@RobertBorchert I was not writing to you specifically, sorry if you thought that.
To the many other people reading this public forum, if you are on the fence about whether to get a personal license, it's probably worth the $100/year if you are using GIS on the desktop in your day job, even if you exclusively use QGIS in your day job. With the personal license, you get access to try out and learn about a phenomenal range of tools. But you can't use them for hire or consulting work, it's for learning only.
I have access to Pro in my day job, but hardly touch it anymore because I am currently immersed in the Enterprise server world these days. That means I let my personal license lapse and spend the money on Raspberry Pi and servers and virtual private servers instead, and I experiment with open source tools. They also are amazing. It gives me a broader reach than just working with one tool.
If you are a desktop GIS user in a day job, it's probably worth it to set up Pro at home.
It might or might not be worth it if you expect to do any consulting or work for hire because you can't legally use the personal license. If you are non-profit, the administrative fees are high.
Another way around the cost of Pro if you are working extensively in consulting type work is to get the lowest level of the developer license, which gives you access to both Pro and Enterprise. When I did that it was $1800 for a year, and it was not really worth it for me. After I "retire" in a year or two I might reconsider doing that so that I can consult again, then it will pay for itself.
The version of Pro that comes in the developer version is the basic entry level one, so it's not as useful as the personal license, but as I said, it's good enough for me because mostly I work on the server side.
