This will only be of interest to people who develop on/for Mac’s and use Parallels for running Windows guest OS’s on macOS.
Some people may have seen my tweet recently about the licensing policy of Parallels Desktop Pro, requiring you to have a license for each (host) machine that you use. This didn’t used to be a problem until I got a MacBook last year, in addition to my iMac.
To get up and running back then I simply signed up for another subscription (leaving with me two: one for an iMac and the other for my MacBook). This week I received a payment details reminder this week for the fact that my credit card that I used had expired. It was then that I noticed that my two subscriptions were significantly differently priced.
The license I got for my MacBook Pro was NZ$88.20 but my original license (the one I was being reminded about, with renewal due later this month) was NZ$179 !!!
I double and triple checked to make sure this was not a single payment for both subscriptions. But no, each was a different price, for a single Parallels Desktop Pro license, with different renewal dates.
I started investigating the possibility of switching to VMware and found that this space is rife with “hidden deals”. VMware have a competitive upgrade pricing deal for Parallels users, but as far as I can tell do not directly advertise this, but you can find it if you google the right terms.
So, curious as to what “hidden” discount/upgrade options Parallels might have, similar to VMware’s I googled a few combinations of “Parallels” and “upgrades” etc and came across this:
http://www.parallels.com/upgradepd12/
That’s a special offer to upgrade to Parallels Desktop Pro at the same subscription cost as non-Pro (US$49/yr) AND the T’s and C’s state that the cost is then fixed at that level for each year. You can order as many as you need.
So I have purchased two of these “Upgrade” subscriptions and applied them to my current installs. My previous subscriptions will be allowed simply to lapse.
That’s well over NZ$250/yr replaced by a single NZ$154/yr subscription covering two licenses.
That’s the same price as the VMware Fusion Pro competitive upgrade deal but now I don’t have to deal with migrating all my VM’s or the fact that (based on an initial evaluation with the 30 day trial) VMware seem not to have solved the performance problems arising when running VM’s off an external USB 3 HDD - an issue that Parallels have also had but long since resolved (the Win10 guest OS thrashes the disk, pegged at 100% with performance being unusable as a result).
The only question is, why didn’t Parallels think to mention this option to me when I queried their licensing policy and indicated an intention to consider switching to the competition ?