Just how greedy is Adobe?

Question

I teach Photoshop, Illustrator, and InDesign to first year undergrads. I recommend they get the student subscription at $19.99/month. But little did I know that my students (and myself) are locked in for a full year. And, that the subscription price goes up to $29.99/month after that, again locking for a year.

Students have 3 months off from school the summer. It doesn't make sense to lock them in for a year. And if that wasn't bad enough, Adobe slaps you with a cancellation fee (what are you, a cell phone carrier??) of 50% of the remaining contract, if you cancel before the year is up.

This is abuse. Adobe is leeching on students and teachers.

I refuse to continue recommending these subscriptions, teaching these products, and will not renew my own subscription at expiration.

jane-e · Accepted Answer

Hi Carlos,I'm sorry that you didn't know — Adobe has had the the subscription since CS6 (it was optional the first version), so this is the seventh version with the subscription. You must not have read the terms for the plans.Creative Cloud pricing and membership plans | Adobe Creative CloudIt clearly says it is an Annual plan, which you can prepay or pay monthly, and it clearly says there is promotional pricing for the first year. The student pricing is a bargain over the regular pricing.If I don't go to the gym for 3 months, I still have to pay for the year.Microsoft Office 365, Malwarebytes, and Quicken are among the software programs that I now pay for annually. It's not just Adobe. It's the way things are going.Just my perspective...~ JaneSince they are students, they might also look into the single app subscription. It is offered annual or monthly, so look closely before buying.If they want to learn Adobe products and get jobs with Adobe products, they need to learn and work with them, even in the summer.

Abambo · Answer

MaxStart wrotejane-e I understand that you are employed of Adobe and you are not going to answer with a reasonable answer (at least from the angry consumers perspective not from Adobe's).Nope! Jane is a user, earning her living with the tools Adobe provides and helping in her free time and voluntary other users when they have a problem with the software. As she is doing a great job with this, Adobe recognised her as an ACP. ACPs and MVPs are standard users with deep knowledge of Adobe products.MaxStart wroteAGAIN! preventing the consumers from activating older versions of your products (argumentatively because you stopped the Support!) is the worst Adobe has done.Nope. When you have a licensed older product from before the subscription model, you are still welcome to use that according to the licensing terms. There is, however, no support anymore and there are no updates any more. Activation is still possible for down to any single version. However, for obvious reasons, some activation servers needed to be taken down and so, to be able to activate very old products you need to contact Adobe: Contact Customer Care !You may be unhappy with the current situation but fact is that Adobe is doing well with it's current business model and companies like mine are also happy with the subscription model. We expanded all our four initial licenses to the all apps CC subscription. Before we had different licenses for different tasks, requiring to change the Workstation for eg small video editing jobs. In addition we added to more licenses, because it's economical and easy to do. I understand that some people have problems paying the full price for the Adobe programs and that especially students may have a hard time paying for this, but also the perpetual licenses were not cheap. A full Photoshop license did cost around 1000$ some ten years ago. Yes, it's not cheap. But Adobe tools are the top tools used in the industry. There are alternatives if you do not do this for a living. But anyone professional needs at least some tools from Adobe, because they are the industry standard.

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