Why We're Not Signing Up To Adobe Creative Cloud.

[chrisgavin2]

I've spent quite a lot of time looking at the implications of the new 'Creative Cloud' deal for our company. I have decided that for us, it's a very BAD deal indeed...

1: As a UK company the list price for Creative Cloud %152 the US price. CC for teams here works out at $102/user/month. The exact same software and online solution for half as much again as US users are being asked for. We can't see any justification for this market segmentation. Adobe software has always cost a lot more to worldwide users outside the US marketplace, but with a 'cloud-based' product delivered entirely online (under the new CC regime) how on Earth, can these price differences continue to be justified?

2: Creative Cloud for teams is being charged at a considerably higher rate than for individuals. Buying numerous seats and being a loyal customer will actually cost a lot more than the per-seat price for individual users. The 'Teams' offer does include increased cloud storage, but we just don't need this, and don't expect to be charged more per seat for the priviledge of being a multi-user customer.

3: Subscription at the advertised rates is not only too  expensive, it just doesn't suit us at all. As many have said before, we upgrade our software when we can afford it. Our business is sporadic, so we prefer to be in control of our spending. The subsciption model represents a constant drain on our resources. If Adobe want to offer a subscription model, then that's fine for those that might want it, but the option to buy software shouldn't be withdrawn from the customers who prefer to purchase their software outright.

4: Creative Cloud includes a lot of things we don't need. We don't actually need to be paying Adobe for cloud storage of our projects. We didn't ask for 100GB of cloud storage per team user, and we certainly shouldn't be paying for it out of our software spend.

5: Monopolistic Behaviour. With customers on a monthly subscription, Adobe can and  will introduce features and increase prices at a pace to suit themselves. As customers, we lose control of how much software we buy and how often. The subscription model of tied-in customers is just bad for us and cetainly bad for innovation and competition in the marketplace.

I encourage users to make their opinions known to Adobe about the new scheme and I sincerely hope that Adobe will give serious consideration to the legitimate concerns of their user-base.

I look forward to the retraction of the 'cloud only' decision soon.

Chris.

[Guest]

Chris I echo the points you noted about the cloud....Adobe is acting like the monopoly it is...

I have formalized my concerns in a letter to the Office of Fair trading and the European Commission on Competition

the commisions email address is comp-greffe-antitrust@ec.europa.eu

[Halo-Support]

I've not looked into the costs of the US software but I completely agree with you about the cost for purchasing team licenses is considrebly higher than individuals. its a fact its much higher! I just got off the phone with adobe sales, and I was asking about the individual or team licence options. The individual full CC cost is £45p/m whereas the team full CC cost is £65p/m per user!! - WHAT!! why is a team license £20 more per month per user??

The phone operator agreed - "yes, thats expensive". I asked what more I get for the team licence and was told I just get to have one payment and manage the users from one account. It's discusting I should pay an extra £20 per user, per month to do that!! surely Adobe should be encouraging team users as its better for them too! .. attract more users, make more money from less processed payments.

Also Its a real shame there is no Direct Debt payment option, only credit card. DD would be a lot easier. Adobe, please can you do something about this?

Thanks!

D

[SoilentGreen]

why is a team license £20 more per month per user??

•     100GB of cloud storage per person for file sharing and collaboration
  That we'll never use.
•     Centralized administration, purchasing, and license management console
  For larger companies, this could be useful,  but larger companies should be given this for free, as they're spending LOTS more money than everyone else.
•     Centralized deployment — package all apps, or a customized subset, for your team
  Possibly useful for some...
•     Flexibility to add or reassign seats when needed
  Help / Deactivate / Reinstall on new user's machine,  we've done it for years.
•     Exclusive access to Adobe experts (two 1:1 sessions per user, per year)
  That we'll also never use.

Not saying that for some the added features aren't worth it,   but $20/month per user to help you manage licenses that at least in our case change only when someone quits, gets fired, or moves to a new position.  These tools should be free.

[jballman73]

Remember years ago when QuarkXPress had a monopoly on the industry? I feel Adobe is doing the same thing now that they did back then. Within a couple years someone will come out with something better, or at least comparable, and they won't have this same control on the industry. Hopefully anyways...

[Greg_Bohn]

  I think Adobe is clearly testing the limits of what it believes most of it's customers will put up with.

  They've presumably calculated how much they will lose (in lost users) against how much increased profit it will get from members who stay.

  Only if they fear that they will fail to get the net benefit they planned on will they be likely to change course.

  And of course if they do get what they want, based on past behavior it's most likely going to be time for another round...

[quenton8]

So why are any of those comments supposed to be negative?  Its what businesses do.  Do you think the local hardware store says "lets see how low a price we can charge for this because that will make everyone feel really good"?   No they say "how much can we get for this and still be competitive and make money".

