I've spent quite a lot of time looking at the implications of the new 'Creative Cloud' deal for our company. I have decided that for us, it's a very BAD deal indeed...
1: As a UK company the list price for Creative Cloud %152 the US price. CC for teams here works out at $102/user/month. The exact same software and online solution for half as much again as US users are being asked for. We can't see any justification for this market segmentation. Adobe software has always cost a lot more to worldwide users outside the US marketplace, but with a 'cloud-based' product delivered entirely online (under the new CC regime) how on Earth, can these price differences continue to be justified?
2: Creative Cloud for teams is being charged at a considerably higher rate than for individuals. Buying numerous seats and being a loyal customer will actually cost a lot more than the per-seat price for individual users. The 'Teams' offer does include increased cloud storage, but we just don't need this, and don't expect to be charged more per seat for the priviledge of being a multi-user customer.
3: Subscription at the advertised rates is not only too expensive, it just doesn't suit us at all. As many have said before, we upgrade our software when we can afford it. Our business is sporadic, so we prefer to be in control of our spending. The subsciption model represents a constant drain on our resources. If Adobe want to offer a subscription model, then that's fine for those that might want it, but the option to buy software shouldn't be withdrawn from the customers who prefer to purchase their software outright.
4: Creative Cloud includes a lot of things we don't need. We don't actually need to be paying Adobe for cloud storage of our projects. We didn't ask for 100GB of cloud storage per team user, and we certainly shouldn't be paying for it out of our software spend.
5: Monopolistic Behaviour. With customers on a monthly subscription, Adobe can and will introduce features and increase prices at a pace to suit themselves. As customers, we lose control of how much software we buy and how often. The subscription model of tied-in customers is just bad for us and cetainly bad for innovation and competition in the marketplace.
I encourage users to make their opinions known to Adobe about the new scheme and I sincerely hope that Adobe will give serious consideration to the legitimate concerns of their user-base.
I look forward to the retraction of the 'cloud only' decision soon.
Chris.