Adobe Just Radically Overhauled Its Business Model And Won't Sell New Software Any More
At its MAX customer conference being held this week in Los Angeles, the company announced that it will only be selling future versions of its software on a subscription basis via its Creative Cloud.
The last version of Adobe software for purchase the old fashioned way, where you pay once and install it on your PC, is Creative Suite 6. There will be no Creative Suite 7.
Creative Cloud was launched about a year ago but it didn't win people over immediately because it felt more like a new way to buy Adobe software than a new product, the Next Web's Harrison Weber explains.
Since then, Adobe users have started to realize the benefits, namely that Creative Cloud gives them access to lots of Adobe's software without having to pay for new software licenses. Some half a million people have become cloud customers, David Wadhwani, Adobe's SVP of Digital Media said in a press release.
Weber has done the math and says that if you use more than one Adobe product, Creative Cloud will cost you less.
A single app subscription costs $19.99 per month. But for $49.99 per month, you can get access to the whole suite which is all of Adobe's major tools like Dreamweaver, Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign and a bunch of smaller tools like Acrobat.
Anyone who owns a copy of Creative Suite version 3 or later can get the first year of Creative Cloud for $29.99 per month. For teams, Adobe will charge $70/month and offer the first year for $40/month as a an upgrade.
Adobe's screen-grabbing, no-coding graphics tool Adobe Fireworks was originally included with the Creative Cloud, but Adobe just announced that it was killing that product.
We'll see if Adobe's customers kick and scream and fight the change.
If this goes well, it could be a sign for other software makers trying to get their customers to move to a subscription and cloud model.
Microsoft must be watching closely.
We've reached out to Adobe for comment.