Payment & Refunds

All yearly subscriptions will automatically renew each year unless you pause or cancel the subscription.

Some subscription set ups don't include an auto-renew option, currently these are:

• Monthly subscriptions

• Subscriptions purchased via a Reseller

• Student subscriptions

You can see if your account is set to auto-renew by going to the Billing section of your account. If it is set to auto-renew, you will see a "Next payment is scheduled for (date)" as shown below.
In this instance, on the day that your subscription is due to expire, payment will be automatically taken from your account and the subscription will continue with no action required from you.

Manage subscription

Pausing your subscription to prevent auto-renewal

If you want to prevent your subscription from automatically renewing at the end of the subscription period, you can go to the Billing section of your account, click on the "Manage subscription" button and then click on "Pause subscription".

Pause subscription

Selecting this option will prevent any automatic renewal payments being taken at the end of the billing period. When renewal is successfully paused, you will instead see a "Resume subscription" option.

If you have paused your subscription this doesn't mean that your subscription has ended, it just means that it won't renew automatically at the end of the subscription period. You will still benefit from the remainder of your subscription and no further payments will be taken unless you choose to restart the subscription by selecting "Resume subscription" as shown below.

Resume subscription

Cancelling your subscription to prevent auto-renewal and remove payment details

If you want to remove your payment information to permanently cancel your subscription, you will see an option to do so beneath the "Resume subscription" option. If you cancel your subscription the benefits of your subscription will continue until the subscription period has run its course, then when it comes to an end, not only will no further payments be taken, after expiry it will be necessary to take out an entirely new subscription if you want to use our services again.

Cancel subscription

We offer a 7 Day Money Back Guarantee on all purchases.

We want you to love your Astute Graphics plugins, which is why we give you 7 days to trial them free of charge.

We do understand however, that sometimes it’s just not meant to be. For this reason, if you decide you want to return your plugins then as long as you contact us to make the refund request within 7 days of buying for the first time (one request per lifetime of the Astute Graphics account), we’ll give you a full refund, no questions asked.

For the Refund Policy please see Terms & Conditions.

Please note: When issued with a refund, it may take a few hours for the refund to show in your account. Similarly, you may not receive your refund receipt email for a few hours.

Yes, this is possible. You will need to make the purchase from an Astute Graphics account that doesn't currently have an active subscription running on it. If you don't have one, you can set an account up by starting a Free Trial (no payment details are taken).

To get started with your purchase, please contact our Support Team providing as much of the following information as possible:

• The email address of the account that you will be making the purchase from

• The name of the giftee

The Support Team will then set you up ready to purchase the gift.

It's no longer possible to make payments directly from the Astute Manager however, as long as you're logged into the Astute Manager then clicking on any of the "buy" links or buttons will automatically log you into the website and load the checkout.

Astute Graphics takes the security of customer data very seriously and takes all legal and industry best practices to ensure this. When making a card payment, we securely and directly pass on customer-supplied card information to our reputable payment processor, Paddle via HTTPS / TLS (SSL secure connection). Astute Graphics and Paddle store only the final 4 digits of the card following successful payment for reference purposes; full card data is never held by either party.

Our payments are handled by our billing partner Paddle, who are not supporting payments from Russia or Belarus at the moment. Unfortunately, following the recent sanctions imposed on Russia and Belarus, Paddle had to stop accepting payments from these countries, as they are subject to international rules regarding payment collection. You can read more about this here.

We appreciate that this is very disappointing for our customers in these locations, but unfortunately these sanctions are out of our control. We are however, monitoring the situation.

The list of countries unsupported by Paddle is subject to change from time to time, please see this list.

Due to the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) e-mandate directive (effective from 1 October 2021) our customers in India may find that their recurring payments for the subscription are affected. This is particularly likely if paying via PayPal.

The e-mandate requires:

• Banks to notify cardholders at least 24 hours prior to every recurring payment, giving the cardholder the ability to opt out of the recurring payment

• Recurring transactions over INR 5000 to go through AFA each time

• Cardholders to authenticate themselves via additional factor authentication (AFA) by the issuing bank by completing a one-time registration process to establish a recurring payment

Currently, we can confirm that we are seeing successful subscription renewals from customers in India via debit and credit card payment, we therefore recommend this payment method if you experience issues with PayPal payment.

If you continue to experience payment issues, we recommend contacting the issuer of your debit/credit card to ask if they support recurring payments. Or to use a debit or credit card that does support recurring payments.

Alternatively, please contact our support team and they will be happy to put you in touch with a Software Reseller who will be able to purchase on your behalf.

Based on extensive feedback received over many years, Astute Graphics changed to the Annual Service Plan on 14 September 2019.

