Only Suckers Renew

Only Suckers Renew
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Opinion: If something goes up in price over 650 percent in four years it has to have gotten a whole lot better, right? The industry has shot anti-virus subscription prices up over the last few years hoping to make users pay full price every year.The price of most things in the computer industry is driven down over time, from competition, economies of scale and advances in the technology. But one product is up over 650 percent in the last 4 years: the annual subscription to Norton Antivirus updates.

In 2001 Symantec increased the price from $3.95 to $9.95, quite a large increase on its own. Just recently, coincident with the release of the 2006 versions of their security line of products, Symantec once again increased the price of the subscription renewal to $29.99. The new 2006 version of Norton Antivirus, of course including an annual subscription itself, costs $39.99. Symantecs message is clear: youre a sucker if you dont upgrade the program. The only question is whether youre a sucker for getting the new version too.

Symantec has absolutely been the leader in this price boom, but most other vendors have happily kept up. Many trail a bit behind. All of them are pricing their products so that you have a strong incentive not to renew your subscription, but to upgrade to the new version. From what I can tell, McAfee has moved completely to a subscription model for the software. The cheapest resubscription I could find was Computer Associates eTrust EZ Antivirus at $19.95. Their new product is only $29.95, so it too is no big savings over a full upgrade.

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So the point is not to get you to pay more for your signature resubscription; its to move you to a model where you subscribe at once to software and signature updates, the model to which Symantec has moved with the 2006 products. The annual product version model is dead, more or less. If you were to buy Norton 2006 six months from now, and even if they come out with major updates in another 12 months, youd get all the updates.

I guess if I were an anti-virus company I would do this too; after all, the product actually doesnt change much from year to year, so theres not much point in existing customers upgrading. Symantec does claim advances in their products over the years, including the new 2006 versions—in particular a new Norton Protection Center which attempts to explain complex issues in straightforward language. I havent tested the new products so I cant say whether theyre worth going through the trouble of an upgrade. And installing a new Norton product these days is definitely a process that goes wrong for some (check out this link too). Anyway, with respect to the new features they add each year, so what? They may justify price increases in the new versions, but they dont justify increases in subscription cost for users of old versions who dont get the benefit of new features.

Next page: The Good and Bad of Subscriptions

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