Why aren't upgrades free?

We are a (small) business and as such we need to make a profit in order to survive and continue making software.  We only make money from two things: purchases and upgrades.   Ideally we would build the cost of all future upgrades into your original purchase and you would only ever have to pay once.  This would make it easier for our customers and offer us better cashflow.  However we live in a competitive industry where very few companies offer free upgrades, which makes their software cheaper.   Most people do not consider future upgrades when purchasing software so they would perceive our prices as being higher and we would probably lose the sale to the competitor.  For this reason, we follow the industry model of charging users for upgrades.

When releasing new versions we try to minimize the frustration of recent purchasers by giving free upgrades to those who purchased "recently".  When we say recently, we usually mean around three months, depending on the product and what it cost us to develop the upgrade.

I appreciate that this may seem unfair to those who purchased close to the cut-off date or assumed that upgrades were free, but these sales are needed to cover our costs and keep us in the black. 

If you have any comments, please e-mail me at Xequte

We appreciate your support.
 

Nigel Cross
Managing Director
Xequte Software
E-mail Me