Adobe is turning acrobat.com into a business with paid user accounts. The service has more than 5 million registered users and will retain the free version with usage limitations on some features. These features can be upgraded to one of the two premium plans.

The plans can be monthly or yearly and would cost $14.99 a month/$149 a year or $39 a month/$390 a year. The ‘premium basic’ plan allows 10 PDF conversions a month and meetings with 5 users through ConnectNow. The ‘premium plus’ plan upgrades to unlimited PDF conversions and meetings with 20 users. The premium plans also have access to phone and web support. Free users will be allowed 5 PDF conversions and meet with two people through ConnectNow.

Acrobat.com is getting into a collaborative app called Tables. Tables handles basic spreadsheets. Through this, multiple users can work on a spreadsheet in one go. They can also track revisions. Eric Larson, Adobe’s director of product management, said that Tables is not yet a ready replacement for Microsoft Excel. Hence, it is being rolled out in Acrobat Lab section initially. 

However, users will be able to do some of the things on Tables, which they will not be able to do on Excel. User would know where others are on the document and provide a warning when somebody is making changes, which may affect other people. Adobe thinks that the features available for paid accounts would woo the free users to upgrade. It is still allowing people to use Tables, Buzzword (Adobe’s online word processor), and presentations.