These days, a lot of companies are offering their software at monthly or annual subscriptions while continuing to offer a one-time fee license for that particular edition of the software. It's a great way to get access to a software that you can't afford all at once, but you'll pay hundreds, if not thousands, extra by using the the software for an extended period on a subscription compared to buying an actual license for full price. Companies earn a killing by offering subscriptions, which is why they're becoming so popular now with Office and popular Adobe software. Thoughts?
Considering the fact that software is always being updated, it's more cost-effective to pay the monthly subscription fee rather than fork out a couple of Benjamins and have to pay a little more for an upgrade later on. That's also great for the casual user who may use the software maybe once in . . . say, six months. S/he'll pay for the software only when s/he uses it, which is great.
You don't actually get the full functionality of the actual retail version, though, right? At least with things like Office 365.. So it's not really that much better to subscribe rather than buy retail, unless I'm completely wrong about how the whole system works?
Microsoft has been pretty generous with their Office subscriptions. It's only like $5 per month for Office 365 I believe, which amounts to only $60 per year which is still a great deal. But on top of that they make it fairly easy to get it for free (if your company is large enough and you use Office at work, for example, they can give you a free license for it at home. Students whose instructors use Office can also get a free license). I've even seen free Office licenses being bundled with web hosting. Adobe also has some cheap options for students and professionals, plus their subscription is reasonably priced when compared to forking out like $1,500 up front for one of their Suites in the past. The subscription model also allows users to get new updates and new features on a more regular basis instead of holding back on all of them for the next big release of something, to tempt you to upgrade. This can inadvertently help deal with compatibility issues too, so if they introduce new features, they know everyone who is subscribed already has them, instead of having to make stuff so backwards compatible.
Choices and Pricing Eligibility There are several reasons why the subscription is better for regular users of Adobe. Students get to learn to make decisions based on their plans and their academic requirements, which is a good thing. They learn to make design decisions and articulate them in their personal evaluations. Teachers and Students save some amount of money that they would otherwise be spending on purchasing a complete new software. Normally, there would be additional cost for other things that they cannot anticipate upfront. With the new pricing they get to choose how to spend money wisely. Hopefully, we could save more with the selective subscription, where we don't have to get the full version of every Adobe product, just what we need for the projects. I would also think that software deals would come with certain purchases of home computers of PCs or laptops, but so far we don't get those. It's separate from computer purchases.
