I’m also a hobbyist, I already paid $300 last year, and only used it for a couple of weeks. Now I need it again, and I’m sad to see that 1y later there is still no plan for amateurs.
I think I will start looking for another product
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I am an absolute fan of the software, but the pricing is really hard to swallow as a hobbyist. I’m using it more than I used to, and it was hard to justify the $239 a year as a hobbyist, but I think now it’s $299. I do also create tutorials for other CAD programs such as ZBrush and SketchUp (I was contracted to create and narrate Google’s official SketchUp Toolbar videos around 2014). And I would LOVE to know how the in-app tutorials are done so I could create high-quality content for Shapr.
I’ve given the feedback in the past…what worked well with SketchUp was to provide a free version so students and hobbyists could learn the software with minimal investment, and they had a pro version. Also, as someone whose parents were software developers, I have NO DESIRE to demand free access to software…I have never in my life pirated software or music because I know how it affects small developers. I value the time and energy that has gone into Shapr3D, and I WANT to pay for it.
But with the prevalence of subscriptions (I HATE THEM), I’m starting to have to make tough choices about which software and streaming subscriptions to keep. I just canceled my Disney+ streaming a few days ago because it went up from $6.99 a month to $14.99 a month. Right now I pay for Shapr3D, SketchUp, and ZBrush subscriptions, in addition to Adobe.
As an unofficial “Shapr3D evangelist,” I show off this software to everyone I know who has a need for CAD. I have it running on my iPad Mini that I keep in my purse, and I LOVE to show people how easy it is. But each time I’m still met with pushback because of the price. I would say maybe one out of 25 people I tell about the program actually subscribe.
Just this week, Bullseye Glass had a seminar on using 3D printers and CAD for glass casting. In my group of glass friends, the conversation shifted to asking me questions about what CAD would be easiest (most of them have iPads). Hands-down, it’s Shapr3D, and several of them downloaded the app to try. One friend tried it out, did the tutorials, liked it, and saw the $300 price tag…she’s now moved on to finding an alternative.
@Istvan, this is what you guys don’t see. I know you’re watching these posts and threads. Keep the full version, and a limited free version…but there needs to be something in between that’s affordable for makers and hobbyists. Hobbyists and makers generally don’t need support, and are more willing to go up on forums and find answers for themselves. BTW, I do appreciate the recent change to 3 simultaneous devices…that allows me to run it on my iPad Mini to show people that I have a full-blown CAD workstation in my purse.
With the app, my compromise in the past has been a “token” solution, which might be $9.99 a month, and the user can buy “tokens” that can be used to download high-quality OBJ or STL files. Maybe $25 gets you 20 download tokens, kind of like what happens on the stock photo sites. I would personally would pay $1.99 per export. You’ve still got the recurring payment, it’s more affordable, and for people who want the higher quality file, they can pay extra. Or maybe a mechanism within the app where you can take the file from the cloud and process it, then send a link. Just brainstorming. We really have the same goals here…we want everyone else to know how amazing this app is!
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I might also add that xTool has a mechanism to reward creators for making tutorials…if you upload tutorials, you get points. And with points, you can buy things. Maybe something like this that would allow motivated users to “work off” part of the price of the subscription?
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The price is unlikely to come down as the software is made more and more capable. Those of you concerned about it should realize that once you sign up for a subscription, you are grandfathered in at that price. If the price goes up while you’re subscribed, you don’t pay more. The longer you wait to start, the more it will cost you.
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How much is it a month now?
The features that make it “more and more capable” aren’t relevant to most hobbyists. In my opinion, this is a conscious choice by the company.
If you don’t want to read my long babble down below…here’s a summary.
* CAD apps haven't meaningfully changed since the 1970s.
* They are built around the idea that a designer is going to sketch and ideate on paper with a pencil and a sketch/notebook and open the app up when they are ready to get serious and 'transfer' those ideas to manufacturing ready designs.
* Shapr3d was a paradigm shift. You could literally brainstorm in 3D. It worked the way most other creative 3D tools worked. Super intuitive. A game changer.
* Shapr3d has regressed to mean. Adopting outdated CAD UX patterns and features. And moving away from Tablet/Stylus forward patters to more traditional keyboard/mouse/desktop. Because that's all companies know.
* Brainstorming in Shapr3d used to be so enjoyable. And now it's a tedious task. Forcing me to think hard instead of free flowing whcih is so important in the exploration process. Because at every interaction they want to force me into these old outdated 2D interpretation of 3D workflows. I can get that anywhere. And I probably will....soon.
