Adobe, the Fortune 500 company well known for its suite of creative software ranging from graphic design to video editing, is hoping to attract new users outside its core audience with its latest offering. Creative Cloud Express is the company’s new “freemium” creative suite with the core functionality of Photoshop, Premiere Pro, and Illustrator, but built for non-design professionals like social media managers and small business owners. The move is certainly Adobe’s response to the rise of Canva, the $40 billion Australian graphic design platform that has surged during the pandemic as an easy alternative to Adobe CS.
The Creative Cloud Express is an expansion of Adobe Spark, which had its ambitiousness hampered by limited capabilities. The new platform has a user-friendly interface not unlike Canva, but with features that have made Adobe a design industry standard. For non-design professionals, Adobe CS can be prohibitively expensive, but for small and medium-sized businesses, the Creative Cloud Express grants access to a streamlined and comprehensive option that boasts more than 30 years of development and refining. Fortified by Adobe’s massive font library, the Adobe Stock royalty-free photo collection, and thousands of templates, Creative Cloud Express may not surpass Canva, but it will help keep the company a household name. In addition to the freemium suite, the company offers a premium option for $9.99 per month.
