Adobe Creative Cloud for teams and enterprise licensing

Adobe Creative Cloud for teams and enterprise licensing covers how organizations, rather than individuals, license Creative Cloud applications and services, together with Adobe Substance 3D and Frame.io, which Adobe sells alongside them. Two contract families apply. Teams plans are governed by Adobe’s General Terms of Use and the Business Product Specific Terms (7 October 2024). These terms define Business Users and Admins, and limit reassignment of a Named User license to once every 30 days.^[2] Enterprise plans are governed by Adobe’s enterprise General Terms, into which Product Specific Licensing Terms (PSLTs) are “plugged in”. For Creative Cloud, Document Cloud and Substance 3D, the current PSLT is version 2023v1, effective 16 August 2023.^[11][1] Either family can be bought through VIP or VIP Marketplace. Enterprise plans are also sold under an Enterprise Term License Agreement (ETLA).

Adobe offers three deployment methods for these products. Named User Licensing ties the license to a person, and Adobe calls it “the default and most widely adopted method”.^[3] Shared Device Licensing ties the license to a machine.^[4] Feature Restricted Licensing (FRL) activates on a single device and excludes cloud services.^[5] The general rules for the Named User and Computer metrics are in Adobe Named User licensing. This article adds the enterprise PSLT rules, the deployment models, and the metrics for Substance 3D and Frame.io.

Editions

Sources for the table: Business Product Specific Terms §4,^[2] PSLT 2023v1 §24,^[1] the Frame.io FAQ,^[10] and the generative credits FAQ.^[7] The catalog records the plan-level offerings as SKU rows, for example Creative Cloud Pro for teams, Creative Cloud Pro for enterprise, Shared Device Licensing and FRL Multi-User Offerings. Generative credits are covered in Adobe generative credits.

Metrics

The Creative Cloud product description lists three license metrics. Creative Cloud itself is licensed Per User, additional Transactions Per Transaction, and FRL Multi-User Offerings Per-Computer.^[6] The catalog maps these to Named User, Transaction and Computer. Shared Device Licensing is counted under Device-Based Software License. Substance 3D adds a Site metric. Frame.io storage is sold in Terabytes per year, and Frame.io user plans are sold per User per year.^[8][9]

Counting / floors

Named User Licensing

Under the enterprise PSLT, a per-User license lets each User activate the software on up to two Computers at a time, but not use it on both simultaneously (§2.1).^[1] This matches the two-Computer rule in the Software Product Specific Terms. Per-User products must be deployed through a unique login ID and password. Floating, generic user, leased and shift deployment are prohibited. A license may move to another User without counting as an additional deployment, provided the product is de-installed from the previous User’s Computer and the new User has a new ID (rule, §24). Teams customers instead follow the 30-day reassignment rule of the Business Product Specific Terms.^[2]

Two enterprise restrictions affect how the software may be used:

• Multi-user machines. If per-User software is installed on a Computer that more than one User can access, the licensed quantity must cover the total number of Users able to access it, not the number of concurrent users (rule, §1.1).
• Automation. The desktop software may not be installed or accessed for operations not initiated by an individual User, such as automated server processing or robotic process automation, unless a Sales Order permits it (rule, §1.2).^[1]

Named User Licensing requires periodic internet access. Computers must connect to Adobe servers for initial activation and at least once every 30 days after that (rule).^[3]

Shared Device Licensing

Shared Device Licensing is device-based licensing for shared computers, such as labs and classrooms. The license resides on the machine, and “a single shared device license supports unlimited users on a particular machine” (rule). Adobe states that it is not designed for machines with dedicated users. Users must still sign in, and administrators control access through identity types, access policies (Open Access, Organization users only, Enterprise/Federated users only) and egress IP restrictions. Shared device licenses do not include cloud storage or Libraries, although users with their own service entitlements can still use them. Migration from the legacy Device Licensing or Serial Number Licensing to Shared Device Licensing is permanent (rule).^[4]

