[Chris Jacek]

Do you have a preference between the two? For me, performance during playback from a computer is probably issue number one, followed closely by quality, encoding time (especially in AE), and preview playback performance. Size is only an issue to the extent that it might affect playback performance.

Professor, Producer, Editor
and former Apple Employee

[Chris Jacek]

[Aindreas Gallagher] “[Chris Jacek] “Or to put it in a pop-culture context, “I am altering the deal. Pray I don’t alter it further.””

Very nice.”

Thanks. I figure you can never go wrong with an Empire reference. I’d say it’s the best of the series, but I don’t want to start another major debate.

Professor, Producer, Editor
and former Apple Employee

[Chris Jacek]

Finally, thanks to someone for actually hearing what I’m saying. I thought I’ve been clear enough, but all I keep getting from others (especially those at Adobe) is that the Creative Cloud is a better deal than we currently have. Despite the continued claims that the simple math works out if favor of Creative Cloud, it is simply not true. Not in my case. And not in the case of ANY educational CLP customers who have taken advantage of the maintenance licensing that has been an Adobe mainstay for years, if not decades.

Here, once again, is my simple math. Our current costs, including instant upgrades for every CS release, is $6.25 per month, per seat, for Production Premium. The cloud is $20 a month, and then $30 a month after a year. That math seems pretty simple to me.

Is $6.25 a month an insanely good deal? Hell yes! That’s how Adobe won our business. That, and the excellence of their products. Unfortunately, in the world of bottom lines in higher education, excellence alone is not enough. Genarts Sapphire is awesome, but $850 for a plug-in (that’s after 50% educational discount) is NEVER going to happen. So here we were, paying our $6.25 a month per seat, and being the world’s most enthusiastic Adobe cheerleaders, and now we are being told by Adobe that our best financial option is $30 a month? No even remotely true.

If Adobe really believed that this new $30 a month option was the best deal, why did they INSTANTLY kill the maintenance licensing program. It was barely a month from announcement to death. If the Cloud was so obviously a better deal, wouldn’t we all flock to it, and abandon the maintenance program that has served as so well in the past? There would be no need to kill the existing program if the new option was so much better. The only reason to kill a program that abruptly, is because you are trying to force everyone into a more expensive model.

Or to put it in a pop-culture context, “I am altering the deal. Pray I don’t alter it further.”

Professor, Producer, Editor
and former Apple Employee

[Chris Jacek]

[Dennis Radeke] “A suite to suite upgrade costs today $375 for Production Premium assuming you have the immediate previous version of CS5.5. If you have CS5, it is more. A year of Creative Cloud at $19.99 is about $360, but comes with much more. Also, your institution can contact Adobe to look into 3 year plans which we offer.”

This isn’t true. We have a CLP license with a maintenance contract. Our costs, before Adobe changed the rules by killing the maintenance licensing, are $150 for two years of upgrades, which is $6.25 a month. For that we DO get all the newest versions of the CS suite, immediately upon their release.

I though I’d made that pretty clear in my post.

Professor, Producer, Editor
and former Apple Employee

[Chris Jacek]

[Dennis Radeke] “Chris, I don’t think you have all of the facts here. For example, maintenance is built into the new model pricing structure. One thing Adobe has always done is give very good value to our customers. You might not like the model and that’s okay, but I’d encourage you to get all of the facts.”

Actually, I think the model is a pretty good idea. It is the price that we have a problem with. The iTunes music store could still be a great model regardless of price, but if songs cost $10 each, nobody would like it.

The math is actually ridiculously simple. We currently pay $6.25 a month per seat to keep current with all the Adobe products we use (Production Premium package). To keep that same functionality under the Creative Cloud system would cost us $30 a month per seat, after the promotional period. We can’t afford that. We don’t need the extras like Dreamweaver, cloud storage, etc.., They would be nice, but not in our current plans.

Make no mistake, the actual model of the Creative Cloud would be just fine if it didn’t quintuple our costs. Offer my school the Creative Cloud for $6.25 per month, and we’ll sign up today.

Professor, Producer, Editor
and former Apple Employee

[Chris Jacek]

[Dennis Radeke] “@ $360 for a year ($20 x 12), that’s still LESS expensive than purchasing a single suite to say nothing of all the apps and services you actually get. If you choose not to consider all of the other stuff like cloud storage, services, built in upgrades, new apps, tablet apps, etc. thats fine. The math still adds up for a single suite…

I would totally agree with you if Adobe was getting greedy and trying to charge more, but from everything I’ve seen, it’s simply not the case.