Of course Adobe wants to be paid for what they do, and they will (and should) try and make the most they can from what they sell.

That said, I think there are things they COULD do with CC that would make it more acceptable to the general population (for example, if you pay for it for 4 yours you can terminate your CC and keep what you have) -- that would keep many people like myself happy since I will be retiring shortly and may not be able to continue paying.

[Greg_Bohn]

> So why are any of those comments supposed to be negative?

  Well, some people were claiming this latest change was nothing but "Sweetness and light". Adobe is spinning this as being only about bringing great things for its customers.

  In reality it's primarily going to be great for them more so than their customers.

  I think people should at least be aware of what's really going on.

  Being on the receiving end of this, I'm not rooting to be gouged, locked-in, or lead around by the nose.

  If people accept that, then they should be aware of what's likely to follow in the future.

> No they say "how much can we get for this and still be competitive and make money".

   Clearly they can try to take advantage of their near monopoly position. I'm just not going along.

   They dominate their market, and  don't really have a significant competitor at the moment (except perhaps if you consider their perpetual license products as a competitor).

  That ones just been eliminated (or at least weakened).

  If the "local hardware store" started charging 2-3 times more because they were the only hardware store in town (and then said I should buy their entire line of products because I'd be so much more productive), I wouldn't be too happy about it.

  In this case I'm doing the only thing I can and that's to stop buying Adobe products.

[Guest]

this is a direct link to the FTC.. if you havent already you may wish to lodge a complaint with them about Adobes price gouging etc

https://www.ftccomplaintassistant.gov/

[SoilentGreen]

Remember years ago when QuarkXPress had a monopoly on the industry?

They just announced today, that as of July 1st,  they're moving to a one version back upgrade policy.

[Jeff_Know1]

Argh, that is so annoying when companies do that. I was looking at the features for QuarkXpress but now forget it. I thought the new people running Quark would have figured out by now that it is not a good idea to piss of your customers. History seems to repeat itself. http://forums.macresource.com/read.php?1,1573483,1573532

[Greg_Bohn]

Jeff_Know1 wrote:

Argh, that is so annoying when companies do that. I was looking at the features for QuarkXpress but now forget it. I thought the new people running Quark would have figured out by now that it is not a good idea to piss of your customers. History seems to repeat itself. http://forums.macresource.com/read.php?1,1573483,1573532

  Quark seems to have seen what Adobe did last year and decided to jump on the bandwagon.

  You can also bet that if Adobe succeeds in forcing "Software As A Service' on their customers, other will be emboldened to follow.

  Imagine how much fun it would be if almost everything on your computer (including the computer itself) was only available as a monthly subscription... And if you ever stop paying...

[Randall B Miller]

Not a big deal. According to the License agreements we all press the Agree button to, we don't own any software anyway. This is just a move sideways

[chrisgavin2]

Hi rmdtulsa,

Actually I think it is quite a 'big deal'. No we didn't own the software before under the 'traditional' licencing agreement, but once we'd paid for it, we could carry on using it as long as we wanted/needed to. Not only do we lose this ability with the Creative Cloud deal, but Adobe have also decided we should pay more for this... a lot more...

The list price for Creative Cloud for teams is now £65.44 per user per month. For the benefit of US readers, that translates to $101 per user per month. That's about double the price often quoted on these forums by advocates of the CC deal.

I see lots of people here saying that cloud costs a lot less than this, but advocates of CC tend to be quoting the (1) US price, (2) the price for individuals (not teams) AND (3)  the introductory price for the first year only.

We're looking at a list price of over $100 per user per month to be in CC, not the $50 that many people are often quoting in these discussions.

That's a very significant price hike being sneaked in here, and this price will surely be 'reviewed' by Adobe next year and EVERY year therafter.

Who can guess how the prices will change once everyone is signed up and no alternative is available?

Adobe is suddenly making a very poor offer to it's customers and removing 'choice' from the marketplace too.

To me, this is quite a 'big deal'.

[Randall B Miller]

I've been seeing a lot of English Euro prices from several companies being

"the same" numerically, not sure why, just glad I'm here in the USA, then.

[Greg_Bohn]

rmdtulsa wrote:

Not a big deal. According to the License agreements we all press the Agree button to, we don't own any software anyway. This is just a move sideways

Yes, it is a "big deal". Sure, you don't technically "own" the software, but you do (did) own the right to keep using it for as long as you wanted. Now, you lose all access when you stop paying.

[jballman73]

Companies are already doing this. Microsoft Office is now a pay monthly service, office 365, Playstation is now moving to a monthly fee and xbox one is now a monthly fee too. It definitely looks like this is the way companies are going to start running things.

[Randall B Miller]

I LOVE $50 a month instead of $600 a year in one chunk. So much easier on my finances. I would delay the $600 upgrades, this is so much better (for me).

