Stop paying £66 a month for software you don't need!

THIS WEEK: Adobe wants £66.49 a month for its full suite. That is nearly £800 a year, which is a remarkable amount of money for a small business that mostly needs to resize a logo and make a decent social post. We look at the free tools that genuinely replace Adobe for most of what you actually do, where each one falls short, and what to do when you hit the limits.

Adobe Creative Cloud All Apps costs £66.49 per month on an annual plan, billed monthly. That is £797 a year. The Photography plan (Photoshop and Lightroom only) is cheaper, but you still need a year-long commitment to avoid a cancellation fee. In 2024, Adobe charged users up to $150 just to cancel their subscription. The backlash was not subtle.

The assumption built into this pricing is that there is no real alternative. That assumption is wrong. The free tools available in 2025 cover the vast majority of what small business owners actually need: editing product photos, creating social graphics, making short marketing videos, designing a flyer. Professional designers working on complex multi-layer brand campaigns still need Adobe. The rest of us really do not.

The myth that professional design requires expensive software has been quietly dying for years. Most small business owners are paying for features they have never opened, using software that takes longer to load than the actual edit takes to complete, and wondering why they feel like they are doing it wrong. They are not doing it wrong. The tool is just overkill.

The tools below cover the four main things Adobe charges you for. All of them are free. None of them require a subscription. Some of them are better than their Adobe equivalent for everyday use.

TOOL 1: Photopea

Photopea replaces Photoshop. It is a browser-based photo editor that looks almost identical to Photoshop. No download, no account, no cost. You open it in Chrome and you get layers, masks, selection tools, blending modes, and full PSD file support. If you have ever used Photoshop, you will feel at home within five minutes. If you have never used Photoshop, it is more complex than Canva but far more powerful for actual image editing. Editing product photos, retouching headshots, creating precise cutouts: all of it handled without touching a subscription. Where it falls short: performance drops on very large files, there is no desktop app, and the ads in the free version are distracting during longer sessions. A paid tier at around $9 a month removes them. Link: https://photopea.com

TOOL 2: Canva

Canva Free replaces Adobe Express and InDesign for most day-to-day tasks. For small business owners who need to produce social graphics, presentations, flyers, and marketing materials quickly, Canva is probably the most useful tool on this list. Thousands of templates, drag-and-drop everything, export in whatever format you need. It is not a photo editing tool and it is not a vector tool. It is a design production tool for people who need finished assets without fine control. The free plan is genuinely usable. Background removal inside Canva requires the Pro plan at £10.99 a month, but you can remove backgrounds with a free tool first and then bring the image into Canva for free. Link: https://canva.com

TOOL 3: Inkscape

Inkscape replaces Illustrator. Free, open-source vector editing software that has been around long enough to be genuinely mature. Logos, icons, illustrations, anything where you need vectors rather than pixels. It supports SVG natively and exports to PNG, JPG, and PDF. The interface looks like it was designed in 2009, because it mostly was, but the tools are solid and it handles the vast majority of Illustrator use cases without a subscription. For creating or editing a business logo, making vector graphics for print, or doing anything that needs clean lines at any scale, Inkscape does the job. Where it falls short: no automatic image trace, slightly slower on Mac, and the interface takes some patience. Link: https://inkscape.org

TOOL 4: ChatGPT DaVinci Resolve

DaVinci Resolve replaces Premiere Pro. The free version includes the full professional colour grading suite, multi-cam editing, audio post-production tools, and AI-powered features including voice isolation and noise removal. These are the same colour grading tools used on actual film productions. The free version is not a crippled trial. It is a complete professional video editing application that happens to cost nothing. For small businesses producing YouTube content, social media videos, or any kind of marketing video, this is the most significant free upgrade available. Where it falls short: steeper learning curve than Premiere for beginners, no collaboration features on the free version, and it needs a reasonably capable GPU for smooth playback. Link: https://www.blackmagicdesign.com/products/davinciresolve

This is not about learning everything at once. Pick one task you do regularly in Adobe and replace it with a free tool this week. Just one.

If you use Photoshop to edit product photos or headshots, open Photopea at photopea.com right now. The interface is nearly identical. Open one of your existing PSD files. It will load it without any conversion. Do your usual edit. Export it. You have just done the thing you pay Adobe for, for free.

If you use Illustrator to edit or create logos and graphics, download Inkscape at inkscape.org. Open your existing AI or SVG files. Make your edit. Save it. Done.

If you use Premiere to edit social media or marketing videos, download DaVinci Resolve at blackmagicdesign.com. Import your footage. The colour grading tools alone are worth the switch.

If you mostly use Adobe for social posts and marketing materials, open Canva at canva.com. Pick a template in the right dimensions. Done in five minutes.

You do not need to cancel Adobe today. Just open one free tool, do one real task in it, and see whether it does the job. For most small business owners, it will. At that point, cancelling the £66 a month subscription becomes a very easy decision.

NEED HELP? In over your head? No idea where to start? I can help fix these issues.

GIMP is a free, open-source desktop Photoshop alternative. More powerful than Photopea for offline work. Considerably uglier to look at, but the tools are there for anyone who needs them. Link: https://gimp.org

Figma free tier is worth knowing about if you work on websites or apps and need to produce mockups or interface designs. The free plan covers most everyday needs. Link: https://figma.com

RawTherapee is a free RAW photo editor for anyone who shoots in RAW and wants proper control over exposure, colour, and detail without paying for Lightroom. Link: https://rawtherapee.com

The reason Adobe has been able to charge what it charges for as long as it has is not that the software is irreplaceable. It is that switching felt like too much effort, and "everyone uses Adobe" was close enough to true that it was easier to pay than to argue with it.

That has changed. Not because the free tools are perfect, they are not. Photopea has ads. DaVinci has a learning curve. Inkscape looks like it was built during a different era of the internet. But these tools are genuinely good enough for the vast majority of what small businesses actually need to do. If your requirements are making product photos look professional, creating consistent social posts, and occasionally editing a short video, you do not need Creative Cloud.

What you actually need is about forty-five minutes to learn a new tool. That is the real cost of switching from Adobe. And unlike £800 a year, you only pay it once.

Got a tool you want me to review? Reply to this email. Need actual help with your business's systems or digital setup? I have been doing this for 17 years. Get in touch.