The renewal email landed in February like it does every February. Adobe’s account manager over in Ireland, polite and professional, with a fresh quote attached. The headline number had moved up. The tier had also quietly moved up. Pro Plus across the studio, which is a slightly different product to what we actually had the year before.
The first thing I did, which past me would not have done, was open the PDF and read it. Not skim. Read.
Pro Plus bundles in Adobe Stock credits. We don’t use Adobe Stock. We have our own asset libraries, client-supplied imagery, Envato when we need it, and a stock account that already costs what it costs. The Plus tier also rolls in enterprise admin features that make sense for a fifty-seat agency and make no sense for the studio I actually run. Paying for capability I don’t use is a tax with a friendlier name on the invoice.
So I wrote back. Politely. Asked whether standard Pro would cover the workflow, given what we actually do with the software. It does. Of course it does. That’s the licence I had the previous year.
The thing nobody warns you about Adobe negotiations is that they’re conducted in dollars. The contract is USD-denominated, billed through Adobe Ireland under European VAT rules, and the GBP number on the invoice is whatever the exchange rate decided that morning. The quote that looks like one figure in the email becomes a slightly different figure when the card gets charged. None of this is hidden. It’s just buried in the kind of clauses you don’t read if you’re treating the renewal as paperwork instead of as work.
That’s the bit that took me a few cycles to land on. Reading the contract is the actual job. The advantage in the conversation comes entirely from showing up having read it. The account manager isn’t trying to put one over on anyone. He’s quoting what he’s been told to quote. The first number is never the real number, and the second one usually isn’t either, and that’s just how this dance goes.
We landed on standard Pro in the end. Sensible figure, sensible terms, no Stock credits I’d never spend. Affinity sat quietly in the background throughout, the way it always does, useful as a reminder that the alternative exists even if you’ve no real intention of moving.
The renewal email will land again next February. The negotiation will happen again. The contract will need reading again.
I’ll put it in the calendar this time.