The best Adobe Acrobat al­tern­at­ives

Adobe Acrobat is a product family for PDF solutions. For a long time, anyone who wanted to use the tools to their full extent had to buy the rather expensive complete version of the product. In the meantime, a sub­scrip­tion system was in­tro­duced that lowered the price. For large business customers, this is a practical solution since updates and support are included. But if you want to avoid ongoing costs or constant updates, other providers also offer this one-time payment model. Al­tern­at­ives to Adobe Acrobat are often less expensive - whether as a sub­scrip­tion or as a purchase version. Many of them offer a similarly large range of functions.

For private users who only want to read PDFs or create them from other formats, a free PDF reader is often suf­fi­cient. Office programs are now equipped with plugins that convert documents to PDF by default. Readers also usually have com­ment­ing functions included. If you want the full range of functions, go for standard or pro­fes­sion­al versions.

Correct as of September 2021

Foxit PDF Editor is ideal for users who fre­quently work with PDF documents at home or at work and want to take advantage of features such as Con­nec­ted­P­DF, OCR, and all security features. With Connected PDF, you can manage access per­mis­sions, keep track of who is modifying the document and how, and share in­form­a­tion about the project via the cloud. OCR makes text within images and scans machine-readable and lets you edit the content.

Par­tic­u­larly note­worthy are the well-developed ac­cess­ib­il­ity features. The reader reads out text in speech output and offers various mag­ni­fic­a­tion tools. In addition, Linux users will find this software to be an al­tern­at­ive to Adobe Acrobat, which has not supported the operating system for several years now.

You can purchase up to ten licenses of this Adobe Acrobat al­tern­at­ive for Mac and Windows on the official website. Companies that need more should contact the sales de­part­ment. The single license includes support and updates link in the purchased version. There is no sub­scrip­tion system like with Adobe.

Nitro PDF Pro lets you create PDF files (including Tagged PDF), import Word, Excel, and Power­Point documents, and integrate email. Nitro works across programs and creates a small tool plugin in the most commonly used Office programs that can also convert documents to PDF/A format. Nitro does not support quite as many formats as Adobe. However, the scope is suf­fi­cient for daily use.

You can work on your document anywhere via the Nitro Cloud. You grant access and editing rights and track edits in real time. Elec­tron­ic sig­na­tures and timestamps, as well as passwords, provide ad­di­tion­al security. The Erase tool allows you to white-out areas to make them un­re­cog­nis­able in the document. With one click you can also delete all meta data and therefore protect sensitive data.

The PDF editor is a good al­tern­at­ive to Adobe Acrobat. You can use markups and notes to annotate the document and hide sensitive in­form­a­tion with the tool. For image editing, the PDF editor opens a third-party program. Text passages can be edited, moved, or rotated in the program.

Fur­ther­more, the program lets you create clickable links. Stamps and coloured QR codes are also possible. It reads out marked text and can integrate trans­la­tion programs. If the menu bar seems a bit cluttered, simply adjust it to your needs. Working with the PDF editor is straight­for­ward.

If you use the program only rarely for in­di­vidu­al tasks, it remains free of charge. If you exceed the daily limit (up to three tasks per hour), you get referred to the sub­scrip­tion or purchase licenses. The de­velopers have trans­ferred the exact design of the web ap­plic­a­tion to the desktop program. The only dif­fer­ence: Sejda PDF Desktop processes all tasks locally on your PC whereas Sejda Cloud stores documents on the Sejda servers and deletes them auto­mat­ic­ally after two hours.

The range of functions is quite adequate for a free tool. The user interface is well organised. At the top of the screen, you can see the main page, where all functions are sorted by topic. Clicking on one of the buttons takes you to the re­spect­ive task area. For example, if you select the PDF editor, you will be prompted to load a PDF file. For editing, you can then use limited functions such as markups (highlight and strikethrough), redaction (without deleting meta data), sig­na­tures, or inserting text. However, the abundance of tools on the homepage is no longer there.

For example, if you want to save a Word document as a PDF and sign it digitally, select ‘Word to PDF’ under ‘Convert to PDF’. Save the file sep­ar­ately. Under ‘Edit & Sign’ you upload the PDF file again and then sign it in the tool. Do you want to add Bates numbering? Then save the document again, click on the ‘Bates Numbering’ option under ‘Other’ and add the desired para­met­ers.