So like many people, I use WinRAR for all my compression needs, and I've used it for a veeeeery long time, I don't even know how old the version on my computer is but I'll bet it's years out of date. So I thought I would actually show some respect to the creators of this great program and buy an official license.

BUT IT COSTS 44 DOLLARS! PLUS ANOTHER 6 FOR 'MAINTENANCE'!

Why is this so? How can they in good conscience charge so much for such a simple program?

It's so expensive to give you an incentive to use 7zip instead!

I guess because almost no one ever pays for it... So the few people who do have to count.

I use 7zip for everything btw. Also handles *.rar files.

Does the full version have advantages over unlimited trial one though? Aside from *to support the developer*?

7z sucks, they haven't even implemented CTRL-W yet.
Whooo WinRAR!

I use 7-Zip, which is free. it allows to open simple rar archives as well.

And more elaborated "rar" archives aren't much in use, simply because WinRAR isn't popular program nowadays (price being one of the reasons, large modern data storages - another, free zip format - third reason).

That's exactly what I was going to say... got to charge the people who are willing to pay more, to make up for those who aren't..

Must check out 7zip then, the pop up saying I should pay for winrar is mildy annoying (and makes me a tiny bit guilty, but enough to actually pay for it, particularly if that's the price)

I tried recently to add a file into an old rar archive and WinRAR said it can't do it, so I did it wit 7-Zip instead. Btw what Ctrl+W does in WinRAR?

Perhaps someone will buy it by mistake if they offer it through Steam on the next sale. :P

If that's so, then it's a bad business strategy, punishing honest customers who want to support the developers because everybody else is happy with the free version. I bet selling the full version for peanuts would bring in the same, if not greater revenue. As it is, why pay for something when the free version does the job well. The only benefit I can think of for purchasing WinRAR is that I could get rid of the annoying purchase prompt every time I start WinRAR.

Because selling software is tough. Especially when there are relatively good free alternatives out there. So the few sales you make better count for something, else you're better off just giving things away.

Which is why WinRAR is still sort of shareware. They hope that while you can use it forever without issues, you'd be kind enough to buy it and support them.

Especially then they should give more people an incentive to buy by making it more reasonably priced. They might have to experiment with different pricing models, to find the sweet spot between number of purchases and money earned, but I doubt very much that 50$ for something as seemingly simple as an archiving tool will prove to be the right price point...

Also, creating a feature reduced Average-Joe-version for 5-10$ and reserving the full feature 50$-version for power users might be an idea. Most people don't do much more with archiving tools than opening and occasionally creating simple archives. Making them buy a full version for an onslaught of features they don't need is not likely to work, 5-10$ for removing the nag screen and adding a few useful every-day features just might...

Which could be better done by a 'pay what you want' full version. I think they would get much more money in total than by selling to a few people for a too high price. But probably their revenue comes mostly from companies, who use rar a lot for some reason and who need the support.

7-zip here

They could insert Steam cards in it and then a ton of users will honestly want to buy it :p