Once again, SolidWorks has some great promotional deals, but they are only for new customers or existing customers who need more seats!

How many of you current, loyal customers would like to upgrade your seat for free, knowing that SolidWorks would make more money off of you on the subscription fees (in other words, everybody wins)?

When I bought my personal seat years ago, I wasn't offered a free upgrade as they tend to do now.  I was working on a side project (I had a seat at my employer, but wanted a personal one for side-work), so I bought the base license.  Now I find my needs have expanded and would like to upgrade to Premium.  It feels like a punch in the gut to have to pay somewhere around \$5k to upgrade when some brand-new user gets offered this option for free!

It's us after all, the users who have been using this product for well over a decade, that are the ones who have been there the whole time helping to build the product.  Through thick and thin, we've been submitting enhancement requests, reporting bugs, suffering bad releases that corrupt our files, and all around impressing people with what this product in our hands can do.  I can't tell you how many companies are using SolidWorks now thanks to my efforts and I'm sure many of you as well could say the same thing.

So, if they are willing to upgrade brand-new, neophyte customers (or existing customers that need more seats), how would it hurt them to also offer a free upgrade to existing, loyal customers that just want to take our experience up a notch?

The only excuse I can think of is that some people might take the deal and then never exercise their subscription, therefore getting the advanced features for free.  To this, there is a simple solution:  require 2 or 3 years of maintenance up front.

In fact, I have a hard time understanding why SolidWorks doesn't give their software away free based on this business model.  Get a free seat of SW if you purchase, say, 5 years of maintenance up front.  Yes, in some cases, they would make less money when it came to the companies that just pay the up-front cost and maintenance religiously.  But I'd bet they'd be ahead when it comes to those that don't pay the subscription fee and including the increase in market share.

If this were the case, how many people looking at other CAD platforms (Pro, Inventor, etc) wouldn't jump on this type of offer immediately??

This is simple economics.  Even drug dealers understand this concept:  Get people hooked for free.  Then once they're hooked, hook them on the more expensive stuff.

I think the result would be a big increase in SW users globally, and maybe I'd get a t-shirt or something for suggesting it.

Let me know below how many of you would at some point be interested in exercising some sort of program like this.  Maybe SolidWorks will listen.