Adobe Creative Cloud

You’ve probably heard, Adobe announced yesterday that the company will focus all of its creative software development efforts on its Adobe Creative Cloud (CC) offering moving forward, thus killing off the boxed tools previously known as Creative Suite. It’s a move everyone saw coming, though I had guessed it wouldn’t happen until after CS 7.


There’s a lot of misinformation and assumption going around, so before you get frustrated and fly-off the handle, here are the facts.

Pricing:

  • If you currently own Creative Suite 3, 4, 5, or 5.5: $30 per month for the first year and $50 per month after that.
  • If you currently own Creative Suite 6: $20 per month for the first year and $50 per month after that.
  • If you’re a new user buying Creative Cloud for the first time: $50 per month.
  • Student or educator version: $20 per month for the first year if you sign up before June 25th. After June 25th, or after your first year, you’ll pay $30 per month.
  • Single app subscriptions, like Photoshop only: $20 per month, per app.

[zilla_alert style=”yellow”] The above pricing only applies if you subscribe to Creative Cloud BEFORE JULY 31, 2013! After July 31, you pay $50 per month or $30 per month as a student or educator (barring any future discount offers). [/zilla_alert]

Other Facts about Adobe Creative Cloud:

  • Despite the “per month” term used in the pricing, you cannot subscribe to CC on a per-month term. CC is only available in 12-month subscriptions. So the standard CC subscription will cost a new user $600 weather you use it one day per year or 365 days.
  • These are not cloud apps. The Creative Cloud apps are the same desktop apps you’re currently using. You download them and install them just as you would any other app you buy.
  • You do NOT have to be connected to the internet 24/7 in order to use CC apps. The apps will connect to the Adobe license server one time per month to verify your license (which is tied to your Adobe ID, not a serial number). Just an FYI, Creative Suite apps have been doing this for quite some time now anyway.
  • Any updates to the app that occur in your subscription year are free.
  • You can install CC apps on up to two computers, and your subscription includes access to the Mac and Windows versions of the software
  • You do NOT have to upgrade to the latest version if you choose not to. If you were to subscribe today, you could continue using the current CC apps as long as you continue to subscribe.

Is it right for you?

Well it really doesn’t matter, does it? Adobe has chosen to drop the standard boxed Creative Suite, and I don’t see them reversing coarse. Ever. This is the future of all software. It really doesn’t matter if it’s going to cost you more or less than the current pricing model, because this is your only option if you want/need to continue using Adobe applications.

If you currently have Creative Suite 6, you may be wondering if you should subscribe after the new versions of the CC apps ship in mid-June. I can’t answer that for you, but I will say that you’ll get them for $240 for the first year, a $360 discount.

I’m not happy about the lack of options with pricing either. But it is what it is. And quite frankly, I’ll be quite happy to not have to wait 18-months for feature updates to the software I use every day. And I’m really looking forward to using the new InDesign (what would be known as CS7) and some of the Creative Cloud collaboration tools.

If you’re a print designer, you most likely have little option to switch to something else. There are no true substitutes to InDesign, Illustrator, Acrobat, Flash, etc. in our industry. Only Photoshop has any real competition (Pixelmator is excellent!). This may change in the future, but for now Adobe is king of the sandbox and you have to play with their toys. If you’re a web designer, your options are much more open. If you’re willing to learn new software that may not be as full-featured as Adobe’s, I encourage you to seek them out and give them a try.

Adobe is just the latest vendor to announce the switch to a subscription model. Microsoft recently announced that they’ll be switching to the same model with MS Office when the next version ships as well.