Maxon Reviews 23

This program (Autograph) is total trash, and you must install other programs just to log in. How stupid is that. The Maxon app won't start, so it's impossible to start Autograph.
If the amateurs at Maxon had made it possible to log in directly in Autograph instead, there probably wouldn’t have been a problem. But no, let’s make things cumbersome and force people to install more useless garbage on their computer.
At least the program was free, but also a total waste of time.
No wonder Europe is behind tech companies from the US, if this is what they have to offer.

Purchased a 1 month subscription for C4D + Redshift, a few days later they reveal a black friday campaign. I contact sales to hear about the possibility to upgrade my one month to a full year at the campaign price. This was december 1st. I contact sales again december 15th after not hearing back. Still haven't heard from them after 3 months...
Do they even want customers? The promo only lasted for 24 hours, so it's long gone. Guess I'm switching to Blender.

MAXON renewed my Subscription 15 prior to my renewal date because I had auto renewal turned on in my settings. When I ask for a refund (keep in mind my ACTUAL RENEWAL DATE has NOT YET ARRIVED) UPDATE: I emailed Maxon Customer service after initially being denied a REFUND. They promptly responded and was able to REFUND my money. I still think its a bit sneaky to process a subscription 15 days from expiration but I am happy to receive a refund.

When it goes wrong, they don't care.
I paid for teacher subscription and formatted my machine last month. I opened a ticket, since you cannot call them anymore, and today, they message to say they're closing the ticket. Not one reply after first raising this ticket has any acknowledgement of what it was I asked them to fix. They just asked for system spec, licence file, screenshots etc. So I did most of the work for them. It is now almost 2 weeks and there is still no sign of them actually supporting me retrieving my subscription.
Just another team hiding behind emails and tickets. Use another application with better support.

Very expensive, and you can't activate it on two machines at the same time :/

Very disappointed.

Maxon has never been great at tech support or customer support. Their prices continue to rise, while their products lag and the technical issues abound.
At the moment, I am experiencing yet another licensing issue. I can't use any of the products because they updated their Maxon licensing app and it has a huge bug that won't install on certain system configurations like my Apple MBP with an M4 processor. They forced an update, so you can't use the previous version from last month.
I have done everything they suggested over and over again, including reinstalling my Mac OS. Nothing has worked in OVER a week. I am stranded without use of their software, but their support team has stopped responding.
There is not a way to bypass their licensing app and put my license info directly into the applications I am using like I used to do. And that one thing is keeping me locked out of all Maxon products. Thousands of $dollars a year and I am currently locked out. Waste. I am locking to switch to new 3D and FX software now.

Their vfx and transitions are really good...if they work. I got them for my company and couldn't get them to work. I worked with their tech support to troubleshoot. But they were very unresponsive and had me do things that required me to go into the OS base code, which is really dangerous. I tried it. Didn't work. I asked for refunds many times and was ignored. We ended up having to dispute the charge and cancelling the sub payments. STAY AWAY.

really poor integration and licensing issues constantly with premiere...

My email -
Ross Silcocks - Apr 27, 2025, 3:41 PM UTC
I am Ross. filmmaker for 15 years. premiere user for 10 years. your app has caused me such huge issues. i started to use it to give life to my titles, i really like what i've done with universe. however the app continuously dis-engages my activation code. the maxon app loves to tell me that i need to 'repair' or download the latest. which i've done so may times. i've done updates, restarts, reinstallations. I think i get it fixed then finally I come to show my film at a 100 person premiere and your unlicensed reports suddenly show up in the exports. Frantically i had to re-save my projects. with no titles. Post premiere i activate my license again... Then yesterday i opened my project to find all is unactivated. AGAIN. same loop - so now i'm sick of it, i'm really disappointed and would even go as far as asking for my money back at this point. well actually that is exactly what i'm asking for to be exchanged back - due to these disappointing working conditions i'm left frustrated.

Reply -
Hi Ross, Understandable. Once again, I apologize for not being able to do more for you. Please let us know if you are in need of any further assistance.
Regards.

Lawrence helped me with all changes over to Maxon power.

