I received an email today from Adobe letting me now that my Creative Cloud single-app membership for XD was about to renew for USD119.88 plus Tax. I didn’t sign up for Adobe XD but was given a free trial a year ago (time has flown) when I believe they made the final changes to Typekit. Typekit was bought by Adobe in October 2011 from Jeffery Veen’s Small Batch, Inc. I have been a user of Typekit almost from the very beginning and currently have 12 websites using the service.
But I have no interest in any other of Adobe’s products and the year that I have had the opportunity to use Adobe XD I haven’t even bothered to install it. Adobe Audition might prove useful, but at US$31.49/mo (if paid monthly) the price is ridiculously high. There are good enough solutions out there for far less, or in the case of Pro Logic, you can pay a hefty one time licensing fee and over the course of the life of the product save money compared to Adobe’s pricing.
Sketch provides almost all I need in a design tool these days and their pricing model, though still a subscription, is far more agreeable. If the need arises I’m sure Serif Labs tools will more than suffice.
But that leaves me with what to do with Adobe fonts. They don’t offer a separate subscription for the service and I’ve spent in some cases considerable time finding suitable typography for each project I use their type with.
I’m considering a monthly subscription to InCopy which at US$7.49/mo is currently their cheapest plan. But long term I will look for alternatives at Google Fonts and investigate the feasibility of smaller independent foundries that have a sizeable collection of web fonts.
I’ve completely divorced myself from Microsoft office years ago. It seems time to say goodbye to Adobe as well.