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Adobe to End Standalone Licensing for CS

At its MAX conference this week, Adobe announced it will no longer provide standalone licenses for its Creative Suite software. Starting with the next version, all licenses will go through its Creative Cloud licensing.

“We launched Creative Cloud a year ago and it has been a runaway success,” said David Wadhwani, Senior Vice President and General Manager, Digital Media, Adobe. “By focusing our energy — and our talented engineers — on Creative Cloud, we’re able to put innovation in our members’ hands at a much faster pace.”

The next version of Adobe’s software will be denoted with a CC suffix, indicating Creative Cloud. Licensing starts at US$19.99 per month for a single application, the complete suite for $49.99 (with a one year commitment). Users upgrading from Creative Suite 6 can license the new CC suite for $19.99 a month while CS3, CS4, or CS5 users can license for US$29.99 per month. Team licenses start at US$39.99 per user for previous CS3 to CS6 users; US$69.99 per user otherwise.

For the time being, licenses for CS6 will continue to be sold online for electronic distribution. Adobe announced it would discontinue physical boxed copies of Creative Suite in March.