With Adobe Creative Cloud and some other newer applications, you maintain your license to use Adobe software and services by paying a subscription fee every year or every month, as you might with Netflix or Spotify. The older way to pay for software is called a perpetual license, because you buy the license once and it doesn’t expire. ( Update: As of 2019, nearly all Adobe professional software is now available only through a Creative Cloud subscription.)įirst let’s make sure we understand the two common types of software licenses for consumer single-user software. If you want Adobe software but you don’t want to pay a regular subscription fee, do you still have options? Depending on what you need, the answer is “maybe”…although as of 2017, the non-subscription options from Adobe are fewer than ever. The Adobe transition to a subscription-based business model has been successful by many measures, although it doesn’t meet everyone’s needs.
