Download 1,000,000+ High-Quality Assets from the Adobe Stock Free Collection

News: Adobe Shortens Duration of CC Free Trials from 30 to 7 Days

Read the Announcement: Adobe Reduces CC Free Trial Length to 7 Days

After decades of 30-day free trials for its flagship creative applications such as Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, and all the others, today Adobe announced that going forward, the length of the trial period for Creative Cloud (i.e., the CC desktop apps) will be standardized worldwide at 7 days.

The company has been running some tests over the past couple months, and says the changes better align with how individuals are actually using the trial software – meaning the degree and duration of time they use them the most after initial installation. By moving to seven days, Adobe feels they can follow up better with the customer when the experience is freshest than if it happened a month later. It also gives users greater incentive to bump up the priority of the new software evaluations. Given the accelerating pace of change in technology (and pretty much everything else moving faster these days), these findings aren’t entirely surprising.

Creative Cloud Is Growing Fast – How Many Millions of Paid Subscribers?

The other big reason is because long trial periods are somewhat a holdover from the old days where purchasing Adobe software was a huge upfront cost and major investment… Adobe CS6 (released in 2012) used to cost many hundreds or often thousands of dollars to purchase. Now, by contrast, after your free first week, CC offers monthly or annual subscription plans for as little as US$9.99 a month (for Photoshop & Lightroom), with ongoing upgrades included.

Special: Legally download dozens of free Adobe books for a limited time!

It may also be that too many people were taking repeated month-long free trials without paying for the software. Adobe suggests the primary goal of a free trial is to confirm that the software works on your computer.

Nevertheless, you can actually use the products for up to 21 days and still get a full refund. Additionally, a free 14-day trial of the Creative Cloud for Teams plan (even if just for a single user) is available with no credit card required.

Regardless, even after the final expiration of any free trial period, you can continue to keep and maintain the free level of Creative Cloud membership with permanent benefits for life, at no cost.

See Adobe’s full announcement here.

If you want to get started today (and at least for the next full week!) with the latest Creative Cloud desktop tools, check out the download links here. All of the CC trials are fully functional and can run side-by-side on your system with any older CS versions, without interference. The Windows or Mac OS downloads can also be installed on multiple computers if desired – and easily converted to full versions at any time, without having to reinstall the software.

Download now

Please pass this news along and spread the word!

See Also

Get the New Creative Cloud 2024 Direct Download Links

Keep up with the latest on Adobe software — follow us on Facebook or Twitter, or subscribe to our RSS feed… You can also enter your email and have new articles sent directly to your Inbox. We are reader-supported; when you buy through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.

GET FREE ADOBE BOOKS

Sign up for our popular newsletter and we’ll send you 30 great ebooks to learn all major Adobe tools at no cost!

Thank you for subscribing! We hope you enjoy the newsletter and your free Adobe books... Click here to see the books now, and start downloading and reading!

Sorry, something went wrong. Please try again.

Share This

Download 1,000,000+ Royalty-Free Images from the Adobe Stock Free Collection

28 thoughts on “News: Adobe Shortens Duration of CC Free Trials from 30 to 7 Days”

  1. Looking for help with a zipped file (presentation) that I can open on one computer, but I can not open on any other computer. I saved it to a CD and to a thumb drive and it will not open on another computer. It was saved as an Adobe Acrobat Reader DC format. Any suggestions on how I can save this presentation so I can open on other updated computers?

    Thank you

    Reply
  2. Honestly, I feel that this a mistake. If Adobe wanted to cut back from 30 days, they could have gone to two weeks (14 days). 1 week just feels too short if you are me.

    Slightly off topic, Jetbrains have gone with a model that works almost the same way as Adobe does, with monthly and yearly pricing. What Jetbrains have done is that they will give you the version that was available at the time as you got your subscription after each 12 months. To quote them – “You will receive a perpetual fallback license once you pay for a year up front or 12 consecutive months.”. Would Adobe ever do such a thing?

    Reply
    • Hey Daniel, great to see you again and thanks for sharing your thoughts.

