Adobe has been sending out notices of price increases for its Creative Cloud subscription plans the past week or so. I got mine earlier this week.
Starting April 16, 2018 prices go up for several Creative Cloud plan types.
Here’s the breakdown of the increases from Adobe:
“Pricing will vary by plan — for example, for the annual pay monthly plans:
- Creative Cloud for individuals Single App plans will increase to US$20.99 per month from US$19.99 per month, a $1 per month increase.
- Creative Cloud for individuals All Apps plans will increase to US$52.99 per month from US$49.99 per month, a $3 per month increase.
- Creative Cloud for teams All Apps plans will increase to US$79.99 per month from US$69.99 per month, a $10 per month increase.
Existing customers will receive specific information about their membership pricing directly from Adobe.”
Current STE Student/Education, Creative Cloud Photography and Acrobat CC plans will see no pricing adjustment.
This price increases were signalled last fall at Adobe MAX 2017, which took place is Adobe’s highest revenue quarter ever. Adobe gives no direct reason for its price increase (e.g., it’s having trouble paying the bills, shareholders are upset with revenue, etc.), and only points to the fact that the prices have stayed the same during the past five years.
This is in the FAQ section of its website about the price increase. I don’t understand why Adobe puts this question in the FAQ if it is going to evade its own FAQ. It’s almost like Canon answering questions about 4K cameras a couple years ago…
Adobe has become the giant that no one else can touch.
It offers a suite of products for the creative pro that is unrivaled in the market. Sure, there are programs that can compete with one or two of Adobe’s products at a time. However, no one makes a digital suite of products that covers the full gamut of Adobe’s solutions from photo to video to design to publishing. Adobe is supplying a product experience that has an unchecked demand right now. Adobe can easily push the price another 6% for individuals and 14% or whatever it decides to push to production houses that have massive teams tied to Creative Cloud.
Adobe achieved record annual revenue of $7.30 billion in fiscal year 2017, representing 25 percent year-over-year growth. Creative Cloud alone accounted for $4.17 billion of that revenue.
Adobe’s prices have stayed the same over the past five years; however, Adobe continues to add more subscribers as its revenue breaks its own records quarter after quarter and year after year.
Of course, I’m going to keep paying for the service for the reasons I mentioned above. The vast majority of other creative pros will do the same.
Where is the pain point that pushes the market too far though? What’s Adobe Creative Cloud worth to you and are you considering other options after the price increase?
I’m sure Adobe already knows how to gradually increase the rates in such a way that people will continue paying, even if they complain about it.
I avoided Adobe’s Perpetual Payment Plan as long as possible, until I started doing video and had to give in. I got the email from Adobe yesterday and wasn’t surprised.
It’s all part of Big Business and the pressure to satisfy their stockholders. Another fine example of the difference between making a living (people like us), and making a killing (companies like Adobe).
Haven’t received my notice yet. As a video post-production pro that does a lot of freelance motion graphics work, I had little choice but to subscribe shortly after CS6 really became obsolete. I know many clinging onto CS6, but some of those are struggling to make ends meet at the moment. Many have switched to either Avid or FCPX. Avid’s perpetual license option is apparently popular enough to keep offering…
Am I considering other options after the price increase? No – I’ve already done it, and gone.
“Due to the record profits generated by our rental scheme, we have no choice but to increase our rates. What are you going to do about it? That’s what we thought…”
EXACTLY!!!
I have a cheese grater Mac and CS6, and they work just fine for me. I’ll hold on to them for as long as I can. But when everything dies out and I have to upgrade, then it’s goodbye to Adobe. Affinity Photo and Designer are very nice tools and I don’t need a subscription. Options are available and I intend to use them.
There are alternative applications to Adobe products which are getting better all the time worth noting. All depends if you are tied into a graphic or video studio environment where you have to supply other companies specific file formats from specific software. If not and you are an independent small company or freelancer, these products are worth looking into and still offer stand alone pricing and lets you decide if you need to upgrade or just stay with your version. Upgrades available at low prices when you decide. These are my favorites and are seriously very powerful applications when compared to Adobe CS ….
1. Sony Vegas Pro version 15 (windows based) which has many of the features of Premiere and Final Cut at bit lower price with ease of use, and quick learning powerful video software. Great for wedding video or commercial video work including HD, BluRay and 4K. Final Cut is available for Mac.
2. ACDSee Ultimate Studio (combines Lightroom slider-like controls with Photoshop like layers and brushes, graduated filters, cloning, healing, liquify and many effects) and is available as standalone product or subscription (your choice at lower than PS prices). This is version 11 of its product. Much of what PS or LR can do. Easy to learn if you know LR or PS already. Buy standalone and you choose when to upgrade (at lower priced upgrade costs.)
3. DXO PhotoLab (version 11) which offers Lightroom slider like controls and tons of features with new Nik Software local color controls built into latest version, which is color range like masking controls (formally known as Viveza – an outstanding color masking method (Viveza is one of the best quick localized masking color controllers, I’ve used for 10 years, faster than masking with color channels in photoshop). DXO bought out NIK so expect to see new versions of Color FX, and SilverEffects.
4. Other great softwares include Portrait Pro 2 with slider controls, Landscape 2 for fast sky changes, quick masking controls and landscape color effects, and Body Portrait Pro, low priced compared to yearly subscription fees as standalone products, and some features are specialized in ways that outperforms PS for ease of use, once you learn quickly to use it.
5. Indesign is still king in publishing (Adobe bought this program from Aldus Pagemaker and developed it more years ago) and Indesign program killed Quark Xpress sales which originally dominated publishing. Adobe Illustrator is great, however lesser know but powerful Corel Draw practically has all of the same functionally as an alternative. I’ve used Corel Draw for 10 years.
6. Photoshop and Lightroom have a lot of competition for photo editing these days in 2018. Most designer would pick Indesign and Illustrator but there are alternatives. Vegas is a powerful editing software.
Summary: Adobe you may be king for now if full suites (we all love Photoshop), but there are several other great softwares out there that can do many of the things what you do well and getting better all the time. Enough said.
Adobe became the standard with Photoshop, Lightroom, and Photoshop Elements. It might have pushed one price gouge too far though and be well on its way to the standard of the past. Affinity and Topaz Labs offer a lot of the same for a one time payment, instead of perpetual gouging. “Subscriptions” were a marketers ploy at price/value “overclocking” and its coffin and those for the companies that still adhere to it might as well be inscribed with “Now with 100% more content.” Even hardcore professionals insisting on Adobe will sooner, or later wake up and smell the “cloud” of their money burning, avoid the stench and move on to more receptive and reasonable alternatives!
I am actively looking at different options and have licensed a bunch of them. I have Affinity Photo (and Affinity Designer), On1 RAW, Luminar 2018, and so on. I’m waiting for Skylum to release their Asset Management to see how I like that. Photo Mechanic is also an option, but there is no built-in editor. But I suspect that by the end of 2018, I will have moved on from Adobe. Pity. But they are following the same path that Quark took and at one point they were unassailable, too.
This is surely an opportunity for disruption for the image editing software industry – and it already happening with many new alternatives like affinity photo;Luminar
4 billion dollars increase revenue because of a change in pricing model – for most us … we are re paying a marginal increase in new functionality — it s an overkill with too many bells and whistles — and the re-arrangement of icons is annoying; all in the name of a software enhancements.
As the Rocker Frank Zappa once said: “save your money don’t go to the show ” !