Their licensing is flawed except for using an iLok. This is also why the universal installer can be flawed. Online deactivation seems to be broken. You can deactivate a machine that had the version they give away. Download the new installer and the previous license will still remain instead of the Studio version. When you click in the essential version to upgrade it will take you to their page to buy a license instead of entering a serial number. You also really can't change anything in the registry to fix it either. This is the second time I dealt with this. Support accused me of being rude despite their lack of literacy after telling me 7 times to do something after doing it 3 times.
A DAW with ARA might sound great but DAW upgrades can break older versions of Melodyne and you hope either Celemony or DAW developers fix it . This happened when S1-4 came out and broke Melodyne 2.
FL Studio and Live have something similar. I once ran an audio to midi conversion in Live and Melodyne and both had different results. One was not better over the other.
A DAW bundled with Melodyne Essential is not really a bonus. I think I've collected more free licenses than the Izotope Elements.