Summary

• Adobe Express offers a great free version, but the Premium edition is worth it for extra features.
• Premium upgrade includes access to more generative AI credits, font library, scheduling abilities, stock assets, and editing tools.
• Brand assets and management tools, along with advanced animation options, make the Premium upgrade worthwhile for creative projects.

Adobe’s browser-based Express tool is also available as a phone and tablet app, making it widely accessible and easy to look into. While Adobe Express is similar to Photoshop, it offers a lot more for on-the-go creation of images, videos, and other content types. Adobe Express has excellent free options available — even better than Canva’s — but I think the Adobe Express Premium upgrade is worth it for the extras it includes.

What is Adobe Express?

Adobe Express is Adobe’s content creation and graphic design tool. Prior to 2023, you might have known it as Adobe Spark, and for a small portion of its life it was known as Creative Cloud Express.

You can access Adobe Express in many ways for free, including on your chosen browser, where you can use the tool in its large-screen version. There’s also a free Adobe Express app, available for iOS, iPadOS, and Android devices. There isn’t currently a desktop app like you’ll find for other Adobe software though.

The best creative uses for Adobe Express are creating social media content, digital and traditional marketing materials, and fun creative crafts. It’s great for businesses and teams, as it offers useful collaboration tools to boost your output and workflow.

How much is Adobe Express Premium?

Unlike most Adobe tools, you can access Adobe Express for free. The free version offers so many tools and doesn’t keep much from users who wish not to pay. But Adobe Express Premium brings a little extra to your design abilities with Express, and in my experience, I've found it is worth the upgrade.

Adobe Express Premium is available from $10 per month for a monthly rolling plan. Unlike typical Creative Cloud plans, you can cancel your monthly plan at any time without cancelation fees or further difficulty. You may also choose to subscribe to the annual plan, which is prepaid for the year, offered at $100 for a full year. This one cannot be canceled midway through the term without cancelation fees.

The above Premium plans are for personal accounts, but if you want to increase your team’s or business’s workflow, Adobe Express Teams is another great subscription option, and it contains many of the Premium features, too.

What comes with Adobe Express Premium?

Despite the free version of Express providing more than enough tools for most people’s use, the Premium upgrade offers enough that you probably won’t need to use any other creative tools aside from this one.

Generative AI Credits

Firstly, you’ll get ten times the amount of generative AI credits — Adobe Express uses Adobe Firefly AI in its software — as it takes your account from 25 credits to 250, which practically feels unlimited.

Many of Adobe Express’ AI tools are not specifically behind the Premium paywall — unlike Canva, which locks most of its Magic Media tools away for use by Canva Pro users only — you’re just limited by how many credits you can use per month.

Adobe Font library

Adobe Font is a great tool and feature found within most Adobe software. Although Adobe Express doesn’t have the match font tool integrated — which is one of the best AI tools in other Adobe software — you do get a large library of access to Adobe Fonts on the Premium plan.

Free users can access their system fonts and up to 1,000 fonts provided by Adobe. Premium users can increase that number to over 25,000 fonts from Adobe. They’re all licensed for commercial use to Premium users, so you can use them in any and all of your projects.

Increased accounts for content sharing

One of the best uses of Adobe Express is creating graphics and posts for your social media channels. If you’re doing this, you likely run more than one social media account, and sometimes for more than one business. There’s a content scheduler built into Adobe Express, or you can save your projects for manual uploading, too.

Not only can Premium users easily resize Express projects for a variety of channels and uses at the click of a button, but you’ll also increase your scheduling limit from the free plan. Free users may only schedule posts for one account per social media type — for example, one Instagram account, one Facebook account, and one LinkedIn account.

On the other hand, Premium users can schedule content for up to 3 accounts per social media site directly from Express. This is great for anyone working in digital marketing or if you have multiple personal social media accounts.

Huge asset and template library

Along with the Adobe Font library, Premium users also get access to a higher number of templates as well as other assets like stock imagery.

You can create custom designs from scratch using all the Adobe Express tools, but for quick or trending posts, it’s much easier to start from a template and use some stock assets, like audio.

The biggest benefit of the expanded library Premium provides is that your content posts won’t use overused or oversaturated elements, since you’ll have many more options than free users.

Not only that, but with the increased generative AI credits, you can also generate new templates to use, or utilize the text-to-image feature to add your own custom-made stock imagery and elements.

Brand assets and management tools

Whether you’re using Adobe Express for personal reasons or as part of a team or business, the Brand Kit feature is one of the best Premium benefits.

Available in other tools such as Canva and Microsoft Designer, Adobe Express’s Brand Kit feature allows you to upload your brand assets and guidelines such as logos, wordmarks, brand colors, brand fonts, and a style guide to ensure your brand never strays outside its parameters.

Premium editing tools

There aren’t many extra tools that Premium users get that free users do not, but the few that are available for Premium users do make the upgrade worthwhile.

Premium users can erase image parts and save transparent PNGs. Furthermore, in addition to removing backgrounds in static images, Premium users can also remove backgrounds in moving video footage. This helps you create impressive videos without the need for complex video editing software.

Adobe Express also has animation options, with advanced animation tools for Premium users. Free users are stuck with default animation options, which don't allow you to do much to customize animated elements. Combining further animation features with video editing features means you can take your social videos to the next level.

A premium upgrade that’s worthwhile

Even though free users do have access to many tools which are often hidden behind paywalls on other similar software, the Premium upgrade to Adobe Express is cheap enough and provides enough extra tools that really make it worthwhile. Most Creative Cloud plans already include Express Premium within the plan, but if you’re not already an Adobe subscriber, the extra $10 a month is a great investment and will provide much more value to your creative projects.