Q – Will Avid still support dongles?Ī – Yes, Avid will support dongles and iLok for managing their licenses. In addition, Avid will continue to offer perpetual renewal programs for all products. However, going forward the preferred pricing model will be subscription-based pricing, because this is the direction of the entire industry and the way people would prefer to license software. The post featured an FAQ which read: Q – Will Avid still offer BOTH perpetual and subscription offerings?Ī – We will continue to offer perpetual pricing as an option. However, the biggest reason why lots of people in the music industry right now are thinking that Avid will phase out perpetual licenses for Pro Tools is actually a post by those operating Avid’s Facebook page who first posted the recent price increase.Īlthough this post has now been deleted off their Facebook page, allegedly due to bad PR from people on Facebook, the notice was copied on multiple reputable websites prior, such as here, here and here. This is the first hint that they might be trying to phase out the perpetual license by hiding it on their website. Hints that Pro Tools Might be Moving to Subscription Only If you want updates though, you’ll have to be on a “support plan” which is really a subscription anyway but we’ll talk more about that later. Instead, it’s hidden down the bottom of the page under ‘looking for perceptual license, click here. For Pro Tools Ultimate, it’s not one of the main options when you click on Buy Now. If you want to grab a perpetual license of Pro Tools, meaning you own it for life, at the time of writing this article you can grab that from the avid website. Will Pro Tools become Subscription Only?Īt the time of this article, August, 2019, Pro Tools is not subscription only but recent events hint that Avid may one day decide to make Pro Tools Subscription Only or may make it less ideal to buy a perceptual license than it is right now. Avid want to force you to keep paying for Pro Tools. So my suspicion from a year ago was correct. Otherwise, you’re basically hoping that an OS update or OS security patch won’t stop your older version of Pro Tools from working. So to get updates, even if you’re not on a monthly subscription and have a perpetual license, you’re effectively going to have to be on a yearly subscription in order to be eligible/able to purchase an annual renewal/update. You can still buy a reinstatement plan from some stores but once stores run out of stock of reinstatement plans, they can’t order any more so eventually, they’ll all be gone. Avid have discontinued their reinstatement plan, meaning you can’t pay to update Pro Tools later.

Even if you buy a perceptual license of Pro Tools, in order to get updates, you’ll now have to be on a support plan.

Pro tools 12 subscriptions