      Nobody can predict the future, but thus far it seems clear that Adobe is not going back to the old model… Creative Cloud has been growing fast with accelerating adoption, and has been an even greater success than the company anticipated… So, unless something major happens, folks probably shouldn’t expect the story to change from here on out.

  3. “The other big reason is because long trial periods are somewhat a holdover from the old days where purchasing Adobe software was a huge upfront cost and major investment”

    ???! It’s much more expensive now. My company got me CC at $800 a year because I could no longer use the CS Suite (that we paid a lot money for not that long ago) since Adobe stopped supporting it. The parts of it that still work do so erratically on EL Capitan. And, my company balked, I had to fight for the CC subscription. As a personal user, I can’t afford CC, so my investment in my own copy of CS Design Premium (which was a relatively huge one for me) just evaporated.

    Adobe should have said nothing at all about cutting the trial period rather than say something that would further inflame the still raw wound they dealt their loyal users (I started in the early 1990s, I taught Adobe software, and I had always been a big cheerleader).

    Reply
    • Well, CS6 is over four years old now and Adobe stopped supporting and EOL’d it just like they would any 4-year-old product that has since been replaced by multiple newer releases… That policy isn’t new and applied for old software like the previous CS versions too, as well as other Adobe tools like Acrobat, Captivate, Elements, etc.

      Nothing is forever in technology. Hardware and software evolve very quickly these days, then old programs aren’t supported and eventually stop working properly on newer computers or operating systems that came out later and don’t support previous interfaces and APIs – especially Apple, who is notorious in the industry for this! So while you think you might “own something” with the old CS licensing model, for most people, static software has a practical usable lifetime.

      By contrast, with CC all ongoing upgrades, compatibility updates and product additions are always included – so becoming obsolete will never happen. The monthly payments are also more affordable in the new model than in the old CS model – where the software used to cost many hundreds or often thousands of dollars upfront, and never evolved.

      As for the explanation of why Adobe cut the free trial duration, they did not state explicitly the part you quoted but it was our own interpretation. Nevertheless, it is indisputably true that the upfront cost of CC is small compared to the upfront cost of CS6 – so we stand by the assertion.

      Similarly, the ability to pay for CC for a couple months to really give it a thorough workout is easy to manage compared to back in the CS days where you simply couldn’t do that… With CS6, there was no short-term usage solution because it was all-or-nothing; you had no choice but to pay thousands of dollars in advance for the full suite (as you noted in your own case). So arguably, offering a longer free trial period before making that big investment was warranted at the time.

      You can read Adobe’s complete statement about the free trial changes here:

      Adobe Customer Care Team: Update on Creative Cloud Trials

  4. Meanwhile, Autodesk offers 3 years Free trial for Students and Teachers… I hope other products can be able to overcome Adobe products, so in the future i won’t have to pay a lot of money every single year.

    Reply
  5. Maybe if Adobe doesn’t ask for so much money for the monthly CC subscription, they will have more people paying and not just using trials… It works in all areas is like Movie Piracy, after Netflix come out, no one else cared about downloading a movie when you have a “fair price” to watch a lot of movies online. Maybe Adobe should do the same, and not move the trial period to only 7 days.

    Reply
    • Thanks for sharing your thoughts. This is actually one of the ideas of Creative Cloud. From a cost-of-entry standpoint, the monthly payments are much more budget-friendly in the new model than in the old model – where the software used to cost many hundreds or often thousands of dollars upfront, and did not evolve. In addition, with CC, all ongoing upgrades with new features and performance improvements are always included at no additional cost. So the software will not become obsolete or stop working on a new operating system.

