I work for a local government agency and my predecessor used FileMaker for many years prior to my arrival. I have hired a very capable developer to continue our use of the FileMaker platform. We are well down the road of usage and utilization, so far that coming up with an alternative might take a year.

My concern, hence the reason for this topic, is that we are so deep into the FileMaker platform that FileMaker could choose seemingly any price and we would have to pay it. In my first renewal, after having purchased an annual site license the prior year, the increase in the same licensing is 20%!

Does anyone else see this as an issue for the organization they represent?

Did your number of users change? Most of the pricing I've seen has remained the same ( AVLA and VLA ). The exception being Concurrent Connections.

I haven't looked at the Site License cost compared to last year.

Price increases are just a fact of life.  Nothing ever gets cheaper...  That should be factored into every year's budget, especially if the solution is business critical.  That way there will be no nasty surprises.

Having said that, you can certainly negotiate.  You're not FMI's hostage.  The comparison is between the cost of abandoning FM and the cost of renewing.  That's a topic that should be discussed in prep for each year's budget for instance.

Thanks guys for the feedback. The license renewal is exactly the same, same type and quantity. 

I do understand that things will not decrease in price. We do certainly budget for increases. 

Towards my initial point, is 20% what we should anticipate year after year? Only your history or FileMaker can answer that. If anyone is willing to share, what have you experienced?

Upon further review...it turns out our pricing was discounted last year and now we are seeing regular price, hence the 20% increase. I worked with FileMaker to tweak our user count to lower the cost some.

Thanks to those who responded. It would be interesting to know what other folks have seen over the years but my immediate concern has been dispelled.