Upgrades, Betas, and "Grace Periods"

We often get requests for free upgrades because a user purchased Indigo X (previous version) sometime in the recent past. We'd like to explain our philosophy about upgrades and how they relate to our betas.

First, as far as we know, no software company will tell you that there's an impending beta about to be released when you purchase their software. We don't either. This isn't some sneaky tactic by us, but rather the beta ship date is constantly changing as we hammer down what the critical features are and work out the bugs to make it stable. “It's ready when it is ready,” we like to say, and when it gets to that point we release the public beta.

Next, most other software companies will allow existing licenses to beta test new versions of software. These betas generally last a couple of months (but could be more or less). Once the software is released, they generally charge for the upgrade and all beta testers must then upgrade. Some “grace period” will be in effect, so if you purchased within the last month or so they'll further discount or give you an upgrade. This grace period is generally smaller than the beta period.

Our philosophy is different: when we release a beta, we start selling the new version at the same time we release the beta. This has several advantages: for users, your “grace period” is in fact the entire beta period which historically has been about 6 months or so. For us, we get committed beta testers (because you purchase the upgrade during the beta period). Our betas are highly stable and we turn around any critical fixes very quickly.

If a user buys a new copy of Indigo X beta during that time from the Indigo Store, but determines they don't want to beta test, we will give them a free license for the current non-beta version of Indigo to use until Indigo X is out of beta. For those not wanting to purchase beta software, which we fully understand, we typically extend the free trial period to last for the entire beta period.

So, while other companies generally give a grace period of a month or two, we give everyone a much longer grace period – the entire beta period. We believe that it benefits both you, the user, and us to have this arrangement.