Like I said (and will likely say throughout 2013!), some people will not agree or get it. I can respect that. The fact is that today, CS6 is cheaper by purchasing as Creative Cloud on a subscription than as a box copy. That is true for EDU and for commercial.”

Thanks for chiming in, Dennis. I was hoping to get your take on things. I must, however, respectfully take issue with a couple of your points.

1. The price of $360 a year is not actually cheaper than what we already have. Not even the $240 for the first year at the $20 promotional rate. We already have the licenses, so we are paying $75 a year right now. That is, until Adobe killed the maintenance license. If we get some kind of additional discount for already owning the CLP perpetual licenses, nobody has told me about it. And believe me, I have gone to extreme measures to educate myself.

2. Even if we were purchasing a new license for Production Premium, at CLP pricing, it would cost about $400, plus another $300 for 2 years of maintenance licensing. That’s $700 for 4 years of product licensing, with all upgrades included. With the Creative Cloud for education, it would be $240 for the first year, plus $1080 for the next 3 years, for a total $1320 over 4 years. That’s STILL almost twice as much, and at the end of that 4 years, we have nothing. At the end of 4 years of CLP, we still have the newest version of the software.

3. The simple fact is that we are no longer able to continue in a system that Adobe sold to us, on a promise of budget predictability. The is the opposite of predictable from our standpoint. We have already budgeted the promised annual cost of $75 to keep our Production Premium licenses current. To keep the software we need for our program, there is no option. Adobe did, in fact, pull out the rug, because we only have $75 a year per seat. What can we get for the $75 a year that we have budgeted, thanks to Adobe’s failed promised? Lightworks.

4. Even at the promotional rate of $20 a month, Adobe has overpriced the Creative Cloud for education when compared to its traditional educational pricing. For as long as I can remember, Adobe discounted their software about 75% for its educational customers, which is why they are currently the leader in the educational market. To keep with that practice of discounting 75-80% for education, the price should be $10-12.50 per month for the Creative Cloud. At that price, I might actually be able to get the cost approved. It may still be double our current costs, but I believe that THIS is the price-point where the extra benefits of the full suite of products becomes a viable value.

Thanks again Dennis for contributing to our discussion. Unfortunately, I’m not sure that you provided me with much in the way of new information, and certainly have not given us any viable options. We simply cannot afford this price increase, and we will likely not buy any more Adobe products. We’ll use CS6 or CS6.5 (our maintenance still lasts until summer) as long as possible, and then move on to something else.

So Adobe probably has about a year to provide us with a realistic option. I hope they do, because my students absolutely love the Adobe products.

Professor, Producer, Editor
and former Apple Employee

[Chris Jacek]

[Bernard Newnham] “We use Premiere at our university, as the educational cost of the software is low. “

Bernard, does your school use CLP licensing, and maintenance contracts? If so, what is your plan going forward, given Adobe’s killing of maintenance licensing and large price increase?

Professor, Producer, Editor
and former Apple Employee

[Chris Jacek]

[Miko Meloni] “Maybe Autodesk Smoke?
It’s free for students.”

I was not aware of this. Thanks for the tip. Very impressive of Autodesk to go “above and beyond” like this.

Professor, Producer, Editor
and former Apple Employee

[Chris Jacek]

[Aindreas Gallagher] “Again: adobe are really likely to tiptoe completely past this discussion. the guys who come in here likely have no say in what is pretty rabid short term dollar hungry policy from the top.”

Aindreas, I thought you might find this post interesting. I started this same thread on the Premiere forum, in the hopes of hearing something from somebody from Adobe. I actually got one, which I pasted below. It is not very encouraging, however. It seems that I have been getting this same song and dance from several directions and division from within Adobe, and each time I call, I am never even allowed to escalate to a supervisor. I’m simply told “that’s all I can offer you at this time.” Very disturbing. As you can see from my response (pasted after the Adobe response), my patience for this situation is wearing thin. Shady corporate ethos from Apple and Adobe, and the possible death of Avid, may eventually drive us all into the arms of open-source products.

Hi Guys,

To be clear about the way maintenance giving you upgrade rights on top of the original purchase and how the creative cloud offering works – the per seat fee for Master Collection (which is platform agnostic! being on a Mac or PC the same account access knows which installer you require), with other services including training videos across the entire toolset, a space for social from behance (coming) and free new feature based upgrades drops (can be as frequent as per month if they are ready to drop) is in the constant pricing model that’s subscribed to the plan.

The cost of per seat is locked in and can be budgeted in forecasts. Getting Team allows you to allow access to students based on an admin assigned sign in and when students leave, graduate that account is closed and reassigned. Seats can be scaled mid-way too.