[Guest]

I am not too sure if there is sarcasm in your comment or not.  $50 per month is $600 per year.  If you can't stand paying $600 per year, then just set aside in cast $50 every month and then by the end of the year you have $600.  In any event, I upgraded every two or three years at a cost of $700.  So that's $700 over a three year period instead of $1800 over a three year period.  I don't know about you, but $700 is so much easier on my finances than $1800.

[quenton8]

I guess it depends on what you use.  In my case, Photoshop only, so its $20 a month which I consider "not bad".  I do NOT like the idea I cannot stop paying and continue to use it, although I can see the issues with people paying for 1 year then using it for 5 years, then paying for 1 year etc etc, so some conditions would be needed.

[chrisgavin2]

Thanks John, you've very neatly summed-up the main issue here...

Using your figures, under the old model you paid $700 over 3 years, under the new regime you'd have paid $1800.

And then after the three years were up, under the old model you still had functional software, still with a monetary value and you could choose to use this to get a reduced upgrade to the next release.

After three years on the new model, despite having paid Adobe a whole lot more, you'd have ... NOTHING.

I think many people are looking at the sweetened deals Adobe are offering to get people onto the Cloud, but not thinking so much about what this means in the longer term.

If one has (or intends to have) a sustained career in the cretive/graphics field, one has to project the figures forward and see how this stacks up year after year.

I've been using Adobe products to varying degrees at various workplaces for maybe 18 or so years...

Under the old model, the sustained purchasing of Adobe products was at least rewarded with ownership and discounts off the price of new software.

Under the new regime, sustained customer loyalty is rewarded with ... NOTHING.

I would like Adobe to at the very least reinstate the ability for customers to buy CS software, or maybe also to adjust the terms of the Cloud deal so that some kind of 'ownership' is built-up to reward customer loyalty.

At the moment Adobe seem to have devised a system which gets worse for customers the longer they stay signed up!

[Butch_M]

John Wykes wrote:

I am not too sure if there is sarcasm in your comment or not.  $50 per month is $600 per year.  If you can't stand paying $600 per year, then just set aside in cast $50 every month and then by the end of the year you have $600.  In any event, I upgraded every two or three years at a cost of $700.  So that's $700 over a three year period instead of $1800 over a three year period.  I don't know about you, but $700 is so much easier on my finances than $1800.

This comparison is good and all ... but if you are using software for your livelihood the price point isn't always the most important factor. I have never passed up on a purchase or upgrade to any tool I use because I could not afford it. I have passed up on many items, including offerings from Adobe, because they just didn't bring anything additional to the cause worthy of my investment. What has happened now is Adobe demands to be rewarded for every effort they make, by every customer they have ... even if those efforts add little to the cause. Too bad we all couldn't run our businesses in that manner ... but we don't have a monopoly, we have to exist in the real world.

I can easily afford $600 per year for CC ... that in of itself does not make it a wise investment. The use of the software must enhance your bottom line to a much greater degree than it's cost in order to be considered worthy of purchase. If the new and improved feature sets offered over the course of a year using the CC license model do not add to your earnings by a much greater level than the amount paid ... it is not a smart investment.

For example in PS CC ... while the overall workflow does take advantage of the entire app, (which I already paid for those features and functionality contained in PSCS 6 over the past 20 years) ... I'm not sure the new additional "features" in PS CC will offer any additional enhancement to my bottom line over the year of paying out that $600 ... Certainly the Camera Shake Reduction feature is of absolutely no value to me as I have spent the past 40 years honing my skills precisely to avoid the issue ... so is it worth it to add that feature to my arsenal? ... and by extension, reward Adobe monetarily for an effort I will likely never use? This is but one example. While I do have appreciation for the engineering skills it took to compose the code ... it is wasted effort as far as I am concerned ...

[Randall B Miller]

Over the years, I've had a lousy time working with others that use software

more than 3 years old. Incompatibility hell (transparency in pdf's, fonts

in pdfs etc).

Staying current with software, as I interact with everyone's ad

submissions, art, etc. is so important to me. I want to be able to open

everything, not just a third or less.

I think if you work by yourself without much interaction, it may not matter

at all to "keep up" with software.

I love the new features in indesign (popup snap for gaps between photos, I

used to do that by hand). I try to learn as many new features as I can, and

they generally make me much faster. (I'm not sure I answered anything

here!)

[W_J_T]

Butch_M wrote:

... Adobe, because they just didn't bring anything additional to the cause worthy of my investment. What has happened now is Adobe demands to be rewarded for every effort they make, by every customer they have ... even if those efforts add little to the cause....

+ 1, well said, that pretty much sums it up.

[chrisgavin2]

Exactly right Butch_M

In one move, Adobe have reduced our choice AND hiked the price.

We're all Adobe's customers, If we don't like it, we need to tell them why we don't like it.

I do believe this situation can be changed if enough customers care to make it so.