When Adobe CC (aka. Adobe Creative Cloud) first came out I was intrigued. As someone in software design myself, I am not inherently opposed to a monthly/yearly licensing system, although I believe it needs to be done right and it has to be an option provided alongside the traditional “buy this software once, own it forever” style licensing. While the CC service isn’t right for my personal use (I have a commercial-use CS5 Master Suite that suits my needs), I signed up my company for the Creative Cloud for Teams version. Although there were undeniably some advantages to the CC suite (being able to use the software on any computer made it easy for me to work from home), the overall negatives are so bad that I absolutely do not recommend it.

1. One plan does NOT fit all

Despite numerous complaints about the lack of plan customizability, Adobe seems to have no interest in offering their customers options on what software and how much cloud space they want. After using CC for a few months, I realized that the price (7,000 yen–approximately 70USD–per month, per license) was extremely high given that Photoshop, Illustrator, and InDesign were the only software we were using. The 2GB cloud space was also not used, nor was there any need for it in the foreseeable future. Ultimately, I realized that I had set myself up to waste a lot of money I couldn’t afford to spend because of the rigid pricing plan setup.

2. An untenable contract

When I was signing up I didn’t think much about the “required one year” contract (to be absolutely clear: the one year contract was mandatory for the type of service I signed up for; there was no “month-to-month” option). Continue reading