We download a program, and there it sits. We're happy to pay monthly when we can see what we're getting for it: TV shows or movies or heating or cooling or articles.īut paying a monthly fee for software doesn't feel the same. Netflix, after all, has some 36 million people cheerfully paying monthly. We don't even object to paying monthly fees for digital services. We don't bat an eye when we write checks for cable TV, Internet, phone, gas, electric, magazines, mortgage, and so on. There's nothing inherently wrong with monthly fees. No, the greater factor is something nobody's talking about: the shift from owning to renting. So it's not necessarily the pricing that's stirring up emotions. And hard-core professionals who use all the Adobe Creative Suite programs come out way ahead with the rental program. On the other hand, subscribing is a better deal for dabblers, those who can now rent Photoshop for $30 a month, starting and stopping as needed. If you upgraded only once in five years, you'd have spent $800, compared with $1,200 for renting. Each year's upgrade cost $200, but you could skip upgrading for a while, and the old software would continue to work just fine. In bygone days, you could buy Photoshop for $600. Wouldn't you rather have new features available as they are written, rather than waiting for next year's new version? That's worth something, right?īut what about the money? Adobe software will cost more-sometimes.
The rental program is supposed to offer steady incremental improvements all year long. Big-corporation software, supplied by companies such as IBM and Oracle, has been subscription-only for years.Īdobe points out that the annual big-upgrade cycle-a relic of the olden days, when software had to be shipped on floppies or CDs-no longer benefits anyone. Earlier this year Microsoft began offering its Office suite (Word, Excel, PowerPoint) for a $100-a-year subscription, although you can still buy the programs the old way if you prefer.
This idea-software as a subscription-is catching on. Instead this software is now available only for rent, for a perpetual monthly or yearly fee.
That's what Adobe managed to do this spring when it announced that it would no longer sell Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign and its other professional design programs. Even if the overall outcome is a step forward, a bit of customer disgruntlement is just a cost of doing business.Īpparently, however, it's also possible to enrage just about your entire customer base at once. Any little change will infuriate some subset of your customers: change the layout, change how a feature works, change the system requirements. You can't please all the people all the time, and nobody knows it better than tech companies.
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