The End of Acrobat Perpetual Upgrade Plan

  • 14 December 2021

The End of Acrobat Perpetual Upgrade Plan 

In the era of subscription-based licensing, we have seen more and more software vendors make the move to a per user, per month/per year model and Adobe are no different. Most of their creative tools can only be purchased in this way but the powerful PDF tool Acrobat has continued to be available as a perpetual license. When purchasing a perpetual license of Acrobat, you would have been given the opportunity to also purchase ‘Upgrade Plan’. Active Upgrade Plan meant users got access to any new perpetual version of the product that was released.  However, Adobe have recently announced that Acrobat Upgrade Plan will no longer be available as Adobe have no current plans for a new version of Acrobat Perpetual. This announcement is no surprise as it brings us one step closer to a pure subscription model only for Acrobat.

In today’s world, the subscription model makes more sense for a number of reasons:

  • It gives the user access to the latest version of the product with features above and beyond what had been offered in the perpetual model.
  • Downloading the product can be done easily by logging into an individual account, using an Adobe ID or federated ID.
  • End users also enjoy 2GB cloud storage that is accessed by their Document Cloud account
  • It reduces compliance risk for the company
  • It gives your company a chance to easily standardise
  • User administration is simplified with Adobe’s management console

What does this mean for me?

If you have purchased Acrobat Professional or Acrobat Standard in the past in perpetuity, your rights to this license have not changed. You can continue to use the product in the version that you purchased it. Today’s current version of Acrobat pertual, and likely to be last version, is Acrobat 2020. If you currently have an active Upgrade Plan you may be eligible for a migration promo to move to Acrobat DC (subscription based).

To discuss more on Adobe Acrobat please talk to your regular Micromail account manager or email our dedicated Adobe team on adobe@micromail.ie to organise a call.