Can we buy a lifetime license of the last version ?

[Nemzag]

Hi, be-fore it was possible to buy a version of ap-plication for life-time, but now in store we have only monthly and annual sub-scription... I want to know if it's possible in a manner to buy Dream-weaver CC or pre-vious version like CS5, with lifetime license ?

Thanks

[David_Powers]

You cannot buy Dreamweaver CC on a perpetual licence. It's available only on subscription.

UPDATE:  Adobe stopped selliing Creative Suite in 2017,  3 years after this thread began.

The only version that's still available with a perpetual licence is Dreamweaver CS6 (version 12), which was released three years ago. The current version of Dreamweaver (CC 2014.1) is version 15, so CS6 is already considerably out of date, and not officially supported by Adobe. If you want to buy it, you can find a Buy CS6 link at the top left of the following page: Dreamweaver Help | Help and tutorials‌.

When Adobe moved to the subscription system, it said it would make CS6 available for the foreseeable future, but that no updates would be made, unless a major security risk were discovered. The perpetual licence allows you to use the software indefinitely for a single payment, but I wouldn't describe it as being a "lifetime licence", except in the sense of the lifetime of the software. If it stops working because of changes in operating systems or Adobe finally turns off the activation servers, you're stuck. On the other hand, it might continue to work for many years. Nobody knows. It's a decision you need to weigh up for yourself.

[Nemzag]

Thanks for your re‑sponse, I hope that Adobe will add life‑time sub‑scription for next re‑leases, with dis‑count for up‑dating to the next new version...

Good day

[osgood_]

David_Powers wrote:

.

The perpetual licence allows you to use the software indefinitely for a single payment, but I wouldn't describe it as being a "lifetime licence", except in the sense of the lifetime of the software. If it stops working because of changes in operating systems or Adobe finally turns off the activation servers, you're stuck. On the other hand, it might continue to work for many years. Nobody knows. It's a decision you need to weigh up for yourself.

Adobe still offers as far back as CS2 for download so I should hardly think CS6 is on the radar for switching off the activation licenses.

Other downloads

Of couse as you say it might be curtailed if it stops running on your current OS. I'm still running CS4 on Yosemite and it works like a dream. I could get another 4-5 years out of it unless DW suddenly includes something that I simply couldn't do without - that sadly has not happened in CS5, CS6 or the 2 CC versions.

DW is now really aimed at more of an 'amatuer' market and doesnt really include anything for the seasoned developer that is critical to the workflow.

I'm looking at the Free 'Brackets' program - now that looks promising.

[David_Powers]

The activation servers for CS2 were turned off more than two years ago. You need a special serial number to be able to install CS2 downloaded from there. Presumably, the other activation servers will eventually be turned off.

I'm not sure that I agree that Dreamweaver is aimed at amateurs. It's still used in a lot of universities that teach web media, and I've done consultancy for small design studios that use it. I think it's used by a lot of one-person shops and by people whose main job isn't web design/development, but who have responsibility for updating part of a site.

Brackets is very promising. Some of the people behind it were members of the Dreamweaver engineering team. I wouldn't be surprised to see some of Brackets features eventually being incorporated into Dreamweaver.

[osgood_]

David_Powers wrote:

The activation servers for CS2 were turned off more than two years ago. You need a special serial number to be able to install CS2 downloaded from there. Presumably, the other activation servers will eventually be turned off.

How do you get one of those then (I assume you would have to own an original activation key for CS2). Pesumably Adobe will issue special serial numbers each time they turn off an activation server for each product someone owns otherwise they could find themseleves in deep legal trouble.

You can't offer a product 'outright' for sale and then switch it off with out making provisions for those that bought it and still want to run it - it would be a bit like me selling someone a car then taking it back a few years later.

[David_Powers · Accepted solution]

https://helpx.adobe.com/creative-suite/kb/cs2-product-downloads.html‌

Technically speaking, no commercial software (not just Adobe's) is "sold outright". You buy a licence that allows you to use it under the terms of a legal agreement that's so long most people never read it. In the case of CS6 and earlier, the licence is perpetual, so you can run it for as long as it still works.

Although some people don't like the Creative Cloud subscription model, the number of subscribers is now nearly 4 million (http://www.adobe.com/content/dam/Adobe/en/investor-relations/PDFs/ADBE-Q1-15-Datasheet.pdf?PID=21599...). I doubt very much that Adobe will go back to offering new versions on a perpetual licence. Like it or not, subscription is here to stay. Microsoft is doing the same with Office. If you don't need the new features in the latest versions, you can keep going with the old ones, but they'll never be updated, and there's no official support.

I'm sure Adobe will honour its commitment to perpetual licence holders for many years to come, but as the years go by, the older versions will become less and less useful. I think the main question is not so much when Adobe will pull the plug on activation servers, but when it will stop selling CS6. Once that happens, it could refuse to activate the program for anyone who had not already registered it by a cutoff date.

