One of Adobe's key announcements the last time its massive, spendy Creative Suite was updated to CS5.5 was that the software would be available as a subscription and not just as an outright purchase. The subscription offer seemed to lower the barrier to entry for the suite—which includes Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, and more depending on the edition and runs from $1,299 to $2,599 when purchased outright—but a subscription could be had for just $65 a month. At this year's Adobe Max convention, meanwhile, the company announced Adobe Creative Cloud, which was available for just $49.99 per month.
With the demise of Flash Player for the mobile Web and a recent layoff of 750 employees, Adobe is clearly looking for increased streams of reliable income.
But the president of a prominent Adobe user group yesterday posted an open letter to the company, stating that the company's new pricing policy shuts out longtime users of the Creative Suite. The problem, according to National Association of Photoshop Professionals president Scott Kelby, is that upgrade pricing for version 6 will only be available to users of version 5 or 5.5. So users of anything before that will have to purchase the software at full price, "as if we were never Adobe customers at all," Kelby wrote.
Adobe's Web site includes CS5.5 upgrade pricing going back to CS2, and even touts a limited-time 20 percent discount for upgraders. But when it comes to CS6, a Nov. 9 blog post by Adobe senior vice president David Wadhwani on Creative Cloud includes the upgrade caveat: "With regards to upgrades, we are changing our policy for perpetual license customers. In order to qualify for upgrade pricing when CS6 releases, customers will need to be on the latest version of our software (either CS5 or CS5.5 editions)."
This last bit is what has Kelby and thousands of his organization's members steamed. "I feel the timing of this new pricing structure is patently unfair to your customers (and our members)" writes Kelby.
The more than 300 comments on his post are no less vociferous. "This is not the way to treat loyal customers. Customer service has taken a huge nosedive from too many companies who have grown too large to see the little guy," writes one commenter, Fred Lang. John Van't Land writes, " I can’t afford annual upgrades that cost more than most other software original purchases. It is simple greed. I’m starting to have the same feelings toward Adobe that Steve Jobs had."
But at the end of his post, Kelby has a proposal for Adobe to put things right with its users, who overwhelmingly support his arguments: Make CS6 the "transition upgrade"—that is, one that users know will be required for future upgrades. Whether or not the giant creative software maker will listen remains to be seen.
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