Limit imposed on free assets?

[Orton Marketing Limited]

Why is there suddenly a limit imposed on my 'licsenced for free' images?  I have suddenly (today) been told I've reached my daily limit of downloading from here:  https://stock.adobe.com/uk/free and the person in chat has told me I now need a subscription - but I only want to use the FREE images, and not the paid for images.....

[Liza5C0C · Accepted solution]

Hello @Orton Marketing Limited, 

The current behavior aligns with expectations. We have recently reduced the free daily download limit, resulting in the appearance of a pop-up message informing you that your daily limit of free downloads has been reached. For non-paying Adobe Stock users, the limit is now set at 3 downloads per day.

[Orton Marketing Limited]

It would have been good customer service of Adobe had informed customers of this change rather than to just receive a pop up notification......

[Abambo]

There always was a daily limit, but I wasn't aware, that it has been lowered to 3 assets/day. Customer service should have told you this.

However, I understand that Adobe wants to sell their subscription service. You cant't really expect Adobe to be your image provider and give away the service for free. If you are making money with this, it would be normal to take a plan. If you are a non-profit, you can check with other free to use services.

[acme-scottp]

"The current behavior aligns with expectations"

Umm....Who's expectations? Looking at the forum post it seems like no one knew about this until they hit the "new" limit.

I say "new" becuase I wasn't even aware that there was a limit before, and I had to dig through old forum posts to learn it was 100/day. Dropping the limit by 97% with no notice being sent to customers or posted on the site ahead of time, or not even bothering to put up a notice on the site now to indicate the change was a unnecessary poor decision on Adobe's part.

As a business user, it is baffeling as to why Adobe would make changes that could likley affect business workflows with zero notice. If we can get an email everytime the pricavy policy updates, surely you can let us know ahead of time that there would be significant changes to the way free stock photos work to allow us to make plans ahead of time, insted of having to scrabel at the last minuite to figure out what is going on and how to resolve the situation. 

[Orton Marketing Limited]

I couldn't agree more Scott!

[Abambo]

"The current behavior aligns with expectations"

Umm....Who's expectations? Looking at the forum post it seems like no one knew about this until they hit the "new" limit.

By @acme-scottp

FYI: You're answering to me, but citing Liza.

I say "new" becuase I wasn't even aware that there was a limit before(...)

By @acme-scottp

You weren't aware because you did not hit the limit. Now you hit the limit.

As a business user, it is baffeling as to why Adobe would make changes that could likley affect business workflows with zero notice.

By @acme-scottp

I agree that the limit should be documented. But if you are a business user, relying on free services, you know well, that there is no contractual obligation to Adobe to tell you about this change. It would have been polite to do so, however.

If we can get an email everytime the pricavy policy updates, (...)

By @acme-scottp

You know well, that there are legal obligations for this, and even sometimes, privacy policy updates are imposed by legal changes.

As a business user, it is baffeling as to why Adobe would make changes that could likley affect business workflows with zero notice. (...) surely you can let us know ahead of time that there would be significant changes to the way free stock photos work to allow us to make plans ahead of time, insted of having to scrabel at the last minuite to figure out what is going on and how to resolve the situation. 

By @acme-scottp

As a business user, you know well, that the for-free-assets are appetizers for you to take a subscription, not to get your business relying on this. There are for-free alternatives, but not with the same legal protections. You may or you may not use those services. You may also use competitor services if they serve you better. Or you could take a subscription. It appears that those having a subscription are not hit by this limit. I just checked, and I could licence more than 3 free assets, without loosing credits.

[acme-scottp]

I will never understand why so many people in these forums bend-over backwards to defend the actions of a $165.27 billion company, even when everyone admits it was a not the best decision.

Right now, at this very moment, the limit is still not well documented. The FAQ section of the Stock sites says there is a limit but provides zero details as to what that limit is or how it works. Not everyone has the time to come to this forum and spend 15-30 minutes reading through answers to understand a change that Adobe had to opportunity to clearly communicate ahead of time, and is still failing to provide adequate information about. 

If the argument is that Adobe was loosing so much money becuase so many people were using the free catalog, it might have been a good idea to notify ALL those people ahead of time of the change to avoid risking alienating those potential customers. 

[Abambo]

I will never understand why so many people in these forums bend-over backwards to defend the actions of a $165.27 billion company, even when everyone admits it was a not the best decision.

By @acme-scottp

Who is everyone?

If the argument is that Adobe was loosing so much money becuase so many people were using the free catalog, it might have been a good idea to notify ALL those people ahead of time of the change to avoid risking alienating those potential customers. 

By @acme-scottp

Adobe is free to introduce changes to their way to do business. In this case, there is no contractual obligation to inform you. They could have done that. But they didn't. They could also put different limits on the free assets, depending on if you are a paying customer of Creative Cloud or not. There are plenty of things that could be done.

If they are losing money, they also could limit the number of free assets. You wouldn't see that.

But you can't claim an advantage that wasn't guaranteed to you. That's the way it is.

[acme-scottp]

1. I do expect Adobe to give things away for free when the word "Free" is in the name.

2. I would venture a guess that many people using the Free Stock collection are paying subscribers of other Adobe Products, and I see no reason why Adobe wouldn't just add the Free Stock collection as a benefit on all paid Adobe CC plans.