      Because of the far lower cost of entry, CC has been able to introduce significant numbers of new customers to Adobe, as well as reduce piracy. Adobe CFO Mark Garrett recently said this at the 2015 Global Technology Conference:

      The cloud for Creative Cloud and Document Cloud helps quite a bit against piracy. My analogy is kids who used to download music from say Napster stopped doing it when Apple and iTunes came out and they could buy it in a legitimate and affordable way. So now people who don’t want software downloaded off the web that may have viruses in it, that might be buggy, that isn’t up to date and isn’t current, that doesn’t leverage the ability to sync and store and share or use mobile – we’re seeing that really switch over and people being legit and subscribing to the service. And it’s a much lower price point now, because you’re subscribing as opposed to of laying out thousands of dollars upfront.

      Something else that is very powerful: Never before has the company had 30 million customers all using the exact same release of their creative products – not even with any version of Creative Suite (ever). So overall, by virtually any measure, Creative Cloud has been a remarkable success – even exceeding Adobe’s own internal expectations.

      That said, however, many folks may wish the length of the free CC trial period hadn’t been reduced. This is totally understandable. But at least if you want to try the software out for another month past the end of the free trial, you can easily extend with a short-term subscription (even just one month) without mortgaging your house. You could never do that in the past.

  6. @ProDesignTools
    Hi, Sorry for my bad English but I will try to explain my frustration right now with Adobe…

    Ok I understand your point of view, but now I will ask you to put yourself in my position… I use only Photoshop and Premiere as a home user, my use is about 1 or 2 times a month, nothing else, so why I will pay a full month or year of your subscription? I would have to pay it separately (2 subscriptions of R$125 per month = R$250), that because you do not offer a subscription with these 2 programs only. (R$=Brazilian Reals)
    In another hand, my salary is R$900, So two subscriptions is equivalent to 27,7% of my salary.

    Then I will ask you… is it fair? Spend 27,7% of my month’s salary for a subscription to programs that I will use 1 or 2 times a month?
    Ok you can tell me, look for another freeware program, but it’s not the same because when I lived in Madrid in Spain I had paid a lot of money to have classes, to learn how to work with these 2 Adobe programs, and today I can’t use it because I cannot forward the money to pay for this subscription.

    Well I confess that I don’t use all the functions that the programs have, so, how about Adobe makes a Home user version? Free or charging for a “lite version”…

    Thank you.

    Reply
    • Well, it sounds like with the previous CS model you could never have even touched these programs, because they would have costed thousands of dollars in advance to buy and use even the very first time…

      So if this more affordable CC subscription isn’t working out for you in terms of cost, and you say you’re OK with a simplified, scaled-down “lite” home version with reduced functionality, then maybe Adobe Elements would go better for your situation?

  7. Absolutely ridiculous. Should have been notified before updating the software that it was going to be reduced from 30 to 7 days.

    Ridiculous.

    Reply
  8. to be honest, as a Chinese media student, according to my experience of studying cgi in both china and thailand, the shortened period of the trial could just boost the pirate market of adobe products in china and perhaps this trend would spread to the east asia countries very soon also.

    Reply
  9. @ProDesignTools

    Hi, thanks for the advice, but Adobe Elements is still too expensive for the tools it has and for my Brazilian money. To be honest I think Adobe is adopting Apple terms, charging too much money for their products…

    Anyway, I’m finding some solutions for myself – “Affinity Photo” costs only USD $49.99 for the Mac Version, and it’s free for Windows (Beta Edition) and you are FREE from subscriptions; plus, Affinity Photo was chosen by Apple as the best Mac App of 2015.

    While Adobe is concerned about selling you expensive products, other companies are growing by selling cheaper and similar solutions to more people, and probably becoming more popular !

    Thank you

    Reply
  10. Using a trial for 7 days is really not worth trying it on adobe’s website. A student will not get comfortable nor is it enough time to learn how to use any tools with just a 7-day trial. definitely do not want to pay $19.99 for a product I can’t use and do not have a sufficient amount of time to use it.

    Reply
    • Hi Linda, thanks for your comment. The word now is Adobe’s free trial is primarily for verifying that the software package successfully downloads, installs, and runs on your computer… In other words, to ensure hardware and software compatibility on your system. Yes, you can start to get into testing out the products but not exhaustively. For that, to use and learn the products in depth, you need a subscription, even if short-term only for a month, or longer.