As a paying hobbyist and early adopter. I honestly can’t express my frustration enough with the direction the application has taken in the last few years.
It’s workflow reflected the way that creatives in other industries work and think TODAY. Collect research and ideas. F’ck around in your design tool for a few hours with hundreds of quick iterations. Test them. Then iterate again. Landing at your finalized polished product.
It went from allowing me to quickly brainstorm in 3D and then once landing on a concept i like…getting it into 2d and polished 3d to get it ready for manufacture/printing (I am a hobbyist in that CAD is not my primary tool, but I’m in a adjacent creative field and make $$$ with Shapr3d). The intuitiveness and intimacy that the iPad app offered made it game changing.
I thought for sure that it was going to be the next Figma. The Figma of the parasolid world. Making CAD/3d design accessible to everyone. Easy and intuitive. While also being Enterprise ready.
Now. Regression to mean. Brainstorm somewhere else and when you’re ready to turn your pencil notebook drawings into solids…open up Shapr3d. It’s quickly becoming just a prettier CAD app. Filled with stagnant industry standard CAD features and designs first conjured up in the 1970s. Outdated UX patterns that are far more Desktop and Mouse friendly…at the expense of the Pencil/Stylus. Capitulating to the never ending stream of requests of features pulled out of one AutoDesk app (the company that’s literally prevented the CAD world from moving past the 70s) or another. With very little innovation and/or change.
I get it. That’s where the money is. You don’t get into large manufacturers by telling them that they’d have to retrain all their engineers. Or they can’t have this feature or that. Or that theyd have to change this part of their workflow/process because you “found a better way”.
No company can survive supporting only Hobbyists. Many of the Hobbyists complain about the minimal fee as it stands now. Shapr3D must evolve to where the money thrives, which is commercial and corporate resources. The Shapr3D UI is still a game changer, and while many of us early adapters struggle with the changes, I get it. I’ve run a $1B P&L. Despite my personal desires, I had to chase the money.
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Shapr3D is excellent software, and I would love to see a hobbyist tier similar to what Fusion 360 currently offers. My primary usecase is making STL designs for 3D printing 5-10 times per year. IMO, Autodesk does a great job balancing Fusion’s “free” tier vs. their paid subscription, i.e., providing all basic functionality but limiting it to 10 models and paywalling more advanced features like CAM, FEA, etc., behind plugins or paywalls. That’s perfect for the hobbyist, even if I must go through the hassle of renewing Fusion’s “free” license yearly.
Shapr3D offers things Fusion 360 doesn’t, including ease of use and the ability to run on iPads, and that’s worth a lot. However, it’s difficult to justify the current Shapr3D subscription cost when I only use CAD less than once per month. Also, I prefer something other than subscriptions to begin with.
If structured similarly to how Fusion does it (10 models, etc.), then I would definitely subscribe to Shapr3D for $5/month or $49/year. I’d consider it for $10/month or $100/year. Above that price point, I’ll regretfully stay with Fusion and live with its limitations and complexities. 
Shapr3D is already well-regarded on the hobbyist maker scene, but introducing a hobbyist tier would instantly give Shapr3D much extra credibility and publicity. It would probably result in a lot of additional subscriptions.
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Just throwing my 2 cents in. Also a hobbyist and never used a proper 3d modeling software before. Definitely willing to pay $120/year for STL output only license, but can’t justify $300/year. Your software looks awesome. Good luck and if a hobbyist license becomes an option, I’ll be back. For now, I have to stick to Fusion 360.
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Wow! I had no idea there was so much support and constructive feedback in support of a hobbyist / non-commercial license type. I too would be very much in favor of a non-commercial / scaled-down version of Shapr3d, if for no other reason than the iPad / Apple Pencil support. You can take away all the visualization components, increase the project count, and add high-res export, to make it more geared to folks like us who LOVE the tool but can’t justify the $300/yr. It sounds like we all WANT to spend money and Support the Product, just looking for an alternative option that makes sense for us 3D Printing people!
I’m sure their concern is that there will be “some” that will downgrade to a lower-cost option, but my guess is that there would be a greater offset with an overall increase in the “paid” user base, which would result in a longer-term revenue.
Glad I’m not alone! Hopefully, they will see the value we all see!
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Pricing is pretty reasonable to me. You can use Fusion 360, Solid works, but I am not sure the work with iPad and mac and windows interchangeably. You can try Freecad, Tindercad and there are others.