[Jill_C]

There are more than 900,000 images in the "Free" database. These images cost Adobe more than $4.5 million per year to offer to Adobe customers. I'm sure they've been carefully tracking how many free images are licensed by users, and how many of those users convert to paid Subscribers. The economics are quite simple: if the "free" program is too generous and disincentivizes users to convert to subscriptions, it's running at a loss. Reducing the daily limit is a way to incentivize subscriptions. It's unfortunate that Adobe didn't announce this in advance, but that doesn't change the logic of doing so.

[acme-scottp]

Proving it's possible to make a good business decision in a bad way. 

[Test Screen Name]

"I see no reason why Adobe wouldn't just add the Free Stock collection as a benefit on all paid Adobe CC plans." Actually, I do see a reason, though you may not consider it a good one. Corporate customers can now subscribe to "Creative Cloud Pro" which is a bundle of "All Apps" and "Unlimited access to full Stock collection" (reference: https://prodesigntools.com/adobe-creative-cloud-pro-edition.html).  This is a very interesting decision by Adobe since Adobe have to pay the photographer/artist for every one of the images downloaded under this plan, as I understand it. I wonder if this is a "marketing unlimited" rather than a "mathematicians unlimited". Interesting times... Anyway, I imagine they asked why corprorate customers weren't rushing to take up the Pro plan and found "why would we do that when you give us all the images we ever need for  free"? (All opinion, no inside information).

[Orton Marketing Limited]

These clearly aren't my expectations because I was surprised it happened.

[carolb9070856]

When does the daily limit reset. I haven't downloaded for two days and am still getting the pop up message. Thanks.

[Abambo]

It should reset after 24 hours. I do not know, however, how these 24 hours are accounted for. But 48h should surly release the limit.

[Cheerful_heart1674]

I live in Sweden and I got over 10 free images from https://stock.adobe.com/uk/free for to day so no diffrence.
The only limit was then you will subscribe that you got 10 free image with in 30 days nothing new there

[Abambo]

The only limit was then you will subscribe that you got 10 free image with in 30 days nothing new there

By @Cheerful_heart1674

You can pay extra for overflow if you have a subscription. But the free assets do not count against your 10 assets/month.

[John235486177jo3]

It's not really free since we're paying monthly for an Adobe Subscription. You need to clearly state on the "Free" page, right up front that there's a limit of 3 downloads per day.

[Abambo]

It's not really free since we're paying monthly for an Adobe Subscription. You need to clearly state on the "Free" page, right up front that there's a limit of 3 downloads per day.

By @John235486177jo3

Adobe stock is a separate product from Adobe Creative Cloud. The free assets are available for free, even if you have not one single Adobe subscription. So, they are free.

[peterspeter]

Sounds like Adobe will start to see an influx of Adobe accounts being created and used without any subscriptions being purchased. A 97% decrease in free stock downloads is horrendous. I could understand limiting free stock downloads for accounts without any active subscription, but to those of us who pay an ever-increasing amount every month to access Adobe products, this is such a sad move..

[Jill_C]

I doubt that the Adobe Free Stock program, which has only existed for 2 years, was created to give a "freebie" to Adobe customers with existing product subscriptions. It's far more likely that it was created to incentivize customers to sign up for an Adobe Stock subscription, whether they had existing Adobe Subscriptions, or just wanted to buy Stock photos. Perhaps the Free program was just too generous and wasn't generating enough subscriptions based on the previous very high daily limit of free dowloads. The Free program is not Free to Adobe; they still have to pay the Contributors for use of their images.

[Test Screen Name]

You ask WHY there's a limit. Now, I have no inside knowledge at all, so that leaves me free to speculate.

The first question is - why would Adobe - who had a succesful business SELLING stock images, spend millions of dollars to buy images to give them away? I think there can be only one realistic answer, the main reason a commercial business does stuff for free; someone convinced them to try it, and see if the "free tease" would get people hooked, and then they would want the full range of images, and start paying for them. Adobe have figures for sales of Adobe stock, downloads of free stock, and how many people convert from one to the other. So, why change it? It was either the plan all along, or it was changed because NOT ENOUGH PEOPLE are converting from free images to paid-for images. Some people, perhaps, were able to run a design business perfectly well with the free assets. Anyway, reducing the download limit is a test to see how many people convert now. If it doesn't change, I imagine the whole free collection will close down. To repeat: this is just my speculation, but if you want the world to have free images, do your part and sign up to pay!

[orlymaxed]

I wouldn't be surprised if it had to do with pushing people towards their firefly AI product. If they are going to do this maybe adobe consumers should start looking at alternatives. They really are double dipping such as their Substance 3d suite. Don't be greedy and just make it apart of the CC plans.

[Abambo]

I wouldn't be surprised if it had to do with pushing people towards their firefly AI product. If they are going to do this maybe adobe consumers should start looking at alternatives. They really are double dipping such as their Substance 3d suite. Don't be greedy and just make it apart of the CC plans.

By @orlymaxed

Firefly is an entirely different product. It has nothing to do with stock, and even less with free stock assets.

Substance 3D plans are also different from Creative Cloud plans, and there are also other Adobe products that are not part of the Creative Cloud subscription.