      This is what we hear. Sorry if it isn’t what you wanted to hear.

  11. When you activate any Adobe trial on a computer that has CS5 or CS6, it ‘upgrades’ your existing software so that you can no longer use it without logging into Creative Cloud. Even after you delete the trial software, you cannot run the software that you legally purchased without an Adobe account and Internet access.

    What’s your ‘justification’ for this intrusion?

    Reply
  12. Companies that ignore the customer and try to convince the customer they “know whats good for them” go out of business……that’s exactly what I see here as I read the comments. Problem is you’re no where near large enough for a Govt. buyout. Either you’ll change that back or get your resume ready to start your job hunt.

    Reply
    • Wow, you have a funny way of characterizing success… By virtually every measure in the industry, Adobe’s transition to Creative Cloud has been widely considered a major success, surprising a lot of skeptics and exceeding the company’s own original expectations. Never before (not even with CS6), have so many millions of customers upgraded and been running the same single release of Adobe software, which makes the platform all the more powerful. There are thousands of improvements and new features in CC 2017 as compared to CS6 from five years ago… If you don’t know or care what you’re missing, that’s fine – but if the latest releases can help millions of people get better work done faster, then time is money.

      That said, it’s understandable if some folks are unhappy that the free trial period was reduced from 30 to 7 days. But presumably Adobe made the decision with the benefit of rafts of customer data and business metrics, rather than being a risky or foolhardy move.

  13. So question. Do the trials have a non-stopping clock, or can you say use it 30 minutes a day for 30 days, and it will still work? How does it work?

    Reply
    • Hello Trey, good question! All Adobe free trials are fully-functional for 7 continuous calendar days from the time you first run the program on your computer. They aren’t stopped and restarted either by closing the tool running, nor by uninstalling/reinstalling the software.

  14. The “free” trial forces you to give them a credit card number as well so, not really a “free” trial at all but instead a PAID version with “first 7 days free.”

    Reply
  15. Is there a notification when the trial period is over to opt in for a monthly payment? Illustrator 2017 program was already on my system when purchasing my computer. Started getting the message that the plug-ins were missing after in use for over a year? Unable to find out how to correct the problem, so I figured I would have to re-install the program, that seems to be the general answer to correct the issue. I uninstalled the program and have installed it and problem resolved. Was the error message due to an expiration? What would be the billing for this?

    Reply

Leave a Comment or Question


Receive over 30 Adobe Books plus Our Newsletter, Free!
DOWNLOAD FREE ADOBE BOOKS

Download Free Adobe Books Sign up for our popular newsletter and we’ll send you 30 great ebooks to learn all major Adobe tools free!

Thanks for subscribing! We hope you enjoy the newsletter and your free Adobe books... Click here to see the books now, and start downloading and reading!

Sorry, something went wrong. Please try again.

And don't miss: The New CC 2024 Direct Download Links
Boost your content creation with 1,000,000 free images from Adobe Stock

Don't miss: Download 1 million FREE Adobe Stock assets!

Start downloading instantly from the Adobe Stock Free Collection:

DOWNLOAD NOW

This message will close in:

GET FREE ADOBE BOOKS

Download Dozens of Free Adobe Books Sign up for our popular newsletter and we’ll send you 30 great ebooks to learn all major Adobe tools at no cost!

Thank you for subscribing! We hope you enjoy the newsletter and your free Adobe books... Click here to see the books now, and start downloading and reading!

Sorry, something went wrong. Please try again.

Thanks for sharing!
Subscribe to ProDesignTools for Adobe updates:
15.8kFans
7.2kFollowers
2.5kRSS
DOWNLOAD FREE ADOBE BOOKS

Download Free Adobe Books Sign up for our popular newsletter and we’ll send you 30 great ebooks to learn all major Adobe tools free!

Thanks for subscribing! We hope you enjoy the newsletter and your free Adobe books... Click here to see the books now, and start downloading and reading!

Sorry, something went wrong. Please try again.