If what I see on the User to User forums is any indication there seems to be some confusion out there concerning upgrades. Let’s get the definitions out of the way which will hopefully save some folks a bit of grief when deciding what to buy.
Upsell. An upsell allows the purchaser to buy a new product license using a license from an earlier version of different product. An example of that would be using a Photoshop license to purchase a Creative Suite license. The upsell price on the suites is about $200 less than the full retail price.
Upgrade. Upgrades allow the buyer to get a steeply discounted price on new release of an identical or closely related product. Creative Suite 2 Design Standard licensees can buy the upgrade to Creative Suite Design Premium 3 for instance. Upgrades are also available for individual applications. An Illustrator CS user can purchase an upgrade to Illustrator CS3.
The suites are a real bargain when compared to the price of the individual applications but as the old saying goes, you take the good with the bad. Adobe considers the suite one license which cannot legally be unbundled. That means you can’t put half the apps on one machine and half on another. It also means you can’t upgrade just one application. In short, it’s all or nothing at all for suite upgrades. Any attempt to upgrade a single application will fail with an error reporting that a qualifying product can’t be found.
Unfortunately the wording on Adobe’s website is less than clear on this (and the reason for this post), stating only that the eligibility for upgrading to InDesign CS3 is a license for InDesign 2, CS, or CS2 or Pagemaker 6 or later. There’s no explanation of the fact that someone using InDesign CS2 as part of the suite is NOT eligible. A similar problem with the same error message occurs when an attempt is made to upgrade an individual product to a suite by purchasing an upgrade license instead of the required upsell license.
To summarize. If you hold a license for an individual application, you can move to the entire suite through an upsell or just upgrade that single application. If you own a suite license, you can upgrade the suite but not the individual applications.
So, what’s a person to do if he/she has purchased the incorrect package? Fortunately Adobe has a 30 return policy but hopefully this post will provide an ounce of prevention so that pound of cure won’t be needed.
Finally, you may have noticed my use of the word license quite a bit here. Nobody owns any of these applications except Adobe. What you buy is simply the right to use that product within the guidelines put forth in the End User License Agreement.
This article was last modified on December 19, 2021
This article was first published on July 14, 2008
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