A simple user - upgrade to 19?

[pvonk]

I currently use FMP Advanced 18 on several personal projects (and also enjoy playing around with it). When Claris announced an upcoming version 19, I read a number of articles and posts hypothesizing that Claris was going exclusively(?)  to a subscription plan aimed at corporations and smaller shops.  I have been buying the upgrades almost every year/every other year (depending on what advances each new version contained).  This past week I went to the Claris sight, and it seemed the pricing was aimed at multiple user seats.  But I finally found the link to buying a single license.  Seems the price is the same as last year ($197 for upgrade).  

What I'm wondering about, considering posts from months ago that discuss a change in Claris' direction, is will there still be individual upgrades in the future?  I know that most users here don't know what Claris will really do, but my sense is that Claris has posted announcements about their new direction that, if reading between the lines, "pro-developers" of FM apps have a sense of what the future may hold.

Would you recommend that I continue upgrading?  (I've looked at alternatives like Panorama X and that app seems powerful, more so than a simple flat database - BUT there's always the issue of buying software from a one-person developer.). I'm a retired computer science prof, so I can handle a lot of the power built in FM.  Aside from my "serious" personal projects, I enjoy continuing coding and developing apps in my sunset years, and FM provides a rich base to keep me connected with computing. 

Thanks for any input!

[Ocean West]

FileMaker will be continued to be sold as Perpetual with upgrade maintenance. 

Newer offerings Cloud2 and ClarisConnect are a software as service. 

 

[pvonk]

Thanks for the input. I feel more secure sticking with FM.

[marianco]

On 5/27/2020 at 9:36 AM, pvonk said:

I currently use FMP Advanced 18 on several personal projects (and also enjoy playing around with it). When Claris announced an upcoming version 19, I read a number of articles and posts hypothesizing that Claris was going exclusively(?)  to a subscription plan aimed at corporations and smaller shops.  I have been buying the upgrades almost every year/every other year (depending on what advances each new version contained).  This past week I went to the Claris sight, and it seemed the pricing was aimed at multiple user seats.  But I finally found the link to buying a single license.  Seems the price is the same as last year ($197 for upgrade).  

What I'm wondering about, considering posts from months ago that discuss a change in Claris' direction, is will there still be individual upgrades in the future?  I know that most users here don't know what Claris will really do, but my sense is that Claris has posted announcements about their new direction that, if reading between the lines, "pro-developers" of FM apps have a sense of what the future may hold.

Would you recommend that I continue upgrading?  (I've looked at alternatives like Panorama X and that app seems powerful, more so than a simple flat database - BUT there's always the issue of buying software from a one-person developer.). I'm a retired computer science prof, so I can handle a lot of the power built in FM.  Aside from my "serious" personal projects, I enjoy continuing coding and developing apps in my sunset years, and FM provides a rich base to keep me connected with computing. 

Thanks for any input!

I've looked at options.

Panorama X won't work for me since you are limited to 9-page print outs for reports. And this is difficult to work around in discussion with the developer.  Panorama X simply doesn't have the ability to create output as nicely as Filemaker Pro.  And these days, I almost always use Filemaker Pro to output to PDF instead of printing, with custom PDF file names. Panorama X is a decade behind Filemaker Pro in its abilities.

The closest software to Filemaker Pro is 4D. 4D's single-user interpreted database is very similar in price to Filemaker Pro. It is far away more complex than Filemaker Pro - which is one reason I have had a 4D license for decades but haven't used it as my daily driver.

4D does make me wish that Filemaker Pro had a real programming language. 

I believe Filemaker Pro will always be available in single user app units. That is its history. It's like the Macintosh in the iPhone age.

Claris, however, is attempting to capture the SAAS market. And so is emphasizing this feature. And this potentially is far more profitable than the single-user database market.

Filemaker Cloud is very very competitively priced in the SAAS market. And it makes it dead simple to create your own SAAS database application unlike the other solutions. And it costs less than Filemaker Server.

 

 

 

[pvonk]

fmThanks @marianco for your input.  I'll be staying with FM.