube Video, What is Flex? If you want to learn more about the benefits, pricing, and other more in-depth details about Flex visit our Flex Landing Page!

Wishing you the best, 

Tiana.D

[rkmcswain]

Taking AutoCAD for example, Token is $21/day.

A full 1 year rental is $1,775/year, and $1,775 / 250 (avg work days per year) is about $7.10/day

A month rental is $220, which is about $10.50/day

If you use token for 84 hours (two weeks + a half day), you will be at the same cost as a full year rental.

[FacebookGroupMember]

I hope it's better than the last debacle we all experienced with Flex licensing.... You know, the one to manage multi users but couldn't and then couldn't see the difference between multi or perpetual and flagged the users as not licenced......

[rkmcswain]

I didn't dig that deep, but I would presume it would work very similar to named user licensing, except that they are monitoring your usage in 24 hour chunks.  

Any comments on this @Tiana_Y ?

Also, is there a minimum period before the "day is counted". For example, if a user mistakenly opens AutoCAD and then shuts it down. Does that count as a day usage? Apologies if this is in the aforementioned documentation, I have not scanned it thoroughly yet. Thank you.

[FacebookGroupMember]

Perhaps the user could then charge Autodesk at $50 per crash.

[FacebookGroupMember]

Does one need to be an existing (fully year) F360 subscriber to use flex for a second person? Also, how does this work with the other license types (Personal Use, EDU, Startup)?

[Tiana_Y]

Hi Everyone, 

Yes, Flex is a type of named user subscription so it is similar to single-user. Flex is just another named user option for occasional users. Also, you do not need to be an existing customer to use Flex. Flex is only available commercially, so there are no personal or EDU subscription options. 

I hope this helps!

Tiana.D

[sschulteH6WZ3]

Either they have done a terrible job of explaining how this works, or its one of the worst ideas Autodesk has ever come up with. If I go by the estimate tokens thing its going to cost $1,500.00 dollars to run (1) person (5) 24 hour periods. Essentially its going to cost $300.00, $12.50 an hour no matter if its used one hour or 24 hours straight. Before going this route you better take some speed and have a pile of work ahead of you so you can stay awake 24 hours to get your $300.00 worth out of it. If you want to use it more than 5 days you have to shell out another $1,500. If I want to pay monthly one would get 30 days to use at their leisure it would only cost $275.00 or 9.17 for a 24 hour period or  $0.38 an hour. 

[rkmcswain]

@sschulteH6WZ3 wrote:

Either they have done a terrible job of explaining how this works, or its one of the worst ideas Autodesk has ever come up with.

It depends on whose point of view you're referring to. This is a win-win for Autodesk. 

Let's take Inventor as an example.

Inventor cost 8 tokens a day. For simplicity sake, lets say you buy them 1000 at a time, which cost $3 per token. Ok, now we know it costs $24/day to run Inventor. There are 261 working days in 2021, so subtract vacation and sick days, and let's say our Inventor operator is going to need Inventor for 245 days a year.

245 days * $24/day = $5,880 for the year.

So what they have basically done is added a "daily" cost to the rental lineup that has existed for a while now.

Inventor 3 year rental = $5,915

Inventor 1 year rental = $2,190

Inventor 1 month rental = $275

Inventor 1 day rental = $24

Now let's break them down into the daily rate based on 245 working days a year.

Inventor 3 year rental = $5,915 / 735 working days = $8.05/day

Inventor 1 year rental = $2,190 / 245 working days = $8.94/day

Inventor 1 month rental = $275 / 22 working days = $12.50/day

Inventor 1 day rental = $24 = $24/day.

One more math problem. $275/$24 = 11.5 days. So unless you are going to use Inventor for 11 days or less, you're better off going with a monthly rental, which is probably the vast majority of cases.

I feel like when it's all said and done, they won't be selling many tokens at all, and that that they were made this expensive so as to drive people towards what has been the ultimate goal for several years now, monthly, or better yet, annual rentals.

[sschulteH6WZ3]

They have done piss poor of job of explaining the costs vs features. One would think writing a good 5 or 6 solid paragraphs detailing what is going on with it and detailing the costs would be the way to go if rolling out a new program. What they have done is just plain lazy. 

This not even half a-- attempt "how flex works", these three lines,

and a FAQ is all the effort they put into explaining it. There is some video but in many companies there are negative repercussions for watching videos at work.

Perhaps if Autodesk put some effort into fixing the glaring issues with their products like inventor and AutoCAD Mechanical and added the features and controls that their competitors have had for more than a decade they would not need to resort to tricks and schemes. People would prefer using them. For the small guys like the company I work for and the pick up small jobs I am going to start doing the pay as you go and rental is the ONLY thing that makes Inventor or AM attractive. They had better hope SolidWorks never goes to a subscription type model or Solid Edge which does a subscription becomes mainstream. 

[rkmcswain]

@sschulteH6WZ3 

I'm not trying to dog on Autodesk, but that's just marketing in these current times. Let's just take Autodesk out of the equation. If any software company offered these same options, why would they explain like I did? If so, virtually nobody would buy tokens.  

If a company had a part time user, this sort of sounds like a solution - until you do the math, which they are just relying on people to not do.

[rpf1968]

Hi Wether what I am about to say has any releavance to  anybody else I don't know.

£1410 for 500 credits which are no longer valid after a year seems prohibitive for very occasional users who might well be paying for more credits than they need.

Could it be possible to have a much lower minumum purchase limit?

Thanks

Richard

[mcgreen29]

I just wish the tokens didn't expire after 1 year. I ended up paying $300 to use Inventor for a few days. I think if you paid for tokens you should be able to keep them.