Getting a Good Deal

Have you been eyeing some audio software but it’s waaaay too expensive? Where can you get a good deal? How can you know when it goes in sale? What if it never goes on sale!?

You probably don’t need it

When you see something you want, remember that GAS (gear acquisition syndrome) is a real thing! Stop and ask yourself if you really need it.

Your plugin host or DAW might already come with something similar that will get the job done just as well. Or you might already have something just like it. Or maybe you’re getting excited about something that you won’t actually like.

There’s a lot of cool stuff out there, but make sure you’re sure before you start spending money.

Ask yourself why you want it, and if it will really do what you want. Most of the time, you can try a demo or trial of the thing before you buy it, and answer a lot of questions.

Plugin Boutique

Plugin Boutique (PIB) is my go-to source for most audio software. They carry nearly everything I want (and then some), so it’s a nice one-stop shop. Also, their rewards program is actually pretty solid. Basically, you get a small percentage of every purchase back as “virtual cash” toward future purchases. They also give you “tokens” which can be redeemed for coupons or more virtual cash. They generally do the same sales as everyone else, at the same time, so that rewards program tends to push them a little ahead of everyone else in deals. It’s also kind of handy, since it keeps all of your license keys in one place.

One caveat, though: when you buy things through a reseller like PIB, they take a small cut of the sale. If you buy directly from the maker, they’ll generally get pretty much the full amount (minus fees and taxes), and you’ll pay the exact same price. For smaller plugin developers, that extra little bit can help out a lot (especially with really big sales, where the PIB rewards are minuscule anyway).

Reddit!

I talk a lot about keeping things affordable. r/AudioProductionDeals is the best place I’ve ever found for tracking sales. u/Batwaffel (the subreddit’s head moderator) does an amazing job keeping the community informed about the latest deals from basically every reputable developer.

It’s also a somewhat curated experience, since Batwaffel only allows posts from verified sources. You’ll never see scams or anything there because every single seller has been vetted (and they’re pretty strict about it). And when a plugin goes on sale across multiple sellers, Bat is great at providing links to all of them.

(In that case: stick with PIB for the rewards program. Batwaffel will also get a commission through the affiliate link — he’s earned it, trust me. I’m all for you using my own affiliate links, but Bat probably deserves it more.)

You can search the subreddit to find patterns in sales and track previous sale prices, which is really helpful, too. Sometimes that plugin you want is very likely to be 80% off in a week. Around November and December, there are also posts tracking the flood of freebies and insane deals.

One somewhat underappreciated aspect of that subreddit is the community. While it’s not particularly close-knit, it is a pretty diverse set of people from all kinds of backgrounds, who are usually pretty willing to offer opinions in the comments of just about anything (in fact, people asking me about my WFH setup a few times there is what eventually pushed me to create this website). Sometimes, you’ll spot a deal and someone in the comments will post an even better one. Or maybe there are some gotchas or caveats that people have found. Or maybe a seemingly awesome deal is actually kind of mediocre because the product is frequently in a bundle that goes on sale often (e.g., a single IK Multimedia product being discounted from $100 to $10 sounds great until you realize that you can get their entire catalog for $99 every few months and get thousands of dollars worth of stuff).

Sometimes the plugin developers themselves will also join the conversation to answer questions, provide support, and sometimes even fix bugs.

I check that subreddit almost every day, and have gotten some pretty killer deals (seriously — I’ve even seen 99% off deals).

Useful tips

Check multiple sellers

All of the plugin sellers generally do the same sales, which is why I like Plugin Boutique (like I said, the reward program is great). Best Service tends to be the exception, as they’ll usually do the same sales while also letting you stack an extra coupon code on top of the sale price; you can usually use GROUP or FORUM to knock off another 5% or so, making it the cheapest option in a lot of cases.

Some devs never or rarely do sales

If you can’t find any sales from a developer you are interested in, there’s a solid chance they simply never do sales. Valhalla DSP is the most popular developer I can think of like this. Xfer Records is similar, in that they only really do intro price sales, so they are extremely rare; if you see a sale from a company like this, but it’s not great, consider that it might be the best sale price you’re ever going to see.

Other developers only do sales once or twice a year (FabFilter is the classic example of this), so pay attention! Other developers do similar sales every year (e.g., I believe Native Instruments does single instrument sales in the summer and bundles in the fall, but I could have that backwards).

Sometimes, deals can stack

Like the Best Service coupon codes, sometimes you can get better deals by stacking discounts. A common example is FabFilter: they only do a couple of sales per year (usually for 25% or so off). They also offer bundles all the time, which provide discounts. If you wait until the yearly sale and buy a bundle, you get an even bigger discount.