Uh… your going to sit there and mention autodesk… and completely disregard… play dumb… and act like they don’t give the vast majority of the functionality of that software (that a average hobbyist would use anyways… ) for 100% free.
So in comparison… no Shapr3d is long from the best.
Its intuitive. it has a neat work flow. sure. but it is not a indefinite yearly charge of $350 better than Fusion 360 for exactly $0 every year for the past 7 years ive been using it.
I dont know why anyone even uses freecad or skecthup. Fusion is powerful as heck and wants nothing for its use (by a hobbyist).
Now… if your use case is commercial based… then your business better have the viability to support the cost of the tools. I have a particular tool that was $4000. a plumbing tool. I have over that figure in refrigeration tools. i have 6k in welders. But you know what none of these tools do? They don’t put their hand out every year for more money. They are mine. forever. software companies have got greedy. Charge me for the software. Charge me fore feature sets… demand $1200 for it. But don’t offer me something for a high price that ill never have any hope of owning. That is a hard pill to swallow as a business owner… but as a hobbyist that is completely insane.
There is avenues to use Solidworks for $100 a year. SOLIDWORKS. But the hobbyist is out of line hoping for a similar price point from shapr? Oh please… They even very much would likely see an increase revenue due to a increase in users!
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Time-based tokens penalize newbies. They need longer to do what an experienced user can manage.
I see this is a very old thread but just wanted to throw in my thoughts as someone who’s hitting this “rare use and expensive to use” thing. Would it be crazy to have a per-export cost? I’ll have a little something I want to design and try to print but paying $40 for that and then being pressed to make as many projects as possible in the time feels pretty meh. Instead, if the same lack of features and 2 project limit was in place but I can get a high quality STL output for $5 I would happily pay that when the occasional project comes around. Anyone who uses it in a large capacity is gonna need more than 2 projects so it should prevent anyone from shorting shapr3d by just paying per export
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I would also like to share my situation and experiences. First off, I’ve been using this software for a while on my iPad and it is truly amazing. I am still impressed with its performance on my 2018 iPad Pro. I love the instant gratification of pulling idea from your head and making an accurate 3D rendition in Shapr3D. Then you can export that STL and print it on your 3D printer. As a hobbyist, this workflow is so awesome.
That being said, my journey into this hobby (CAD and 3D Printing) has been long and slow. I have paid for two years of Shapr3D Pro subscriptions, and I have decided to not pay for a third this year. As a parent and a full-time employee, finding time for this hobby is tough to come by. Currently, I have about 40 halfed-baked projects (btw I can no longer access these because I don’t have a Pro subscription) that are pretty much just brackets, small bins, or items I have modified from thingiverse. I probably only have 20-30 hours using the app which makes the price per-hour outrageous in my opinion. I don’t regret paying the $490.43 for two years of Pro, but I couldn’t do it for a third year despite loving this app so much.
It is not my place to suggest a price for hobbyist version, but I would love to see it happen one day. For me, the Basic version works great until I want to Export my STL. The low-res STL just doesn’t cut it. I would be happy to pay for that function alone. I could get around not having Shapr3D Sync and just Import/Export the two projects I am actively working on. From a hobbyist perspective, we like lifetime licenses because of our lack of time. No pressure of a ticking clock. For example, I have ditched Adobe Suite for Affinity Photo, Affinity Designer (Vector), and DaVinci Resolve 18 (Video) which are all one-time licenses. I would love to have a Basic “Plus” version with a similar pricing model.
Anyways, thanks for hearing me out. It goes without saying that if I could just dedicate more time to this hobby, I would have no problem paying $299 annually for Pro. The UI and tutorials are first-in-class. Keep up the great work!
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I love Shapr, especially the iPad app. Just wish there would be a smaller tier…like 10 projects $12 per month or so.
I’m currently working on growing my YouTube channel where I post tutorials for CAD, laser cutting(dxf files) and 3D printing(stl files) and was super excited when i discovered shapr3D.
Overhead videos of when i design on my iPad became increasingly popular. Got lots of DM’s asking which software i use.
It’s just a shame. Would love to use and recommend it but it’s just not affordable for casual user. Most people will use Fusion as you can export stl AND dxf on the free plan. Shapr3D doesn’t offer DXF on free plan.
I don’t mind paying for my subscriptions but prefer to have a software which offers a free plan, so I can recommend it to whoever asks.