CLP licenses won’t have access to the new feature rich (innovation based) updates – legally. This meant in the past that updates of this nature required waiting until a full year/18month cycle was released before the features could be passed on at the extra cost.

The Cloud based subscription bypasses the innovation lag.

So effectively $40 per seat is $40 per seat even when a major update drops. If you a in subscription timeframe you effectively have maintenance built into the price.

From the sites I saw you would otherwise be paying about $600 for the Prod Premium only software, then the maintenance on top. If the students want to learn where video goes across digital publishing, web etc, you need to buy more software. This is just software there are no extended services included in this product line.

Reapply the mathematics knowing the maintenance is included in the pricing and consider the extent of allowing students access to the software on their computers too. They get access to 2 Adobe Expert lessons per seat/year and 100G of cloud based storage.

Hope this helps a little more about understanding the value of Creative Cloud.

🙂

JB
Adobe Systems,
Video Solutoins Consultatnt, A/NZ

Jon Barrie
Adobe Video Solutions Consultant ANZ
Jon’s YouTube Tutorial Page
follow Jon with twitter

Re: Price increase of 600% for Production Premium for our college
by Chris Jacek on Mar 2, 2013 at 9:24:47 pm

I understand how it works, and everything you mention sounds great. Except for the price. The fact that there is no longer an upfront cost means little to us, because we have already paid the upfront costs of the perpetual license. We retain our license when the student leaves, and can then re-assign it to another of our students when they join the program. Since the computers are portable, they ARE using them at home, even though they actually belong to the college until the day they graduate or leave the school otherwise. All this, we are already receiving, but for only $6.25 a month. I know it is only software, but that is truly only what we need, and more importantly, what we can afford. Are you suggesting that the extras you mention are worth over $33 per month? They certainly are not worth that to us.

I think the Cloud is a great idea, but your pricing structure is exploitative to educators as compared to your previous licensing system. And frankly, we will NEVER be able to afford it, which leaves us with 2 choices: Keep using our old stuff, or look elsewhere. Adobe used to be a company that valued its educational users by aggressively discounting their products 75-80% over the commercial prices. That’s why we chose Adobe in the first place. This will also be the reason we STOP using Adobe products if this new policy is not improved. To keep with your traditional aggressive educational pricing, you should be offering the Creative Cloud for about $10-12 per month.

If this new pricing structure is such a great deal, then why kill the old system so quickly? If it is such a great deal, people would certainly flock to the new system and abandon the one we’ve been using. But Adobe’s decision to quickly kill the old licensing system, shows that they know they are screwing over their educational customers. I noticed that Adobe still offers “Upgrade Plan” for CLP licensees on the commercial side, but not education.

I think it’s pretty obvious that Adobe no longer wants to court education with the aggressive discounts that they used to. How long do you think that educational institutions are going to support Adobe when you jack up the prices so much so fast?

Professor, Producer, Editor
and former Apple Employee

Professor, Producer, Editor
and former Apple Employee

[Chris Jacek]

[Craig Alan] “My only regrets was possibly not going with PPro. But given your post maybe I made the right decision. Not sure how they could just up their rates that radically after institutions bought in. What happens when the term expires? Can you just continue to use the non-updated software until you can afford to renew? That’s the case with FCP X as far as I know. But the renewal isn’t 600% higher either. Not a smart move on Adobe’s part. They have an opportunity here to take over FCP 7’s share of the pro world. Why make it hard for schools to offer it?”

I think you may be right. I never would have expected this from Adobe, given their long history of aggressive educational pricing. Just to be clear, our licenses are perpetual, so we will get to keep using whatever version we have last. We’ll keep getting our updates until our maintenance contract runs out, so I’m obviously hoping for some nice updates between now and then. That would buy me a year or so. By then I’m hoping we’ll have a clearer picture of the fate of Avid. I could certainly go back to Avid if they keep with their great $299 deal for 4 years. But that still leaves me stuck when it comes to After Effects, which is a large part of my curriculum.

For what it’s worth, I don’t know if Adobe plans to raise their price at all for new licenses. For all I know, they may keep with their aggressive academic pricing in that instance. But I never intended on having to buy another new license unless my program grew large enough to expand beyond what we have. The maintenance contract guaranteed that I wouldn’t have to. Now Adobe won’t even let me renew that contract, and the only solutions they offer to my situation are 1) Buy a new full license for the product that I already bought a full license for (no upgrade pricing) or 2) Pay $40 a month per seat for the Creative Cloud Team.

Ironically, we will probably go with option #3, which is to keep using our last version of the software for as long as possible. I call this irony because this is exactly what Adobe’s new system was designed to avoid: People skipping versions.

Professor, Producer, Editor
and former Apple Employee