Following a year-long test period, Adobe has decided to move its online productivity and collaboration services out of beta and introduced two paid subscription offerings targeted at business users. Among the products in Acrobat.com's suite are Buzzword, an online word processor; ConnectNow, a web meeting program that enables screen sharing, chat and video among users; and Share, a file sharing program that lets users access files through a URL instead of an email attachment.
The service will retain its free version, but there are now usage limitations on certain features which can be unlocked by upgrading to either a Premium Basic ($14.99 per month or $149 per year) or Premium Plus ($39 per month or $390 per year) plan. That's considerably more expensive than Google Apps, which packages services like Gmail and Google Docs together for $50 per user per year, but Adobe hopes to differentiate itself by offering web meetings and the ability to create documents in the PDF format.
Along with the move to paid accounts, Acrobat.com is getting a new collaborative app called Tables that handles basic spreadsheets, and in the next 12 months the company plans to offer Acrobat.com's services on BlackBerry, iPhone, Nokia and Windows Mobile smartphones.