Live data from Hacker News

Canva has acquired Affinity in an effort to compete with Adobe

finance.yahoo.com

181–190 of 353 posts

Re: Canva has acquired Affinity in an effort to compete with Adobe

#181
post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because not everyone can or should IPO. Once you get to a certain point in size, your investors will start pushing for an exit (where you have two main options, IPO or sell).

What investors? As far as I know they were never VC funded. Affinity wasn’t a dinky startup, the parent company (Serif) was founded almost four decades ago.

> What investors?

GP made a broad statement, I was replying in general following suit.

Re: Canva has acquired Affinity in an effort to compete with Adobe

#182

I've been using Affinity products forever, in fact since before the Affinity era, then they were branded Serif (DrawPlus, PhotoPlus, etc)... They have been incredibly consistent over the years with the quality of their products, which is why I have purchased many licenses over the years and always recommended people to look into their software... Like others in the thread, I really do hope they don't change to subscr…

Pure speculation on my part but I think the way it will go down is Canva will announce that you can get access to Affinity products via a Canva subscription, with an option to buy the individual products outright like today. They have to be looking at Adobe and going "yeah we don't want that kind of reputation".

> They have to be looking at Adobe and going "yeah we don't want that kind of reputation".

They can also look at the market and Adobe and go “yeah, they have no alternatives, everyone is a subscriber now”

Re: Canva has acquired Affinity in an effort to compete with Adobe

#183
post #161

While Affinity is a one-time purchase, I'll admit I was very, very disappointed when with the last version they switched from a normal product key to online-only activation requirement which was not at all clear at purchase time. So despite having purchased the whole v2 suite I ended up never using it and staying with v1, and their response was pretty junk as well. That said, I share concerns of other posters that th…

We’ve been burned so often by those kinds of statements that every time I see a company repeating them I’m left wondering if the founders are unbearably naive or they think users are stupid.

Re: Canva has acquired Affinity in an effort to compete with Adobe

#184
Not sure why a web based subscription product which already had collaboration features would want to own native one shot apps.

Only way I can see logic for this acquisition is if they're wanting the talent/experience of Affinity's developers to build web based offerings of the feature sets of Photo, Designers, Publisher as part of a Canva web offering.

Re: Canva has acquired Affinity in an effort to compete with Adobe

#185
post #142

Why every product I like ends up being bought... argh, we can't have nice things.

Because no one wants to pay for products they like.

Well, everyone of their clients was paying for a license. Affinity was not free/fremium.

Re: Canva has acquired Affinity in an effort to compete with Adobe

#186
post #172
post #161

While Affinity is a one-time purchase, I'll admit I was very, very disappointed when with the last version they switched from a normal product key to online-only activation requirement which was not at all clear at purchase time. So despite having purchased the whole v2 suite I ended up never using it and staying with v1, and their response was pretty junk as well. That said, I share concerns of other posters that th…

I hate these statements. They could have said something like: "We got bought by Canva because they want more independence/alternatives from Adobe. We can invest more in development. Expect more integrations with Canva. Currently there are no plans for changes to our business model" But they didn't. Their statement was meaningless with zero information. Which means either they will absolutely enshitificate everything…

> "... Currently there are no plans for changes to our business model"

They mentioned exactly that in the FAQ:

> Canva’s business model is subscription, are there any plans to change how Affinity is sold?

> There are no changes to our current pricing model planned at this time, with all our apps still available as a one-off purchase.

Re: Canva has acquired Affinity in an effort to compete with Adobe

#187
post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because no one wants to pay for products they like.

We don't want to pay for software? Look at the Appstore! Good products for reasonable prices are worth the money. Affinity offers a good product for a reasonable price. Adobe offers a better product but the subscription model is hated by many. For me Affinity products are good enough. Let's hope the current versions keep on working on Apple Silicon and Windows 11/12/etc. The current 2 version is good enough for me an…

> We don't want to pay for software? Look at the Appstore! Good products for reasonable prices are worth the money

Such a strange statement in 2024, we all know almost no developers can afford to live off charging a fair price $20+ for software on there because people wont buy it, or charging the price people will actually pay on there which is $0.

Only way to make money on the App Store is to hammer in ads, sell data, exploit or trick people into subscriptions.

Re: Canva has acquired Affinity in an effort to compete with Adobe

#188

Why every product I like ends up being bought... argh, we can't have nice things.

Apparently most of the market doesn’t want the same things you want.

Otherwise Affinity would be the giant acquiring a much smaller Canva team.

That said, this is also further proof of why the standalone software license model died. If Affinity had a great business of their own, they wouldn’t need to sell.

Turns out if you want a software team to continue providing value to you, you should probably put them on salary (subscription).

Re: Canva has acquired Affinity in an effort to compete with Adobe

#190

I've been using Affinity products forever, in fact since before the Affinity era, then they were branded Serif (DrawPlus, PhotoPlus, etc)... They have been incredibly consistent over the years with the quality of their products, which is why I have purchased many licenses over the years and always recommended people to look into their software... Like others in the thread, I really do hope they don't change to subscr…

It really seems that the whole software world has decided to move to monthly payments. It really irks me. I don't want this.

Have to extract the most value for shareholders. Only way i see it changing is people start stealing software because they get sick of it or people stop using subscription based licenses all together.
Post reply on HN