From further feedback, it became clear that this was confusing and customers didn’t see any benefit in keeping plugins which would likely lose compatibility in a short time. We therefore decided to make it simpler by switching to a full “Subscription” in name and operation. This began on . From that date onwards, all new purchases involve a one-off initial fee that provides access to the full suite of tools & plugins, plus a year of updates and enhancements. When that year ends, the subscription requires renewing to continue using the plugins.

Benefits of the subscription

•  All customers receive access to every current Astute Graphics plugin for Adobe Illustrator.

•  Automatic access to all new updates, upgrades, added compatibility, training and support.

•  Greater cost planning and value for money with monthly or annual payments.

With significant time savings, our plugins pay for themselves very quickly. This benefit is available for individual customers and teams.

Workflow focused
Whilst in the past we sold plugins individually, with the subscription there are no restrictions on the incredible creative possibilities and time-savings available due to missing plugins in your toolbox.

Customers get the most from our tools when they are all used seamlessly together, as part of an integrated workflow. The subscription provides all tools, demonstrating the tools as we always intended them to be used in the real world.

Keeping up with changes
One of the largest uncertainties experienced by those using technology is the frequency of releases. With some operating systems and Adobe releases causing breaking changes, it has always been a difficult task to ensure you’re up-to-date and compatible.

Astute Graphics also has a long and proven track-record of producing regular new product releases or major existing product upgrades. The news of these paid-for releases could not be made in advance.

Both situations have always left questions of cost in a customer’s mind. When is the best time to buy into the plugins? When will the next breaking change take place?

With the subscription, signed-up customers benefit from not only all compatibility releases, but also compatibility with every new and major Adobe Illustrator release.

Get up-and-running quickly
The new Astute Manager was released in 2019 with vast improvements and simplification of experience, from ease of purchase and installation to activation. saw the release of Astute Manager v2 ensuring that the installation and maintenance of our plugins is as slick as possible. This was then further improved with the 2022 release of Astute Manager v3.

So, Astute Graphics plugins are a full subscription service?
Yes, and there are huge benefits in signing-up, from the exciting new tools, training material and support to continued use with Adobe’s latest Creative Cloud releases.

You’re likely to make your money back in the first few days through time savings. Take our Free 7 day trial to find out, the trial includes 4 free plugins that you get to keep after the trial has ended.

We're certain that you will love what you find however, we understand that sometimes it’s just not meant to be. If you decide you want to return your plugins up to 7 days after buying for the first time (one request per lifetime of the Astute Graphics account), let us know, and we’ll give you a full refund, no questions asked.

Existing customers – we have you covered
With tens-of-thousands of loyal customers and well over 100,000 users, we want to ensure you’re looked after.

Legacy Customers
If you purchased before 14 September 2019 you are a legacy customer. As we have priced our subscription to be the cost equivalent of what previously bought you 2 or 3 plugins, the vast majority of legacy customers will benefit from gaining access to all tools rather than a restricted set. With our old licensing structure we typically released 2-3 major upgrades per year which (if purchasing all 3) could cost anything between $100 and $190. With our new subscription service, you gain access to ALL licenses and upgrades.

If you are using previously-purchased plugins they will continue to work in the versions they were purchased for. Whilst these legacy licenses will no longer be updated, and may not be compatible with future operating systems or Adobe Illustrator releases, their licenses remain valid and available for Adobe Illustrator CS6 to Illustrator 2019 on both Windows 7 / 8.1 / 10 and macOS 10.10 through 10.14. Please see our advice on reinstalling.

Your legacy license keys can be found within the email/s you received upon purchase of your legacy licenses.

All other existing Customers
Plugins purchased from 3 September 2020 are purchased as part of the subscription service, customers pay for access to all plugins. When the subscription expires, access to plugins expires and it will be necessary to purchase again to continue use.

Take our Free 7 day trial to find out if the subscription is for you.

For the Refund Policy please see Terms & Conditions.

Please read the terms and conditions, check your software compatibility and run our Free 7 day trial before purchasing.

We accept all major debit and credit cards from customers in every country:

• MasterCard

• Visa

• American Express

• Discover

• Diners Club

• JCB

• UnionPay

• Mada
  

Online payment methods:

• Google Pay

• Apple Pay

• iDEAL

• Bancontact

• PayPal

Please note: A PayPal account isn't necessary for PayPal payment, but if you do have a PayPal account you have the additional option to apply for PayPal credit. Please note that PayPal and its associated credit is not provided by us therefore, any questions regarding this service would need to be directed to PayPal.

Your invoices can be viewed and downloaded by logging in to your Customer Account and going to Billing. Now scroll to the bottom of the page where you will see Transaction history and there you can click on PDF to view and/or download your invoice. Historical purchases will show on the right under Historical transactions.

Please note that if you are a legacy license customer, invoices for these older licenses will not show on this website. You should have a copy of your legacy invoices and license keys which were sent by email at the time of purchase. If you are having trouble locating these, please email us and we will send them to you.