I was in Perth on Tuesday night, showing RAD Studio XE6 to a bunch of developers. Afterwards, one of them came up to me and said (edited for profanity):

“I’m on XE5 and I don’t think it’s fair that I pay the same to upgrade to XE6 as someone on XE4 or XE3. I’ve given you money more recently than they have, so I should pay less!”

This struck home for me, not just because I agreed with him but because it told me we need to do a better job of explaining what we already have.

See, we already have exactly what he’s asking for: The Recharge upgrade. If you’re on the latest version, you can upgrade to the new version for less than half the price of someone on a prior version. Given the new version today is XE6, anyone on XE5 can recharge for a lot less than someone on XE4 would pay to upgrade.

Interestingly, I asked him if he’d heard of Recharge. He had, but thought it was a contractual commitment like Software Assurance, and he didn’t want to commit to upgrade until he’d played with the Trial Version. So that’s our fault for not explaining it properly.

So just to be clear, Recharge and Upgrades are largely the same. The differences are in the versions that qualify and the price you pay. For XE6, XE5 qualifies for a Recharge, while for an Upgrade it’s XE to XE4 (after June 30, it’ll be XE2 to XE4).

For pricing, contact your local Embarcadero office or Partner, or look on the online shop.