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Comment by danschumann | Hacker News Reader

Do software products like adobe photoshop for $20/month count as SaaS, or merely a subscription based software product?

I'm surprised everybody else is saying it doesn't count.

SaaS stands for Software as a Service, which means begging customers to make a one-time decision to start a predictable subscription in exchange for regular new features and bug fixes.

The alternative is begging customers to make decisions to upgrade to the latest release multiple times, even after they purchased the older software. Customers on older versions spend a lot of time downloading updates to security issues, comparing to competitors, and deciding if this is the right time to upgrade or to wait for a sale.

From a business perspective, I would say Adobe is squarely in the SaaS business.

Creative Cloud is mostly light touch product with an few large companies and agencies requiring high touch.

Interestingly, I often feel like Adobe wants it to be higher-touch.

I've had the $10/mo Photoshop+Lightroom bundle forever. I almost never use them, and when I do it's definitely not for pro-level stuff, but I find it worth the price to have these tools available when I need them.

Adobe, on the other hand, really really wants me to get into Behance, watch this or that instructional video, take a survey, read their blog, etc.

But if I got that engaged with their ecosystem, I'd surely end up with support tickets and so on, but I doubt I'd give them any more money. I get that it's worth it to them on average, it just feels weird sometimes as I'm a dream customer at $10/mo.

I think you may have it backwards. In SaaS high-touch refers to the actions the company takes on an account, not your engagement with the product.

Self-serve items are generally considered low-touch. Knowledge Bases, Documentation, Instructional Videos—these are all things that are created so the company doesn't have to spend time with you. Support is considered a fall-back when none of those options work.

High-touch means a Customer Success Manager is assigned to your account. Generally the CSM will try and setup monthly or quarterly check-ins to:

—Troubleshoot any problems

—Spot and address churn risks before they arise

—Inform the customer about product changes

—Handle renewals (Although this is sometimes a sales function)

If you're paying $10/mo and not sending Adobe any support tickets, it sounds like you're the perfect low-touch customer.

Ah, interesting, thanks for clarifying about the CSM.

Right, I'm the perfect low-touch customer right now, and I get that the self-serve things are also low-touch.

So I guess burning a few hours of customer support time would not move me into the high-touch zone. Got it.

Technically, if its an app which runs in your browser, and in the cloud only, it would be SaaS, regardless of function. But it also qualifies as a software subscription. So, yes.

Well.. photoshop runs on your computer.. but it requires you to be logged in. It used to be a 1-time purchase, but now it is monthly subscription.

Ah, then nope, just a subscription... and lame one at that. Have you seen this? https://www.figma.com/

The lines are blurry. For example there are apps that can run in something like Citrix Connector, VNC, even ssh etc. that are not running in a browser but also are running "in the cloud" (whether private or public).

It's a subscription based software.

For something to be SaaS, the software has to be in the cloud.

I think that we're at a point where customers no longer care, it's just a technicality

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