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What Is a Good Adobe Acrobat Alternative?

I am looking for a good replacement for Adobe Acrobat. One that is at a lower price point with similar layout and features. Adobe no longer provides my school district licences per computer and the price point is too high for licences per person.

Being able to create forms, sign documents and edit PDFs are features I frequently use.
—–
Tim

Comments: 17 Responses to “What Is a Good Adobe Acrobat Alternative?”

    3 years ago

    So you definitely need something the ability to create PDFs, not just view and annotate them like Preview. Though you can sign documents with Preview. You could also, of course, use Pages or anything really to create documents and save them as PDFs. But to use PDF-specific things like forms, you'll need some closer to Adobe Acrobat.

    Is there no way you could do without the forms part? Or maybe use a technology instead of PDF -- like web page forms? I'm don't know what you are doing that you need to build PDF forms.

    There are a few PDF tools in the App Store. But I've never used any of them except PDF Pen, which I don't think will allow you to create documents from scratch.

    Hopefully someone else can chime in with a recommendation.

    Ken Jones
    3 years ago

    I know you can save Pages as PDF. You can edit PDF in the LibreOffice suite (free, Win, Mac. Linux) if you open the PDF in the Draw app of LibreOffice. Might help.

    Lorenz Rychner
    3 years ago

    I have found PDFPenPro very flexible, it may do most or all of what you need to achieve:
    https://pdfpen.com/pdfpenpro/

    Grace Lidia Suarez
    3 years ago

    I tried. I really dislike Adobe products. After testing six or seven I finally gave up and got Acrobat.

    Ian Oultram
    3 years ago

    I'm looking for exactly the same solution. It simply isn't financially viable for me to use Adobe.

    I've been experimenting with Google docs and an add-on called DocHub. It's far from perfect for my needs but it working as a temporary stop-gap. There's a free version but if you need volume its costs from $4.99 per month.

    I really hope there is a native Mac solution out there.

    Jasper
    3 years ago

    Have a look at pdfpenpro. It’s not cheap but probably cheaper than Acrobat. I only have an old licence and expect that the current version would be improved. I find it a little prone to crashing but it does everything I’ve ever needed that Preview can’t

    Kevin Hall
    3 years ago

    When I had a PeeCee i used to use a product called FoxitPhantomPDF and when I moved over to the MacBookPro I looked to see if it was available, and it was. I have a feeling it cost me about £70.00, three years ago. I got fed up with it because it was not good at creating PDFs. So the next thing I tried was Readdle's PDFexpert. Again it is quite expensiove, about £70.00 or thereabouts, but I have yet to hit a problem that PDF Expert cannot solve. That is not a promise, but it is the product I use

    Michael Vignola
    3 years ago

    PDFpenpro has all of the features of Adobe Pro, the latest version is stable and does all of things that I used with Adobe pro

    Bill Bowman
    3 years ago

    PDFpen is a good alternative (and part of Setapp) or PDFpen Pro for a more robust set of tools (not on Setapp). If your needs are rather light, I'd have a look at PDF Viewer in the Mac App Store. It's not as feature-rich as some, but it's free with some in-app purchases.

    Mark
    3 years ago

    I’ve been using PDFPen Pro for a number of years.

    Andrew
    3 years ago

    Wondershare's PDFElement is viable and PDF Expert is fair. The latter won't have OCR until the next version.

    Björn Sackemark
    3 years ago

    Gary: If you need similar look and feel, and features too, as Adobe Acrobat (XD), you really should go with Adobe. Creative Cloud is a double edged sword, and everyone’s got an opinion… But it’s a lot of software for the subscription fee.

    Otherwise: What’s wrong with PDFPen (Pro)? So many people have pointed this out. It’s worth highlighting the SetApp deal. I guess you could describe it as literal SaaS —you subscribe to an alternative App Store.

    What are you missing from Acrobat exactly?

    Chris Bell
    3 years ago

    I recommend PDF It All. I've been gathering screen shots of magazine articles or PDF's from online courses and had issues that were not making a satisfying solution. This app, which I use on my iPad has a useable free level that is enough for me and appears to create a pdf for a much stronger user. I believe I chose this because it had a purchase level and wasn't a subscription base. Good luck.

    Franco Giudice
    3 years ago

    I'm using PDF Expert by Readdle both to create pdf from scratch and edit. Fully satisfied!

    Chris Cawein
    3 years ago

    I also use PDF Expert and am very happy with.

    John Stires
    3 years ago

    Is printing as a PDF not filling the bill?

    J.P. Iyer
    3 years ago

    I second the paid version PDF Element but it is expensive: PDF editing, conversions, create forms, and batch processing The perpetual license is best but it probably too expensive for each individual.

Comments Closed.