Honestly, I can't see how Corel (and KKR) is going to attract any new customers with this kind of pricing in relation to poor application maintenance. And that's assuming CorelDRAW will still be around by then. I'd rather camp out a few versions with what I have and then blow $500 for a new version a few years from now when the yearly upgrades finally add up to something worthwhile. For me that's not worth $249 per year to stay current.

Certain bugs related to type have gone un-fixed across multiple version cycles. The annual upgrades of CorelDRAW have had very little in the way in improvements. That's despite the flaws in the application. I'm personally planning on turning off the auto-renewal for my own CorelDRAW license and staying put with CDR 2022 for a few years to come. The whole idea is to force users into the $249 per year subscription. Now the one time purchase version is not upgradeable at all. That option was quietly removed from the one time purchase version. People who wanted to buy a $499 one time purchase were able to add a $149 per year upgrade protection plan. When upgrade protection was first offered it was $99 per year, in addition to initially buying a $199 upgrade to get on board with the program. Traditional perpetual license customers that have been on the lower priced 'upgrade protection' plans are now within the final year of those plans. In the US it's either a $249 per year subscription or a $549 one time purchase that cannot be upgraded. CorelDRAW has no more upgrades in the traditional sense.

Coreldraw graphics suite 2021