Adobe doesn’t want me as a customer…
In my spare time, I love to go hunting with my camera in the fields. I was an Aperture user until Apple decided to discontinue it in 2015. In 2014, I switched to the Creative Cloud Photography plan, so I could use Lightroom to manage my photo’s and process them.
Recently I decided to switch to Apple Photo’s application, as the iPhone camera is pretty great for photo’s on-the-go, iCloud started to work pretty well and having photo’s on two locations isn’t optimal, so I decided to move everything to Photo’s, using iCloud and cancel my Adobe Creative Cloud plan. As I was on the yearly-plan so I had to pay a cancellation fee and the plan would be active til 18-Nov-2018. That’s all fine and expected.
At the same time, I started using Adobe’s Typekit (now called Adobe Fonts) for some other projects like Semonto and my private websites. Last week, I received the following email.
Adobe Fonts
Hi there,
You’ve been subscribed to Creative Cloud and have a standalone plan that gets you Typekit — thousands of fonts you can use on the web or your desktop. As we mentioned in our last email, we’re making some changes to our service that will affect your plan at this email address (xxx).
You no longer have to pay separately for your fonts. In fact, we’ve discontinued our standalone plans, and:
Your fonts are part of your Creative Cloud subscription now. We’ve expanded the fonts that are included with your Creative Cloud subscription, so you no longer need to pay for a separate upgrade. You have the same font library, now with unlimited monthly pageviews and unlimited desktop use, included in Creative Cloud at no additional cost.
Keep going and enjoy the new fonts and lifted desktop, pageview, and domain limits. And if you need a receipt for any past renewal from Typekit by Adobe, they’re available on our website.
Questions? Let us know at fontsupport@adobe.com.
Best,
The Adobe Type team
I’m not sure to which email they are referring, as I did not receive an email about any changes before, but that’s not a problem. Maybe that email was send before I signed up for my Adobe Typekit plan? Anyway, this email confused me: they discontinued my plan, and it’s now integrated in my CC subscription, that’s still valid but will expire in a few days. So I decided to contact them for more information, maybe I got stuck in an edge case?
The answer I received was confusing me even more…
Hi Jelle,
Sorry for the confusion here. We sent you this email because:
- The Photograph Plan used to come with the Free Typekit plan.
- Now it comes with full access to Adobe Fonts.However, since you canceled the Photography Plan, that’s no longer the case and the account is now on the Free Adobe Fonts plan.
I hope that makes sense. Let me know if you have any further questions and we’ll take it from there.
Cheers,
Benjamin
Wait, the free Adobe Fonts plan? But I just paid for a full year a few months ago for Typekit. I’m using it on multiple websites, so I don’t want to be blocked, so I contacted them again what will happen exactly.
Hi Jelle,
You have full access to Adobe Fonts as you would have when you purchased the Typekit subscription. We will be giving a year subscription to Adobe XD for free. This will give you a years worth of Adobe Fonts as well.
Then you can decide if you wish to renew that subscription or change the CC plan or cancel. I hope that makes sense.
For now, things should work exactly as they did before. Let me know if you have any further questions.
Cheers,
Benjamin
Hmm.. is anyone still following? Now they want me to use the Adobe XD plan, which I get for free for a year, in order to have the same features as I had with my Typekit plan. I don’t want Adobe XD as I’m using and working for Sketch. The email was still quite confusing me and unclear what will happen exactly. So I asked for more details…
Hi Jelle,
The answer is yes. Sorry if I made things more confusing. You’re good to go.
The reason we’re giving out a free year of XD is to honor the paid standalone subscriptions, like the one you have.
So, you’ll get the free year of XD which will cover you for the rest of your Typekit subscription and a little more. Then you can continue or downgrade or cancel. It will be totally up to you.
Let me know if you have any further questions.
Cheers,
Benjamin
Hmm, right. Which is exactly what I thought. They are giving me Adobe XD, for free for a year, so I would still have my Typekit features. However, what are my options after that year? Typekit was priced at $49 yearly. XD at $120 yearly.
Hi Jelle,
After that year, you’ll need a paid Creative Cloud subscription to use Adobe Fonts for your websites. It will only be available through CC.
There are very affordable plans which would be a good option. Or you can not use Typekit for these sites any longer.
I hope that clears things up. We wanted this transition to be good as we could make it. Let me know if you have any further questions.
Cheers,
Benjamin
Alright, so, once the free year of Adobe XD, which I wont be using, is over. I need to switch to a paid CC account, in order to keep using the Typekit features. I just canceled my Photography CC subscription, moved all my photo’s to a new system and I’m not using any Adobe products anymore, except Typekit, which is not available anymore, but only as a feature on a CC subscription. Looking at their website, the cheapest CC subscription (on the overview page) is the Photography plan, for $15 a month, or $180 yearly, versus $49 yearly as I only want to keep using Typekit. This almost quadruples the price/costs? Also, pretty weird that Benjamin is suggesting me to just stop using Typekit for my sites…Is this a hint?
I decided to ask Benjamin to confirm this pretty aggressive change.
Hi Jelle,
Pricing can change in the future but right now, the single-app subscription for InCopy is $4.99 a month. Very close to what the Portfolio Plan was priced at.
That would probably be the best bet if you only require Adobe Fonts. I hope that helps. Let me know if you have any further questions.
Cheers,
Benjamin
So. Adobe is forcing me to take a subscription on a random product that I wont be using, in order to keep using Typekit, or just stop using it. What gives? This sounds pretty aggressive and user unfriendly. Or maybe that’s just me? Anyone else experiencing the same?
Btw, Benjamin, sorry for all my emails. I think I will follow your suggestion and stop using all Adobe products.
