BASALT · JOURNAL
Acrobat's subscription against a one time licence
Acrobat Pro is sold as a subscription. Basalt is a one time purchase. The comparison is straightforward arithmetic, with a few things worth stating that arithmetic alone misses.
The arithmetic
Check Adobe's current pricing on their own site rather than trusting a number in a blog post, since it changes. As a shape rather than a figure: a monthly subscription accrues cost every month whether or not the application is opened, and a perpetual licence does not.
Over a multi year horizon and for occasional use, the perpetual licence is usually cheaper by a wide margin. For daily professional use of the full feature set, the comparison is much closer, because you are getting considerably more software.
What the subscription buys that a perpetual licence does not
Continuous feature updates. This is real value and it is worth being honest about: a subscription that ships new capability every year is not the same purchase as a licence for the software as it exists today.
Support, at a level individual developers generally cannot match.
Cross platform use, which matters in any firm with mixed machines.
What a perpetual licence buys
Software that keeps working whether or not the company does. This is a genuine consideration for tools in a professional workflow, and it is the reason some firms prefer perpetual licences even at higher up front cost.
Predictable cost. No renewal, no price rises, no seat count management.
No account. Basalt requires no sign in, which for confidential document work is a preference some people hold strongly.
The honest recommendation
If you use the full breadth of Acrobat regularly, the subscription is reasonable value and switching to a narrower tool to save money is a false economy.
If you open a PDF tool a few times a month, mostly to redact, merge, or number pages, then paying monthly for a professional suite you barely touch is the definition of overspend, and a one time purchase is the better fit.
Work out which of those you actually are before deciding. The honest answer is often visible from how often you have opened Acrobat in the last month.
Frequently asked questions
Is a one time PDF licence cheaper than an Acrobat subscription?
For occasional use, usually and by a wide margin, since a subscription accrues cost every month regardless of use. For daily use of the full feature set the comparison is closer, because the subscription includes considerably more software and ongoing updates.
What do you lose by not subscribing to Acrobat?
Continuous feature updates, vendor support at a level individual developers rarely match, and cross platform availability. Those are real, and whether they matter depends on how much of the product you actually use.
Does a perpetual licence keep working if the company stops trading?
That is the usual argument for one. Software already installed under a perpetual licence continues to run, whereas a subscription depends on the service continuing to authorise it.
How do I decide between them?
Look at how often you opened your PDF application in the last month and which features you used. Regular use of the full breadth favours the subscription; occasional redaction, merging and numbering favours a one time purchase.
Doing it in Basalt
Basalt is a native macOS PDF toolkit with eighteen tools in one window: merge, split, compress, OCR, Bates numbering, privilege logs, forms, signing, watermarks, comparison and more. Redaction destroys content rather than covering it, and an independent verifier re-opens every written file and proves the material is gone before the file is saved. If it cannot prove it, nothing is written. A one time $29 licence covers up to three Macs, it is free for the first 24 hours, there is no account, and the engine holds no network entitlement at all, which macOS enforces at the code-signature level. Download it at basaltformac.com.
Redaction that proves itself
Basalt destroys the content you mark, then re-opens the file it wrote and proves the content is gone before it saves anything. Your documents never leave your Mac.