I recently started a project that required a couple of effects from the RG Universe package, so I paid for a months subscription at £32. A couple of days later, I realised that I also needed one additional effect that's not included in Universe, so I looked to try and upgrade my licence to RG Complete, but there was no longer an available option to do that. So I was forced to pay an additional £86 for a fresh RG Complete license.
I contacted Maxon to ask for a refund for the RG Universe license, because RG Universe is included within RG Complete, and there's no reason why I would be paying for that twice. And they flat out refused. They had an almost gleeful attitude at having caught me out, and being able to charge me twice for the same thing, and me not having any power to do anything about it. I've essentially paid £115 to use three effects.
This is just the latest on a long line of issues with Red Giant ever since they've been taken over by Maxon. Constant crashes. Licenses randomly disconnecting themselves in the middle of rendering. Installers not working. Purchases not showing up in the Maxon App.
At one point I inherited an After Effects project with dozens of instances of Particular. The version of Particular I had installed was .001 version out from the version used to originally create the effects. And it completely removed all of the settings from every instance of the effect. Meaning I had to manually rebuild every single instance in the new version, because the previous version had been removed from their available downloads.
I've been an Editor for 15 years. I used to love using these plugins, but now I dread it, every single time. Every single other post production professional I know feels the same. Just an absolutely awful company comprised of scammy little shysters. I'm at a point now where I'd rather turn away work that requires using these plugins than ever have to deal with them again.

Last year C4D became so unstable and got crushed so often. and support can't really answer my questions, told me that problems with another software that worked without issues all previous time, and it's a problem on Maxon's side obviously. Seems like they didn't want to do their work properly, or weren't proficient enough. However, customer experience is so poor, especially for $1k annually.

They keep coming up with very vague and useless solutions

extremly bad , never met such case.
5 Days till now waiting them to answer, nothing i get
them apps are locked caused by them updates and they simply ignore messages

I was a Red Giant very happy customer, they were bought by Maxon and everything went down the toilet, terrible user experience, forced to buy the entire suite of apps when I only needed a few, and lastly, continuing to charge for Universe even after the account was closed. STAY AWAY from them!!!

As they have moved from proper licences to renting out their software I will no longer be using Maxon's products.

I was a fan of Red Giant for many years and I still think their plugins are amazing - unfortunately, they were bought out by Maxon, a company whose main goal seems to be making their products as inaccessible and buggy as possible while constantly jacking up prices. I was in contact with Maxon and their auto-reply bots for weeks trying to figure out why my student discount code wouldn't work. It took so long that my discount code expired and I had to get a new one through Kivuto just so that I could continue talking to Maxon about the issue. I followed all of their activation directions multiple times, even sending screen shots and screen recordings when prompted. In the end it was a massive waste of time and they told me I couldn't use a student discount code because I had bought one of their products in the past. I cannot for the life of me understand why a previous purchase-made before I even started college-disqualifies me as a student now. I am literally writing this review from my college campus. Regardless, their excuse makes no sense because I have successfully redeemed student discount codes with Maxon several times over the last 2 years, all of which were redeemed without issue, AFTER the "disqualifying purchase" they were referencing.
TL;DR Maxon is pure evil. RIP Red Giant.

like many, I am also in the camp of red giant plugins being unusable: on perpetual license, still the software shows as unlicensed/with watermark.

the new maxon app is barely functional and does not offer any option other to funnel you towards upgrading.

I also have a cinema4d 21 and zbrush 22 perpetual licenses and as far as I am concerned, these are the last versions. will not give this scum company a single cent. rather go back to autodesk, which is saying something.

mcgavran ruined the company, I am pretty sure.
go with blender, davinci and other alternatives. this company is garbage and not to be trusted.

just check out reddit for the redshift and redgiant issues. nothing like being on a deadline with sudden licensing issues and slow support.

They stole my money by Student License deception. A month ago I got a reply that says "we reactivating your license" after providing documents and after that nothing at all. No license, no reply. Maxon is just a scam.

Bad work practices. They randomly cancelled all active student licenses after people paid to activate them (payment which other software companies don't even require for the same kind of services), without giving any reasoning or warning. I can't imagine what would've happened if I had tight school deadlines for assignments during that period. Scam software company that buys software and makes it worse.

My experience with Maxon has been disappointing. After facing financial constraints, requesting a re-issuance of my student license became a tedious process. Despite explaining my situation and offering my official ID for verification, the response seemed unyielding. Losing funds and access to the course has left me frustrated. Hoping for a more empathetic approach from Maxon