Freda D. CuevasIf you want to design high-quality websites, it’s worth investing in the best web design software for the job. A popular choice is Adobe Dreamweaver, a long-established app tailored to creative website design, which doesn’t require a great deal of coding.
Dreamweaver is one of Adobe’s Creative Cloud apps, and there are several options for accessing it. However, the cheapest way to get hold of it may not always be obvious. In this guide, we explain how to download Adobe Dreamweaver as a free trial, what the different subscription options are, what discounts are available, and which alternatives are worth considering.
Can I download Dreamweaver for free?
Adobe offers a seven-day free trial of Dreamweaver. If you want to give this a go, head to the Dreamweaver page on Adobe’s website (you can find it by Googling “Adobe Dreamweaver”—it should be the top result) and click Free Trial on the menu. You can then download and test Dreamweaver on its own, or try Adobe’s whole Creative Cloud suite for a week.
It’s worth noting that you’ll have to give Adobe your payment details to download the free trial. After the trial ends, you’ll automatically begin paying for a subscription. So, if you don’t want to commit to the subscription period, don’t forget to cancel before the week’s trial is over. Otherwise, you could end up having to pay a cancellation fee.
During your trial, you can test all of Dreamweaver’s features and work out whether it’s a product you’d like to keep using. Once the week is up, there’s no way to continue using it for free, so you’d need to choose a paid plan that works for you.
How do I buy Dreamweaver
From the Dreamweaver page on Adobe’s site, click Buy Now and you’ll see the various pricing plans available. Adobe’s plans are all subscription-based which means that, unlike with some other software providers, you can’t simply pay a one-off fee to buy Dreamweaver outright.
You can subscribe to Dreamweaver as a single app, or get the whole bundle of Creative Cloud Apps in one package. The latter includes over 20 pieces of creative software, including photo editing program Photoshop, page design app InDesign, and vector graphics app Illustrator. If you’re likely to use three or more of the apps included in it, the All Apps plan is probably the most cost-effective choice for you.
What’s the price of Dreamweaver?
The standard and most popular Dreamweaver plan has a monthly fee of $20.99 / £19.97 / AU$29.99, though you’ll have to commit to a yearly subscription to get these prices. If you want to end your subscription before the year is out, you’ll pay a cancellation fee of 50% of your remaining subscription cost. A monthly subscription with no annual commitment costs $31.49 / £30.34 / AU$45.99 per month. Alternatively, you can prepay for a full year’s subscription for $239.88 / £238.42 / AU$343.07.
If you’re going to be using Dreamweaver regularly, the annual subscription is your best option. However, if you’re only going to need it occasionally, it may work out better to pay for a monthly subscription as and when you need it.
The Creative Cloud All Apps package has a similar pricing structure: $52.99 / £49.94 / AU$76.99 per month with an annual commitment; $79.49 / £75.85 / AU$114.99 per month with no annual commitment; or $599.88 / £596.33 / AU$871.07 for a full year upfront.
You can cancel any Adobe subscription and get a full refund within the first 14 days. Also, it’s worth noting that these prices were correct at time of writing. Rates outside of the US can fluctuate with the exchange rates.
Dreamweaver discounts for teachers and students
Adobe offers an education discount scheme through which students and teachers can subscribe to all Creative Cloud applications for the same price as a standalone app. This includes Dreamweaver, all the other desktop and mobile apps, and 100GB cloud storage. The cost is $19.99 / £16.24 / AU$21.99 monthly for the first year, then $29.99 / £25.28 / AU$43.99 per month thereafter. Like the standard plans, you’ll need to commit to a year at a time. You can pay for a full year in advance, but this doesn’t work out cheaper. Proof of eligibility, such as a school-issued email address or ID card, is required upon registration.
How can I get started with Dreamweaver?
Dreamweaver is a little more complicated than your standard WordPress-type web design workspace, and can be confusing to newcomers. If this is the case for you, you’ll find Adobe’s website has a useful selection of tutorials, in both written guide and video format. They’re divided into Beginner and Experienced sections, so you can learn the basics first, then move on to the more advanced skills.
Dreamweaver: Key info you need to know
Adobe Dreamweaver is a web design program that enables you to quickly create and publish websites, with support for HTML, CSS JavaScript, and more. It occupies an odd middle ground in web design, in that professionals often prefer software that gives more control over coding, while beginners prefer simpler options like WordPress. Nevertheless, it’s a flexible app with some useful features that make it easy to produce a responsive design for different screen sizes. It works through a mix of visual editing and HTML editing, so doesn’t require too much coding expertise. It’s available for both macOS and Windows computers.
Dreamweaver: Android and iOS apps
Though Dreamweaver does enable you to tailor websites to phone and tablet screens, the app itself is currently only available for desktop computers. If you’re looking for a web design app for iOS or Android, there are alternatives available. However, since most professional web design is done on desktop, these tend to be a little more simplistic. Wix and Weebly are a couple of examples that offer accessible web creation apps.
Dreamweaver alternatives
If Dreamweaver isn’t the right choice for you, there’s a wide variety of alternative web design software available. One option is Microsoft’s Visual Studio Code, or VScode, which is popular among developers as it includes a customizable code editor. On the beginner-friendly side, the options include WordPress, Wix, and Weebly, which require little or no coding.
