This is not how subscriptions usually work, but with Adobe it is.
With every other subscription I have ever had if I have it for say 14 months or 16 months and then want to cancel I have been free to do so.
But with Adobe when I wanted to cancel after 13 months I learned that I had automatically been committed to another 12 months and would need to pay a hefty cancellation fee.
I like the software that Adobe makes but I hate hate hate the subscription.
When I leave Adobe after my subscription ends this time, I hope to never have to sign up for their subscription again.
If you choose the annual contract, that will run for a full year with you paying monthly installments. If you want to cancel early, you will have to reimburse them. That is exactly the same as phone plans, gym plans (with the exception that gyms often don't allow early cancellation at all), etc. Now if you don't cancel what do you think will happen with an annual contract? Of course it will prolong for another period of time that you chose, in this case a full year again. This is literally hoe contracts work.
If you get a monthly subscription of Netflix, you don't need to manually prolong it every month, do you?
12 months binding is fine. Cancellation fee before the 12 months are up is fine.
Automatically binding your customers for another 12 months every year is insane and extremely hostile and abusive behavior. And I will have no part in such things so even though I love the software that Adobe makes I quite frankly will avoid doing any business with them ever again now to the extent that I am able to.
It's not that terrible, but it certainly is something immigrants like me don't expect. Now I assume it's the case.
The actual shitty thing that people should be complaining about, is that the subscription auto-renews (unless I missed the checkbox) and I couldn't find a way to cancel it pre-emptively, outside of blocking it at the bank level, otherwise it signed me up for another 12 months.