[osgood_]

David_Powers wrote:

Although some people don't like the Creative Cloud subscription model, the number of subscribers is now nearly 4 million (http://www.adobe.com/content/dam/Adobe/en/investor-relations/PDFs/ADBE-Q1-15-Datasheet.pdf ?PID=2159...). I doubt very much that Adobe will go back to offering new versions on a perpetual licence. Like it or not, subscription is here to stay. Microsoft is doing the same with Office. If you don't need the new features in the latest versions, you can keep going with the old ones, but they'll never be updated, and there's no official support.

Although I'd prefer to have the choice of buying the software outright as in the long run it's cheaper I don't particularly mind a subscription based product (if it offered anything remotely attractive) as I would get mileage from it unlike say a hobbyist who maybe only updates their site once or twice a month - obviously to them a subscription based product may seem like a rip-off.

I don't see a time in the near future when DW, beyond what I already have, is going to become an attractive proposition for me personally (I hope I'm wrong). It hasn't offered anything for the last 4 versions so I'm not hanging my hat on it. Personally I think its losts its way a bit concentrating on packing it with stuff for amatuers which is inferior to that which is open source and freely available on the net, its poorly tested, which will result in it being dropped from future versions.

As I said I'm looking to programs more like Brackets with less 'incidental garbage' and more professional centric ideas which help those that are more reliant on coding by hand.

[dyxadependragon]

David_Powers  wrote

https://helpx.adobe.com/creative-suite/kb/cs2-product-downloads.html

Technically speaking, no commercial software (not just Adobe's) is "sold outright". You buy a licence that allows you to use it under the terms of a legal agreement that's so long most people never read it. In the case of CS6 and earlier, the licence is perpetual, so you can run it for as long as it still works.

Although some people don't like the Creative Cloud subscription model, the number of subscribers is now nearly 4 million (http://www.adobe.com/content/dam/Adobe/en/investor-relations/PDFs/ADBE-Q1-15-Datasheet.pdf ?PID=2159...). I doubt very much that Adobe will go back to offering new versions on a perpetual licence. Like it or not, subscription is here to stay. Microsoft is doing the same with Office. If you don't need the new features in the latest versions, you can keep going with the old ones, but they'll never be updated, and there's no official support.

I'm sure Adobe will honour its commitment to perpetual licence holders for many years to come, but as the years go by, the older versions will become less and less useful. I think the main question is not so much when Adobe will pull the plug on activation servers, but when it will stop selling CS6. Once that happens, it could refuse to activate the program for anyone who had not already registered it by a cutoff date.

Pardon my necro-post, but I feel it necessary to inform you (and anyone interested) that Microsoft is not doing the same as Adobe as they have not scrapped the perpetual licenses. To put it simply, you could get a perpetual "lifetime" license for Microsoft Office Professional 2016 for one PC for 4x the amount of getting the subscription yearly with free upgrades. Adobe, on the other hand, took it out of the question due to "avoiding confusion between the" licensing and services. So no, Microsoft takes it a step further to serve those who would appreciate the products longevity while Adobe avoids implementation for their (when it comes down to it) push towards an increase in equity for those using the products for multiple years to come.

[Nancy OShea]

Legacy Creative Suite users are now finding out just how terribly lopsided their old products are with current operating systems.    It's an all too familiar cry these days.  "My creative suite stopped working and/or I can't install it on the latest & greatest operating system!  I paid for a lifetime license to this software 10 years ago.  Why won't it work?!"

There's no such thing as a lifetime license.  There never was.  All software eventually reaches it's end-of-life.  If you're a Mac user, it will come sooner than if you're a Win user.  

When Win 10 came out, Office '97 customers were outraged when it stopped working.   "Gosh, it's less than 20 years old, why would they do such a thing?"  In computer terms, old is 2-3 years.  10-20 years is a decaying relic.

The Creative Cloud subscription model was born  out of the fact that  Win & Apple OS updates are rolled out constantly now.  The old perpetual license model is no longer relevant.  It had to die.  The only way to keep pace with sweeping operating system changes is to issue software on rapid release cycles for as long as customers want to keep using it.   The subscription model works in ways that the perpetual license model never could.  So that's what we have now.  And you can thank the operating systems for their role in this.

Nancy

[osgood_]

https://forums.adobe.com/people/Nancy+OShea  wrote

The subscription model works in ways that the perpetual license model never could.

Right and the software companies, particularly Adobe, have viewed this as an opportunity to make more money.  Since you are paying for a product twice, three, four, five times over do you not think it would be a good idea for those that stick with a bit of software to get rewarded with a discount each year?

Jetbrains does exactly that. Firstly their products are way in advance of what DW has to offer for the professional user, they have more subscription options in terms of individuals, companies etc. Starting at approx £70 a year for the individual for the first year going down for the second and third years.

Adobe continues to exploite the code challenged. No one who is a professional coder would ever dream of paying for an over priced piece of junk like DW currently is. Its just way overpriced in my opinion for what is essentially a few Bootstrap snippets which anyone could put together themselves in any IDE or editor you care to name.

Once it was a leading web development programme worth its cost but lately has become no more than a vehicle for third party extensions and frameworks.

