You’re not alone. I can justify it more for a LoB platform app vs something like a user’s Acrobat license. Adobe is perhaps the single worst software company I’ve ever dealt with.
As in god help you if you ever need to resolve a dispute with Adobe, whether you screwed up or they did. I think they have several dark patterns baked into their servicing and support flow. Like it’s so bad it must have taken work. I don’t often think of companies as assholes, but Adobe is right there.
But yeah, I can see the year-long commitment for line of business apps as pretty rational, but for commodity tooling software, it seems like there’s room for more competitive subscription terms, like maybe 30-day adjustment windows after initial/renewal billing event, or 5-10% flexibility in license commitment over the term, things like that. Like everything, small businesses feel the pain of these things more acutely than large corps., so maybe it’s a matter of designing targeted/qualified price plans that think more like an actuarial. Pay a buck extra per seat but have more flexibility, with the idea that the majority of customers are on point the majority of the time?
You get a very short window (if I recall correctly, 2 weeks) to cancel an annual subscription.
I've experienced a lot of other unpleasantness in my dealings with Adobe (a company I only have dealings with because I have to read their proprietary files) but that one in particular cost me about $500.