Thoughts On Dollar Photo Club Shutting Down

I first joined Dollar Photo Club back in 2014 shortly before they were bought by Adobe. When I first heard about the parent company, Fotolia, being bought by Adobe I figured something would eventually happen that Adobe would close them down. I maybe didn’t think they would close them down but perhaps brand it to be more Adobe. I especially figured that once they announced Adobe Stock that maybe Dollar Photo Club’s days were numbered but I just kind of put that out of my mind. Until a couple of days ago when it was announced that Dollar Photo Club would be shutting down April 15th 2016.

So my thoughts on the whole service shutting down are that it’s a sad day to see any website or service shut down but I fully understand why Adobe made the move. Even though it may seem that Adobe is shutting down its competition and raising the price, and maybe they are. It did feel nice to have gotten into Dollar Photo Club before Adobe bought them because they had stopped sign ups. It felt kind of like I was part of, well, a club. I loved the fact that I could pay $10 a month and just let it accrue over years and be able to download images that I had full legal rights to use. With Adobe Stock I can do the same thing and love that it’s built into Adobe apps but now after the first year I will have to pay 3 times as much for the same service.

Now Adobe Stock does offer videos as well but I saw where it would cost me $80 to license a video which means that I can’t just go out and get stock video. I would need to spend extra money if I want test video. I mean I might as well go out and record my own videos if I need a stock video or something.

So my final thoughts on the service are that I’ll give it a year and if I don’t use it enough to justify the $30 a month for Adobe Stock then I’ll cancel. If I could ask something from Adobe I would ask that maybe figure out a way to include stock video at a lower price for video maybe. That would be nice. I don’t know though maybe another $1 stock image service will come up in the future and give Adobe Stock competition. We’ll just have to wait and see.