Starting Tuesday, Adobe will charge for premium services available on Acrobat.com -- such as file sharing among five or more users -- as the company moves the collaboration site out of its beta phase.
Adobe, which makes popular software such as the Adobe PDF Reader and Flash, has moved Acrobat.com out of public beta and will offer two new paid subscription services that add capacity and capabilities for more extensive business use. Since Acrobat.com first launched in June 2008, 5 million people have signed up to use the service, with more than 100,000 signing up weekly, according to a statement from Adobe.
The goal of the site is to encourage users to switch from e-mailing multiple versions of documents back and forth to collaborating on documents directly in an online environment.
The Premium Plus service includes ConnectNow Web meeting capacity for up to 20 participants and unlimited online creation of PDF files and costs $39.99 monthly, or $390 annually. The Premium Basic service includes Adobe ConnectNow Web meeting capacity for up to five participants and online conversion of 10 uploaded documents to PDF per month, and costs $14.99 per month, or $149 per year. The free service will continue to offer Adobe Buzzword online word processing, ConnectNow Web meeting capacity for up to three participants, and online creation of up to five PDF files.
