Affinity reborn free

The British boss of Affinity explains why the software has gone free

- Ash Hewson, Affinity CEO

Serif's Affinity suite was already well loved in creative circles, not just because it was great software, but because of its modest one-off cost. When Serif was bought by Canva in 2024, many feared it would end in another subscription model. Instead, the company has taken the opposite approach and made the new all-in-one Affinity app free.

Does free really mean free? And why did the company take three distinct apps and merge them into one? We put these questions and more to Affinity's British CEO, Ash Hewson.

PC Pro: The Affinity apps earned a lot of goodwill from the creative industry when you adopted the one-off payment model. What made you decide to abandon that and offer the new Affinity for free?

Ash Hewson: Canva has always had this philosophy, which is a genuine one – and I heard there's been some scepticism in some of the feedback from the community – but it's a genuine one about empowering the world to design. And, of course, Canva has always had this model where they've made really good design tools available for free. And that's been incredibly successful for them.

When we were thinking about how we're going to come together with Canva, we took the view: why shouldn't that apply to pro-end tools as well?

One of the shocks of this is because everyone's institutionalised in this model that's existed for so long. Even going back to pre-subscription times, you used to have to pay five or six hundred bucks for licences of those that should not be named. Or even things like Quark or CorelDRAW.

Obviously subscription changed that, but even then it was just astronomically expensive. So, we genuinely want to do something that would change that status quo.

PC Pro: You mentioned there was some cynicism about your motivations for going free. What can you say to reassure customers that this isn't the first step towards an eventual subscription product?