Loyalty discounts

A lot of developers provide discounts based on what you already have from them, as either a blanket discount across all products, or to complete bundles. Off the top of my head, Soundtoys, Arturia, Klevgrand, FabFilter and sometimes Plugin Alliance all do this, and that is far from an exhaustive list. That discount will often stack with sales prices.

Look for upgrade and crossgrade pricing

An upgrade price is exactly what it sounds like: You have version x and you can upgrade to x+1 for a discount. Sometimes it’s a great deal, and sometimes it’s not. Often, upgrading from x to x+1 costs the same as upgrading from x to x+3, so if the immediate upgrade isn’t worth it to you, a later upgrade might be, so you might as well wait. In most cases, you lose your license for x and it is replaced with a new one for the newer version. Sometimes, though, you keep your old license and can sell it.

Crossgrading is when a special sale on something is offered for owners of a different product (often even from another company!).

Upgrades/crossgrades can also be from one edition of something to another (e.g., going from NI Komplete Select to NI Komplete). Sometimes, you can build a long-term upgrade strategy to get the best deal for something by being patient and paying attention. For example, you can frequently get the Elements editions of various iZotope products for free. You can then upgrade from a single Elements edition to the Elements suite in a different sale later on. From there, in another sale, you might be able to turn either a single Elements product or the suite into a full version or a nice bundle. From there, in yet another sale, you might be able to upgrade again to the Advanced versions. It takes time, but you can end up with a $2000 bundle for $100 over the course of a year — and you get to decide if it’s worthwhile at each step along the way instead of having to go all-in.

Developers will work with you sometimes

Sometimes, a developer will put a bundle on sale, but you already have part of the bundle. Or maybe you just want something a little different than what they are offering. In some cases, you can contact the developer and they will help you by building a custom deal just for you. I know FabFilter keeps coming up, but they are just such a good example of all of these, but they are well-known to gladly build custom bundles for anyone who asks.

Look for “used” licenses

A lot of the time, if you want or need something and can’t find a good deal, you can find it on a plugin marketplace like Knob Cloud and buy a license directly from an individual. It’s not unusual to find prices lower than anything you’d see in any sale.

It’s like eBay, though, so buyer beware! Make sure you read seller reviews. Also, make sure you pay attention to the details (how to send money, how license transfers work, etc.). In some cases, the transfer works by transferring an entire account on the developer’s website, which could cause some difficulties if you already use other plugins from that developer.

Rent-to-own (RTO)

Sometimes, especially with expensive things that never go on sale, there is a rent-to-own option through PIB or Splice. Generally, you won’t get any sale price for that, but you can avoid dropping a massive pile of cash on something, too. This can make some of the more expensive stuff feel a lot less scary and provide a way to bail if you realize you don’t really want it.

In rare cases, you can actually take advantage of rent-to-own to build your own deal by locking in a price before it increases! For example, when Xfer Records Serum 2 was released, owners of Serum 1 got the upgrade for free, including those who were getting it via rent-to-own on Splice. When they announced Serum 2, they increased the price from $189 to $250, and did an intro sale for $189 (I’m a little fuzzy on the details, so these prices might be a little off, but they’re close enough).

Splice doesn’t let you do RTO with sale prices, but there was a short window where Splice was still only doing Serum 1 and was basing the rental price on the older price (which happened to match the new sale price). Users who started a new RTO plan during that window were able to effectively get the sale price with a low monthly payment.

As an added bonus, if you started a plan and then paused it, you could resume it later on at the price you started at. That let users use the RTO plan as a cheap, paid trial before deciding if they wanted it or not, without needing to miss the only sale that will ever happen on that product.

Another common RTO trick I’ve heard is with Bitwig Studio. Normally, you buy a relatively expensive license for the DAW, which gets you the DAW and 1 year of updates. After that year, if you want updates, you’ll need to buy an update plan, which gets you another year of updates.

The trick here is that if you do RTO to buy Bitwig, you get updates for the full term of the RTO plan (which is 25 months on Splice!). That means that while you might miss out on a sale for the DAW itself, you’re basically getting an extra year of updates, which is often a better deal overall than you’ll get in a sale. I’m not sure, but you might even get another free year when you complete the RTO plan — I could be wrong on that.

As an added bonus, Bitwig tends to give away lots of freebies to owners with active upgrade plans (which I believe RTO users are eligible for), so you can get a lot of extra value without needing to actually buy the plan. They do some really good freebies, too (e.g., they usually give out one u-he plugin most years, which generally retails for over $100 and rarely goes on sale).