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Why subscriptions are bad for Adobe
updated 9 years, 9 months ago
14 Members
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19 Posts
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Here’s an interesting blog view…
https://notesonvideo.blogspot.ca/2013/05/why-subscriptions-are-bad-for-adobe.html
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I can’t say I really disagree with anything stated in the article. I would add that the subscription model will also generate their own competition in the form of software companies who see an opportunity by not following the same model.
Photo editing software that no one would have considered previously because of Photoshop, or vector software no one would have looked twice at because of Illustrator, could make inroads because some consumers will look anywhere but at the cloud model for pricing.
Andy
https://www.timesavertutorials.com
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I disagree. If Adobe doesn’t offer compelling reasons to keep using Adobe software people will find other options. This is true with a perpetual license as well as with a cloud subscription. $50/mo is no where close to a lock in price. I mean, years ago many users and facilities with 10’s (if not hundreds) of thousands of dollars invested in Avid gear found ways to leave Avid and switch to FCP Legend.
I also disagree with the idea that subscription equates to a monopoly. I’ve seen other people make this same leap and I don’t understand why. Did Avid need a subscription plan to gain near monopoly status in the TV/film parts of the industry and ultimately rest on it’s laurels? Did Microsoft? If Adobe doesn’t make compelling products a competitor will rise up, people will look elsewhere and eventually leave. That’s the bottom line.
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You could say that at any stage a customer having second thoughts could just cancel the subscription however the most cost effective subscription is a yearly one. If you cancel that you will pay 50% of the balance owing for the year in question and that penalty is a pretty good incentive to not cancel.
Abode could have avoided a lot of fuss by being more generous with their opening offers for the CC subscription rollout.
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The pricing is just off. For me, a previous Master Collection owner, it is right in line with the upgrade pricing for that on a yearly basis. I’ve been on the cloud for a year and for me the cost was fine. I upgraded every year, and this actually smoothed out the costs, and with the first year at $29m/mo it was still cheaper than upgrading every two years, and you stayed up to date and had a few extra features over the box set. They added Lightroom for example which wasn’t in the master collection box. For me it was a easy choice.
But if you have the production bundle and only updated every other update, that first 2 years will cost $960 instead of maybe $400 for a single production bundle update.
I thought things were supposed to be cheaper when you signed a contract or opted for something like a subscription? But I guess not when the company takes away all other options.
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[Andrew Kimery] “If Adobe doesn’t offer compelling reasons to keep using Adobe software people will find other options.”
Like what exactly? If you rely on After Effects and Illustrator for your work, what exactly “other options” are you going to move to? With the previous model, you could subsist on a version until you could afford an upgrade. Now you are forced into the upgrade, or forced into obsolescence.
When Avid facilities moved to FCP Legacy, it was already a maturing application. What are the illustrator and After Effects equivalents?
As I said before, I think this cloud model will produce competitors, but only because their upsetting the entire ecosystem which before was content to always use CS products for design and graphics. I just don’t know personally of any comparable Illustrator competitors. You could make an argument for Motion as a competitor to After Effects, but we all know that Motion only covers a portion of what After Effects does. So where do the people who’ve so completely relied on CS products go?
Andy
https://www.timesavertutorials.com
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Let me just say how I’m going to respond to this pricing. I’m an occasional user of After Effects, Encore, Photoshop and Illustrator. Our organization currently owns two versions of Production Premium installed on two workstations and two laptops.
I will probably upgrade to CS6 permanent license for both. Likely, I will keep using that license as long as possible. When it becomes necessary to upgrade After Effects for new features, I will probably buy a single CC license for that one program. I will keep the remaining computers permanently on CS6. I do not foresee a feature in Photoshop, Illustrator or Encore that will require me to upgrade. After all I have CS3 on my personal laptop and have never felt I lacked anything.
While I’m just two licenses, the result is Adobe will probably earn less money from me over the coming years. I’m happy with FCP X, but this makes me less likely to consider Premiere.
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I get what you’re saying about the programs. If that’s what you think is best for you then who’s to say different? But I think only talking about Creative Cloud in terms of the programs is pointless when you don’t consider the other features that come along with your subscription (and the things that are still to come).
You wanna get to the App Store? You’re gonna need an Apple device. You wanna get to the Creative Cloud? You’re gonna need a subscription.
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The CC is an interesting beast already…I haven’t paid a cent, other than owning the CS6 Master Collection on DVD, and I have access to the Cloud (had to sign up for it, of course). I’ve already downloaded Edge Animate, the replacement for Flash Catalyst. It’s a freebie, and it is for graphic designers who don’t want to become programmers, but need to create HTML 5 and interactive content for the web and interactive documents:
https://html.adobe.com/edge/animate/
I think that CC is going to be forging ahead with all sorts of breakthroughs of this sort, as the subscription base grows. I’m not quite sold on the subscription model, but I’m open to seeing how it develops.
Joe Bourke
Owner/Creative Director
Bourke Media
http://www.bourkemedia.com -
[Joseph W. Bourke] “it is for graphic designers who don’t want to become programmers, but need to create HTML 5 and interactive content for the web and interactive documents:
https://html.adobe.com/edge/animate/“
Interesting. I wish there was a video demo for this. I’m still using a proprietary video/audio player I bought from ESA years ago for the Members Area of one of my websites. I add code to this Flash player so that it has fallback to HTML5 for iPad and iPhone users. At the moment, HTML5 still does not seem overly robust.
It will be interesting to see where it all goes, but at this time I still need to be able to serve up both Flash and HTML5, and it appears about 80% of my users are still using web browsers with Flash.
Dave
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