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Survey: Are you going for Adobe's Creative Cloud?

CNET and Jefferies are curious to hear if you think Adobe's subscription plan, its Web developer tools, and its Creative Suite 6 are worth the price. We'll publish survey results later.

Stephen Shankland Former Principal Writer
Stephen Shankland worked at CNET from 1998 to 2024 and wrote about processors, digital photography, AI, quantum computing, computer science, materials science, supercomputers, drones, browsers, 3D printing, USB, and new computing technology in general. He has a soft spot in his heart for standards groups and I/O interfaces. His first big scoop was about radioactive cat poop.
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  • Shankland covered the tech industry for more than 25 years and was a science writer for five years before that. He has deep expertise in microprocessors, digital photography, computer hardware and software, internet standards, web technology, and more.
Stephen Shankland
2 min read

It's time again to take the pulse of Adobe Systems and its Creative Cloud product and business overhaul.

In March, analyst firm Jefferies and CNET jointly surveyed people's opinions on Adobe's shift. Now we're running a new survey about Adobe's Creative Cloud subscription plan, Creative Suite 6, and Web design tools.

We'll run the survey for a few days and share results later so you can see if others share your opinions about Adobe.

Photoshop is a storied brand, and the Creative Suite that includes it and many other Adobe projects has been around for years, too, now. But much newer is the Creative Cloud, a subscription service that grants access to that full suite of software, newer tools including Adobe Edge for Web design and Lightroom for photography, and online services for sharing files and publishing.

On top of that, Creative Cloud customers get access to new features sooner than people who buy conventional perpetual licenses to its software. It looks like some of those new features will emerge at a December 11 Creative Cloud event.

Adobe Creative Cloud logo

Adobe is eager to steer people to the Creative Cloud, which means a stable, recurring revenue stream rather than the fits and starts of traditional license sales. The Creative Cloud costs $50 per month for people who sign up for a full year and $75 per month for those who pay month by month with no commitment.

But Adobe's offering a deal right now to try to prime the Creative Cloud pump: $30 per month. One reason we're running a new survey is to find how attractive that offer has been.

For traditional sales of perpetual licenses, we're also curious about whether you've found the CS6 products compelling enough to buy or upgrade.

Last, we're also curious about a major new domain for Adobe, Web design. It's had Dreamweaver on the market for years, but it's now working furiously to try to create modern Web page development tools with products like Edge Animate and Muse.

Unlike in the era when Adobe's Flash software was the standard way to handle interactivity and animation, Adobe doesn't controls the Web foundation technologies such as HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. That means it doesn't have the incumbent advantage it does with Flash, but on the other hand many decry the primitive state of Web developer tools for the modern Web, so it would be foolish to count Adobe out.

As with the last survey, you can leave your e-mail address at the end of the survey if you are open to us asking you follow-up questions, but it's completely optional.