The enterprise PSLT limits each per-Computer licensed copy to one desktop computer at a time (rule, §2.2).^[1] On shared devices, users with a Shared Device Access entitlement receive 10 generative credits. Users with no entitlement receive none.^[7]

FRL and serialized deployment

In VIP, each named-user license allows two activations. Feature Restricted Licensing products may be activated on only one device and do not include Services.^[5] The catalog records this as the FRL one-Computer rule. Older serial-number deployments are frozen: customers using serial number deployment “do not have access to On-premise Software released to named user deployment after October 2018” (rule, §5).^[1]

Render and encode components

Two sections of the enterprise PSLT allow installations beyond the licensed user count:

• After Effects Render Engine. An unlimited number of Render Engines may be installed on intranet Computers if at least one intranet Computer has the full After Effects installed (rule, §28).
• Adobe Media Encoder. AME may be installed on an intranet Computer to encode projects created by licensed instances on other Computers. The number of AME installations may not exceed the licenses purchased, and AME may not be used as a hosted service or for third parties (rule, §30).^[1]

Virtualization & partitioning

Adobe’s product descriptions define a Computer as a virtual or physical device. Where a device contains more than one virtual environment, “each virtual environment will be counted as a separate Computer”.^[6] The catalog records this as the virtual-environment rule. For shared virtual desktops or terminal servers running per-User software, the multi-user access rule applies: every User who can access the software counts, whether or not they are using it at the same moment.^[1] Adobe does not publish a vCPU or core conversion for Creative Cloud.

Substance 3D

The Substance 3D product description lists three license metrics.^[8]

A Site is “the business location of the Customer whose address is identified in the Sales Order” (rule). Substance 3D Collection plans for enterprise include add-on software such as the Substance 3D Automation Toolkit.^[8]

The enterprise PSLT grants a perpetual, internal-business license to Substance 3D Assets. The assets may be distributed only as part of a Modified Work or a Larger Work, never on a stand-alone basis. When the agreement expires, the customer may keep using assets it downloaded and paid for before expiration (rule, §§40, 42, 43).^[1]

Frame.io

The Frame.io product description sells five user license types, each Per User per year: Enterprise: Select, Enterprise: Select with SBWM, Enterprise: Prime, Full User and Enterprise. Storage add-ons (Managed Storage or Active Storage) are sold Per Terabyte per year, and Frame.io Mounted Storage 10TB is sold Per Each per year.^[9] Included storage depends on the license type:

The Select storage allowance is recorded as a catalog rule.^[9] Creative Cloud customers who sign in with Adobe credentials receive a free Frame.io plan with 100GB of storage, up to five projects with another user, and Camera to Cloud. Frame.io is disabled by default for Creative Cloud enterprise customers until an administrator enables it (rule).^[10] Under the enterprise PSLT, Frame.io may use login details separate from other Adobe services, and customers may share content with third parties through it (§33).^[1]

Cloud / BYOL

Adobe publishes no bring-your-own-license rules for running Creative Cloud desktop software on public cloud infrastructure, beyond the Computer and multi-user access rules above. The enterprise PSLT has a geographic restriction instead. Users in mainland China may activate and use only the Creative Cloud, Acrobat and Substance 3D Collection “Offering in China”, and the China Offering may not be used outside mainland China (rule, §7).^[1]

Programs

Teams and enterprise plans are bought through VIP, VIP Marketplace or, for enterprise plans, the ETLA. Anniversary dates, discount levels and the 3-year commit are covered in Adobe VIP and VIP Marketplace.

Out of scope

• AI/ML training. The enterprise PSLT prohibits using the products or their output to train AI or machine-learning systems (rule, §26).^[1] Generative AI terms are covered in Adobe generative credits.
• Acrobat and Document Cloud. These share the same PSLT but are covered in Adobe Acrobat and Acrobat Sign licensing.
• Adobe Fonts, Adobe Stock and Adobe Express terms (PSLT §§19, 32, 34), and ETLA contract terms, which are not public.
• Frame.io self-service plans (Free, Pro, Team) sold on frame.io, which are outside the enterprise product description.