Adobe remains one of the top leaders in software solutions for image, video, audio, and web editing. Although there are plenty of alternatives out there, their fanbase remains mostly strong and committed. However, this has slowly been changing as the company continues to make its solutions more expensive, slowly pricing them out of the range of consumers and clearly limiting their focus on professionals.
Once upon a time, you used to be able to purchase perpetual licenses for Adobe software. Buying the current year’s version either online or in-store (ie, CompUSA, Best Buy, etc). It wasn’t cheap, but you then owned that version for as long as you wanted to use it.
Eventually, the company switched over to a subscription model that chased a lot of people away. Forcing users to pay monthly for as long as they want to be able to make use of the software. They no longer owned a license as you are now just renting it essentially. If you stop paying, you lose access.
Then the price hikes and limited specials. You’ll find they have discounts for students and teachers. However, although the special pricing sounds intriguing, reading the small print shows that it only lasts a year and then pushes them into the same price bracket as everyone else (3x the price). Making for a weak contribution to the community.
Needless to say, despite having a mostly strong fanbase, the company has lost a lot of customers over the years. Now, it seems to be losing even more overseas as it has been massively hiking prices for international users in other countries. The company used to base its pricing on the value of the currency and other variables of each country to determine how much people in these countries would be willing to spend (“willing” — but not always “capable” of).
When I say massively, this is no joke. This year, social platforms like Reddit have been swarming with discussions in regard to this. Some countries suddenly saw a price hike that is a heavy multiplier of the original price they were paying. A devastating blow to international users.
For example, one of our contacts in Yozgat (Turkey) explained that his monthly subscription with Adobe this year shot up from 190.80 TRY ($5.46 USD) to 1,387.20 TRY ($39.70 USD) per month. That is over 7x the price they were paying in a single price hike. Showing no interest in making it easy for these customers. Since our contact in Turkey was a hobbyist user with plenty of alternatives, he canceled his account and moved on to something else, despite being a long-time user. Most of his friends and colleagues seem to have done the same.
The same can be said all over, as all countries have seen a price hike this year. Some are more unfair than others. Other countries include (per Adobe) Algeria, Argentina, Armenia, Australia, Austria, Azerbaijan, Bahamas, Bahrain, Bangladesh, Barbados, Belarus, Belgium, Bolivia, Brazil, Bulgaria, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Egypt, El Salvador, Estonia, Finland, France, Georgia, Germany, Great Britain, Greece, Guatemala, Honduras, Hong Kong, Hungary, Iceland, India, Indonesia, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Jamaica, Japan, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Kenya, Korea, Republic of , Kuwait, Kyrgyzstan, Latvia, Lebanon, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Macao, Malaysia, Malta, Mauritius, Mexico, Moldova, Morocco, Nepal, Netherlands, New Zealand, Nicaragua, Nigeria, Norway, Oman, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Philippines, Poland, Portugal, Qatar, Romania, Russian Federation, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, Slovakia, Slovenia, South Africa, Spain, Sri Lanka, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan, Tajikistan, Tanzania, Thailand, Trinidad and Tobago, Tunisia, Turkmenistan, Ukraine, United Arab Emirates, Uruguay, Uzbekistan, Venezuela, Vietnam, and Yemen
It’s unknown how much this will affect the stock price of the company as we do not know how much of their quarterly profits come from international sales. But it is bound to put a dent or two (or more) somewhere. It’s unfortunate that a company shrouded with pricing complaints pushes on by only making things worse.
