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K
katie.ayres
Participant
June 16, 2020
Question

Wait, What? Client must have a Creative Cloud subscription for a font?

  • June 16, 2020
  • 2 replies
  • 700 views

I just read this in the Terms section of Adobe Fonts:

 

The Terms of Use do not permit reselling beyond December 31, 2019. After that time, the client's website must load Adobe Fonts from their own Creative Cloud subscription to ensure that there isn't any interruption to the font licensing or web font hosting.  

 

This is untenable.  I can't ask a client to perpetually pay for an Adobe Creative Cloud license just to be able to use a font on their website.  It used to be that I could pay for a font for perpetual web use, which I would be happy to do, it is important that the designer get their license fees, but Adobe does not give an option to do that anymore.  

 

If Adobe is going to change this, they need to make it easy for us to then pay for the fonts on behalf of the clients.  Otherwise, I must abandon my current use of Adobe Type and find fonts directly from typographers, which is a blow to my freelancing business, both in time and money.

 

    This topic has been closed for replies.

    2 replies

    S
    stevenm33329052
    Inspiring
    June 17, 2020

    If that's the case then we can't use Adobe Fonts for our web projects either, surely this is a mistake?! We're just a small company and our clients will NEVER accept having to pay for an Adobe Cloud subscription just to use a font. We'd lose the client immediately, no question.

      T
      Test Screen Name
      Legend
      June 20, 2020

      It’s an interesting question whether a web developer should make a client site that works only as long as the web designer keeps paying a subscription to the design software. The client might expect it to work forever (allowing for web fees). Not sure subscription fonts really have a place in web design for clients at all. 

      K
      katie.ayresAuthor
      Participant
      June 20, 2020

      I agree, I don't think it does, and yet, the whole Adobe workflow is to make it very easy for me to pull these fonts into the website.

       

      In my case, I provide hosting for my clients as well on my servers, so it was a natural solution.  And to be clear, for awhile, Adobe's terms did allow for this use for my clients and now Adobe is quietly revoking it.  I always expected that if a client stopped hosting with me, then they would need to pay for licensing the fonts, what I failed to see was that many of these fonts are expensive, because you have no insight to that while choosing fonts through the Adobe system.  

       

      The real solution is for Adobe to make it very easy for me to have access to all the fonts during design process with the clear display of the price of a perpetual license for each of the weights, and then make that part of my proposal ( a not-to-exceed kind of line item) and then purchase the font on my client's behalf.  

      Dov Isaacs
      Dov Isaacs
      Legend
      June 16, 2020

      Moved to Adobe Fonts community. This isn't a general Type & Typography issue.

       

      - Dov Isaacs, former Adobe Principal Scientist (April 30, 1990 - May 30, 2021)
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