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Every piece of software I use that has a forum seems to have a Forum-Thread-That-Will-Not-Die and this seems to be Shapr’s.
So much has been said, I’m going try to answer the questions as it was asked: As a hobbyist how do you manage due to no hobbyist plan/price?
My wife actually came up with the answer when I was gnashing my teeth over the price point: “It’s cheaper than therapy.”
After spending nearly a week legitimately trying to learn how to make FreeCAD work for me, I gave up. My frustration with it was more the source of her comment than it was the price. This is part of a hobby I want to be both challenging and fun. I will NOT criticize the people behind FreeCAD because they’re nearly all volunteers who give freely of their time, but at the rate I was going, fun was a long, long way away. Before my wife made the wisecrack about therapy, I was starting to to understand what Shapr’s charging for.
I’m fortunate that I’m in a situation where I can rationalize the price. I understand it’s not going to the case for everyone. In an effort to contribute something, I’ll throw this idea into the mix:
- The first-year price is what it is. I’m not competent to make suggestions there.
- Yearly renewals cover continued support and upgrades.
- Don’t renew? The software continues to work, but in (I dunno) “zombie mode”. Sync across devices ceases (I’m guessing). Any cloud stuff that costs Shapr to maintain is turned off. But you can keep using the software as it was the day your license ran out.
- Something new comes along in a newer version you have to have? Reactivate your license.
This is where a fork could happen between professional and hobby user pricing IF there’s a way to keep everyone from just renewing as a hobbyist. I have no idea how THAT would work, if it even can. But it’s not something I saw suggested in this never-say-die thread.
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I have given feedback for a few years on this topic. I have just turned yet another friend onto Shapr3D who turned around and said “I’m retired, this is great software but I can’t justify Shapr3D’s $300 annual subscription price.” I told her that she could “try it” with the free version, and that she could save the file, I could open it on my Pro version and export so we can print it so she can see that it’s accurate. It won’t let me do that. She’s visiting and I thought that was a way to show her that this was just something she can’t live without.
She’s also got a very strong background in 3D printing, so she is the IDEAL user who would also evangelize the program.
There needs to be another option…there has to be a middle ground, and I think there is an untapped group of users who are simply priced out of using this amazing program. I have also suggested the possibility of tokens for export like some of the photo sites (“pay $25 for 15 export tokens”) for those who only occasionally export for print. I think the pain threshold for a hobbyist is maybe $10 a month, and that could be justified or offset with Shapr3D adding “export tokens.”
Also, a frequent response to this is that the user can “save money if they pay for the subscription annually.” This is NOT an option for that price-sensitive user who can’t justify or afford a $30 monthly subscription. To charge that price-sensitive user an extra $120 a year because they can’t afford/justify to pay $300 a year all-at-once seems misguided.
I asked my friend after working with Shapr3D what her pain threshold is for a program like this is…she suggested $12 a month, with $99 a year. She is a hobbyist who might design 3-4 times a month, would do multiple high-quality test prints for each project (so 3-5 prints would not be enough).
I do find it frustrating that Shapr3D seems to dismiss user input on this. As a CAD trainer, myself and other users have legitimate, relevant input on this, and our goal is to bring others into the Shapr3D world because we believe in it. WE ARE YOUR FREE MARKETING, and EVERY other person I introduce to the program has 1) never heard of it, and 2) gives the exact same input on pricing, and 3) won’t sign up for the subscription because it’s too expensive. I keep trying, but I have not been able to convince even ONE person to subscribe. I wish Shapr3D would really take our input to heart.
Here’s another thought…let those of us who are evangelizing your product have discount or affiliate codes to help introduce others to the program and let them get a real-world test drive that lasts more than a trial period. 6 months or 1 year discount codes would help us get the program in the hands of others who will absolutely become paying customers who can’t live without it.
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Somebody – whether it’s Shapr or someone else – is leaving huge buckets of money on the table not figuring out how to serve the growing hobbyist/maker community. It’s a failure of imagination, but it’s not the customers. Somebody’s going to do it and everyone else is going to wonder where their users went.
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First of all, Shapr3D is a startup company. Funded by their subscribers and investors. Diluting the subscription cost would be damaging to their financial backbone and growth needed to hire more staff.
Secondly, I find it difficult to believe the monthly or annual fee is really that difficult to allocate funds for. It’s less than eating at a fast food place once a week.
If you really feel Shapr3D is good, then help support them to grow. Maybe when they become a large company, only then might they be able to offer something for the intermittent hobbyist.
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