Adobe Subscription
False advertising edit
Adobe advertises their products on their website as if they were a monthly subscription. However, they sign their users up for a yearly subscription without their knowledge.
Adobe has a two-week free cancellation policy, but after that, users will be charged for canceling their Adobe subscription.
They will then offer deals for users to stay with Adobe longer, which will cause them to go over their two-week free cancellation policy and thus have to pay to cancel.
Access to files edit
With the exception of Lightroom Classic, which offers a limited mode that can no longer edit, but still export images after cancelling a subscription, the file formats of Creative Cloud apps are completely proprietary and can only be opened, edited and exported without restrictions from Adobe Creative Cloud applications. This means that cancelling the subscription also leads to the user losing all access to the files created with their applications until they re-subscribe.
Moreover, when Adobe cancels a product (which they regularly do), the corresponding applications can in some cases no longer be installed. In this case, the user no longer has any way to access or edit their files. A prominent example of this is Adobe Encore, a DVD authoring program. If a customer needs to re-visit an old DVD project and re-export it with a minor adjustment, they now need to re-create it from scratch in another software at their own cost.
Access to old versions of CC apps edit
Adobe has recently disabled the ability to download older versions of their CC apps. Despite what they advertise on their website the last mayor version of the CC apps you can download is 2023. The ability to download any version prior to 2023 has been removed from their Creative Cloud Desktop App. Their online support, despite what you may read online, does not offer older app install files. They are artificially limited to offering you links for package installers of 2023 apps or later. If you need older installers you can resort to Github projects like CC-Offline-Package-Generator (by chriswayg) or adobe-packager (by Drovosek01). These scripts allow you to download older versions of apps directly from Adobe's server.
Disappearance of Fonts edit
Adobe offers access to a huge library of fonts as part of their Creative Cloud subscription.
However, those are not guaranteed to stay. For instance, on June 15th, 2020, several fonts were removed[1], leaving users who used these in their projects to purchase expensive licenses if they needed to make edits to existing documents. In theory, if a foundry goes out of business, this would leave users without access to the font they used for past projects, which could be detrimental if it is something like a corporate design for a company which would then be dependent on that font. Designers who offer templates for sale are faced with their work becoming worthless over night.
Moreover, font sync is tied to running a reasonably current version of the Creative Cloud background service app. Users using older computers with older operating system versions (particularly Macs) can lose access to the feature without prior warning. At some point, font sync just quietly stops working. In this case, users have to purchase new hardware to be able to continue to use the feature even though their old system would be perfectly capable of performing the tasks they need to perform on a daily basis. When purchasing perpetual licenses for fonts and software, this would not be an issue.
The Venezuela Incident edit
In 2019, users in Venezuela were temporarily locked out of their Adobe software[2] due to political disputes between Venezuela and the United States. Users were unable to do their work and had their livelihoods threatened. Unlike perpetually licensed software, which is usually guaranteed to work after purchase, users of an Adobe software can essentially be locked out of their software over night. Users were only eligible for a refund for their license fee, not the damages in reputation and loss of profit.
How to pay less to cancel edit
If you have to pay to cancel, there is a way to bypass having to pay as much money as they are offering.
On your adobe account, you can swap your plan with a much cheaper plan. You will have to pay for this new plan.
Then, using their 2 week free cancel policy, you can then cancel for free and both plans will be canceled.
However, you have avoided having to pay as much to cancel as you would have normally.