Thanks, webfork and Midas, for your posts about Bvckup 2--I've been using the free old beta for several years now, but you and the info reproduced below finally convinced me now is the time to buy it.
*long post warning*--TL;DR Settings are portable, but licensing is
per-machine and explicitly NOT. Also, sounds like (
potentially disadvantageous) licensing changes are imminent, so for anyone wanting to purchase the program,
right now may be the best time to do so. By my understanding, if you go to buy and you see that the
Purchase page lists a "Basic" license option, you've missed the boat and the newer licensing terms are already in effect.
More info re: licensing change (emphasis added and a few typos corrected):
From the dev, Alex Pankratov: "There are two types of updates - milestone (feature) releases and maintenance (bugfix) releases. For example, release 79 is the former and releases 79.1, 79.8, etc. are the former. Right now both types are included with a license,
perpetually [for Bvckup 2 only?].
This will change shortly. Maintenance releases will remain perpetually free, but the access to milestones releases will be included for one year and require a fee to extend it for another year after that." -
https://bvckup2.com/support/forum/topic/1147/6322
(Apparently that fee will be only "
20% of the original cost," so certainly a more significant discount than most devs give for continued updates!)
"As of right now we are still on Personal/Professional licenses. Shortly we'll be adding 3 new license types - Basic, Pro, Server. At the same point we'll be taking Personal and Professional off the purchase page. They will still be fully supported, but it won't be possible to buy them. In other words, after the licensing model switch there will 5 license types, 3 of which will be available for purchase. Feature-wise existing Professional will be same as new Server and existing Personal - same as Pro (but still subject to at-home, non-work-related use only restriction)." -
https://bvckup2.com/support/forum/topic/1149/6337
Features and licenses overview for upcoming tri-level licensing, from the development blog:
https://bvckup2.com/wip/03122018
Looks like the new lowest-level "Basic" license, in my view, guts several of the best aspects of this program (e.g. Delta copying, Shadow copying), though it may be fine for people who really only need barebones backup
if the new pricepoint of the Basic is sufficiently lower.
Finally, a bit longer quote, also from a
development-blog post:
"As you might've heard (and more than once), the next release will coincide with a change to our licensing model. Existing Personal and Professional licenses will be phased out in favor of Basic, Pro and Server tiers. The principal change is that
licensing options will now differ in what the program can do as opposed to what it can be used for."
"The change itself is that we will continue providing maintenance updates for free, while the access to new features will be free for one year and an optional paid extension after that. The one year starts from the moment of licensing an installation. All major releases within one year window are included, each of which coming with a lifetime of maintenance updates. Basically, the bugfixes are on us. The new features,
should you need them, are at a small cost after the first year. If you don't find any new features useful, you will be able to keep on using your existing release that
will remain fully functional and supported."
Most importantly, "Finally, all legacy licenses (of Personal and Professional types) [for Bvckup 2 only?]
will continue receiving all feature releases free of charge, just as they do now."
From all that text dump, it seems as though the "older" license includes...not "lifetime" updates, but possibly longer-term ones. Sounds like the only way this is a
bad deal is if v3 is right around the corner (which doesn't sound like the case; he apparently still has
several major features planned for the
future of v2) or if the new license model has a significant price drop (again,
sounds unlikely for at-home, non-business users who still want advanced functionality).
And a purchase now would
hopefully let you keep the advanced functionality of the older Personal license while still getting in the discounted-upgrade path for v3 ("
Regarding the upgrade discount [to v3] - it's likely to be in the 30-50% range, probably closer to the higher end of it"), though I may try to verify that on the Bvckup forums.
It's late and I am therefore too wordy, but hope the above info has been helpful to my fellow TPFC-ers!