Adobe Cancellation of Monthly Subscription

[Timothy H]

Got this message yesterday (recalled this morning). Anyone know what's happening here?

Dear Adobe Technical Communication Suite Month-to-Month Subscriber,             

We sincerely appreciate your continued patronage of Adobe Technical Communication Suite. We wanted to reach out to you in advance and notify you about some important changes in the product offering expected to come into effect very soon.

Starting January 14th 2014, Adobe will no longer offer the month-to-month subscription plan for Adobe Technical Communication Suite. If you have purchased a month-to-month subscription and are on the auto-renewal plan, you will be able to renew your monthly subscription for Adobe Technical Communication Suite only till January 13th 2014.

Etc.

[Bob_Niland]

Captivate also.

I haven't dug into it too deeply, but it looks like they are going to offer only annual or perpetual licenses from 2014-02 on.

I have no idea if this means that products now on subscription only are moving to this model (or adding perpetual where they do not today).

[Arnis_Gubins]

Like phone plans, Adobe wants to ensure they've got you hooked for longer periods.

Only some Adobe products (mainly those in the TechComm area) still have perpetual licenses and I seriously doubt that products now on a cloud/subscription basis will ever go back to a perpetual license model.

Dropping the month-to-month licensing is going to impact organizations that occasionally need additional seats for short-term projects.

[Timothy H]

Yes, and I think we all expected that, but with a bit more lead time than 8 days.

With the initial message recalled, does next week's cut-off still hold?

[Timothy H]

(I'm just in the process of evaluating FM11/RHH versus Madcap as upgrade path for FM 7/ Quadralay, hence month-by-month subscription.)

[Arnis_Gubins]

I think you should take the message at face value. Adobe is changing the available plans as of January 14th.

You can get a 30-day (free) trial for the TCS to slightly extend your evaluation period. [Probably another use-case that Adobe didn't consider when dropping the month-to-month plan].

[Timothy H]

Yes, but what's the "face value" of a recalled message?  ?

[Arnis_Gubins]

Sorry, missed the "recalled" bit. Sounds like Adobe let something slip out before it's time.

Looks like something is coming next week...

[Bob_Niland]

> Like phone plans, Adobe wants to ensure they've got you hooked for longer periods.

Could be. Perhaps we'll get some clarity in the coming days, or not.

On one hand we have the general principle that if you delight your customers, and make it as easy as possible for them to do business with you, they'll often be delighted to make purchases well above forecast. Conversely, if you obviously game your customers, and/or make it difficult for them to do business with you, they will minimize their purchases to the maximum extent possible (as I do with several tech brands). In the specific case of FM, they will take a serious look at whether competing product F or even freebie product S might meet their needs.

On the other hand, FM is a complicated  product with deteriorating documentation. It might just be the case that so many monthly customers are mystified newbies, making so many support calls, that the entire monthly segment is running a net loss. If so, it would be tough to decide what to do about that  (keeping monthly available, but offering phone support only to the annuals might do the trick).