[BenPleysier]

I baffles me how someone can hate Dreamweaver so much that they continually advocate using another product in the Dreamweaver forum.

If I hate a product that much, I stay clear of it and get my life back.

[osgood_]

Its up to Adobe to compete, which hopefully will make it a better product for yourself and many others.

I voice my opinion as a long time DW users and had no desire to switch but l felt l needed to because the product was getting left behind and only offering 3rd party add ons, came bundled with non required components, etc  instead of any significant improvements.

Brackets is a poor editing environment. Yes its damn good  for a free product but not for a paid for product. The editor in DW should have been written from the ground up  to include bespoke color coding an essential part of a coders toolbox, if indeed DW is aimed at coders and there lies the confusion, who is it now aimed at?

[BenPleysier]

I do not want to be the origin of another altercation, but I get tired of hearing the same thing over and over again.

Why not ask Preran to be part of the Prerelease Program and help the Dreamweaver developers out of the doldrums.

[osgood_]

Unfortuanately youll hear the same thing over and over again, if not from me then someone else, because its never put right. How many threads in this forum are repeated again and again about the same issues, color coding, find and replace, the lack of inbuilt server behaviours, etc etc

I have it on good authority that being part of the prerelease program is mostly pointless in terms of providing feedback and ideas.

[pziecina]

osgood_  wrote

I have it on good authority that being part of the prerelease program is mostly pointless in terms of providing feedback and ideas.

Lets not keep it secret, as that person i can say openly it is a pointless excercise joining the pre-release when it comes to providing feedback that the team do not want to hear, and for discussing new ideas don't expect anything from the team.

Bug Feedback is sometimes acted upon, but often not to a satisfactory degree, as one persons bug is anothers correct implementation, and as for ideas, they will never be discussed or acted upon by the Dw team unless they are already part of the beta version, in which case they are not really ideas.

The pre-release is open to any Dw user now, and even though i have dumped the link in the 'rubbish bin', it is stll the only way for users to get involved, but don't expect anything except a 'sneak peak', and certainly not to change or influence anything.

[osgood_]

David_Powers wrote:

I'm not sure that I agree that Dreamweaver is aimed at amateurs. It's still used in a lot of universities that teach web media, and I've done consultancy for small design studios that use it. I think it's used by a lot of one-person shops and by people whose main job isn't web design/development, but who have responsibility for updating part of a site.

Yeah, exactly - my definition of amateurs, maybe not yours.

[osgood_]

David_Powers wrote:

Brackets is very promising. Some of the people behind it were members of the Dreamweaver engineering team. I wouldn't be surprised to see some of Brackets features eventually being incorporated into Dreamweaver.

I've only watched a handful of vidoes at the moment but I intend to investigate it very soon, after watching those videos. I've seen what I believe could be some nice little inclusions which might benefit my workflow.

[Nemzag]

Ħêllo,

Can you give me a valid link to be able to buy CS6, please ?

Because in end of October 2017, I subscribed pro one year on CC cloud, as a WebDev student,

but this year the price increase of 100€…

And now I want to buy DreamWeaver CS6…

Ħelp please.

Thank you.

[Nancy OShea]

Adobe stopped selling Creative Suite products more than 2 years ago.   Technically CS6 is outdated software, no longer sold, no longer supported.  You can't buy it legally from any vendor, re-seller, agent or country.    You must subscribe to a Creative Cloud Plan.

Creative Cloud pricing and membership plans | Adobe Creative Cloud

[Nemzag]

Not cool at all… Thank you…

Hope will be able to have a lifetime license pro the last & actual DreamWeaver, without update to the next version…

[Nancy OShea]

Sorry you don't like the answer.    I prefer Dreamweaver's site management features over all other code editors.  But If you can't afford it, you can't afford it.    So here is my list of alternatives, some free, some paid.

• Pinegrow
• Wappler
• Boostrap Studio
• Mobrise
• Visual Studio Code
• Brackets
• Coffee Cup HTML editor.

[Nemzag]

Thank you pro your suggestion,

I already use PhpStorm,

pro coding (and also Brackets, Atom, Visual Studio Code, when I just need to add some short line or few code, because they launch faster than PhpStorm…),

I need DreamWeaver just to have a good WYSIWYG,

pro some editing stuff (like editing table information)…

Now I use BlueGriffon…

But he limited and very slow compared to DreamWeaver CS3 or CS4 with huge file with very long table with thousand line, made in 2007 with a Intel Dual Core E6850 3GHz & DDR2 800MHz,

and this on my new 2019 computer with a i7 Six Core 7800x 4GHz & DDR 3200MHz on X299…

I want to buy the DreamWeaver CS6, because he is HTML5 compliant and will be faster than the last CC Version…

[Nancy OShea]

I can't help you with CS6 because Adobe stopped selling it.

For  visual web design, look at Pinegrow.

Pinegrow Web Editor | Website Builder for Professionals

[Nemzag]

You are very nice & kind,

ħêktangthh you pro yovr ħêlp, time & suggestions, (I never heard about this tool be‑vare)…

I'm very jrathe‑wul pro showing it to me.

Ħave a nice day…