Are you worried that your current font manager is being discontinued? Wondering what your font server vendor’s development strategy is moving forward? If you aren’t worried, you should be. Your freedom is at stake.
Extensis and Monotype Abandon Their Font Servers
Two old players in the creative workflow marketplace, Extensis and Monotype, have begun telling their customers to abandon their font servers and move to their “new” cloud technologies. But they’re a decade late to the cloud market since more than ten years ago, Insider Software released FontAgent CloudServer, the planet’s most complete and capable solution for font distribution, management and control.
New Doesn’t Always Mean Good
Extensis is aggressively urging its Universal Type Server (UTS) customers to switch their users to its Connect Fonts service, which has a limited feature set aimed at workgroups. Its lack of enterprise font management capabilities make it a poor choice for replacing UTS. Worse yet, according to customers of the Connect Fonts service, it has been plagued by service outages that have lasted as much as two days and paralyzed their organizations’ workflows and productivity.
Don’t Be Fooled into Buying Fonts
Monotype has announced the end of life for its FontExplorer product line and is pushing customers to sign up for Monotype Fonts, an online service that lets them use Monotype fonts in their designs. But let the buyer beware. If you deploy those fonts in projects, you must purchase commercial licenses to do so, and those licenses can range into the tens of thousands of dollars very quickly for even medium-sized user communities and web applications. Don’t be suckered into thinking that because you can tinker with lots of fonts that it’s OK to put them to work without financial consequences.
Be True to Your Requirements
The truth is that the new technologies – Extensis Connect Fonts and Monotype Fonts – fall far short of font management, distribution and license compliance requirements of the enterprise. If you’re looking at using those technologies, ask their vendors about important enterprise features like remote and disconnected user support, automatic font expiration, font license management, font usage reports, compliance alerts, and enterprise directory integration. Just because your font server vendor is abandoning its software doesn’t mean you should abandon your requirements.
Looking for an On-Premises Solution?
Extensis and Monotype have made it clear that they are moving away from on-premises font server products. So if you want to stick with an on-prem solution, you’ll need to find a new font management vendor. And even if you’re moving from on-premises to the cloud, moving to their cloud offerings might not be the right move for you.
It’s Not About You, It’s About Them
Why are Extensis and Monotype discontinuing development of their font servers? First, it’s because their old technologies are unable to handle the data of more than one organization at a time, a crucial requirement of cloud-based services.
Perhaps more importantly, the vendors are more concerned with maximizing their market cap than solving your font management challenges. You see, investors reward technology vendors who have recurring revenue streams from online subscription services.
Tired of Getting Pushed Around?
Your decision about your next font distribution and management solution comes down to some simple questions:
- Are you tired of paying for software maintenance and getting nothing for it?
- Fed up with font technology with sub-par performance and stability?
- Frustrated from getting no answers to your support requests?
- Interested in complying with your font licenses without big brother hovering over you?
- Want the right to choose between cloud and on-premises deployment? Between subscription and traditional software licensing?
- Had enough of vendors that bully you into doing business their way?
Freedom of Choice with FontAgent
If any of these issues are important to you, you owe it to yourself to talk to us about FontAgent, the world’s leading font server. It gives you the freedom to choose between cloud and on-prem, and between subscription and traditional licensing. We deliver timely software updates and fast answers to your support requests, and we have a decades-long track record to prove it. And we’re not trying to sell you tons of expensive fonts you don’t need. FontAgent freedom of choice provides the creativity, productivity and control you need.
Talk to Us About FontAgent
At Insider, we’re committed to deliver font management and distribution solutions your way so you can preserve your font management freedom. Ask us for a free FontAgent trial or demo today, and we’ll show you how FontAgent helps you maintain creativity, control and compliance across your workgroup, agency or enterprise.