Do you need to read and create PDF documents as part of your business?
Best Alternative To Adobe Acrobat Pro For Mac
PDF documents are very useful. You can distribute your valuable content and keep it secure so that others cannot change it. No matter what operating system the recipient as they can open a PDF document. So it’s a good idea to have a good PDF editor application on your computer.
Adobe Acrobat DC is a software that helps you to create, secure, and distribute PDF files. It also allows you to change content or images in PDF files. However, the biggest drawback of the adobe acrobat is the cost. Following is a handpicked list of the Top 30 Adobe Acrobat Pro alternatives, with popular features and latest download links.
Most people will naturally gravitate towards Adobe Acrobat because Adobe created the PDF format and they therefore believe that it’s the best software for the job.
- Though Adobe Acrobat is excellent in creating, editing, converting PDFs, there are many reasons for people searching for good alternatives to replace Adobe Acrobat. Adobe Acrobat is ridiculous expensive: Adobe Acrobat Pro is $449 for full version and Adobe Acrobat Standard is $299.
- Not to mention, Acrobat is becoming slower, and nowadays, there is even free Adobe Acrobat Pro for macOS 10.15 alternative. With that in mind, we will look at some of the best alternatives you can use, talking about their features, price, and system support. PDFelement for macOS 10.15.
- @Candytoast, I agree that PDFelement can be a good alternative to Adobe. It is much cheaper and more simple to use. It is not that often to have an all-in-one PDF solution on Mac.
If you just want to read PDF documents then the free Adobe Acrobat Reader DC will do everything that you need. But if you want to do more with PDF’s, such as create them and edit them then you’ll need the Adobe Acrobat Pro DC which comes with a pretty heavy price tag.
The good news is that there are some very good alternatives to Adobe Acrobat that are simple to use and will have all of the tools that you need to view, create, edit and protect your PDF documents.
I’ll share my thoughts on five of the best alternatives and what they offer here so that you can make the right decision.
Why you should look for an alternative to Adobe Acrobat?
The first reason is the price of the software. Adobe is a software giant and they charge giant prices for their applications. For the standard version of Adobe Acrobat DC Pro you can expect to pay around $450. You can purchase a subscription to the software but this is going to be in the region of $180 per year.
What kind of features do you need from a PDF editor?
Well, most people are only going to want to use some basic features to create and be able to simply edit PDF documents. The features in Adobe Acrobat DC Pro go far beyond that and this is overkill for most users.
There’ve been a number of security scares with Adobe Acrobat. Yes Adobe have rolled out numerous updates to fix security issues but can you be really sure that it’s totally secure against hacking? Not only that, but with new updates there’s always the possibility that new security vulnerabilities may emerge.
What should a good PDF Editor do?
There are some freeware applications out there that will let you perform simple PDF editing tasks. You need to be careful with these as some will leave a watermark on your document which does not look good. People that receive your PDF documents with watermarks in them are going to think that you are doing things on the cheap!
I use a PDF editor to carry out a number of tasks and I believe that if you are going to spend your hard-earned cash on an application then it should be able to do at least the following:
- Create a PDF document from scratch
- Convert documents of different formats into PDF format (e.g. word processing documents, spreadsheets and presentations)
- Convert a PDF document into other document formats
- Be able to edit a PDF like you would a Word document (e.g. add or delete text and edit existing text, add or delete images, add or edit hyperlinks etc)
- Have tools for checking PDF documents such as spell-check
- Create a PDF document from a scanned image
- Add different levels of security to your PDF document
You may be looking for more advanced features than this. Perhaps you have to deal with sensitive or confidential documents and you need to control who can access what. Or you may need to completely remove certain information for some users for confidentiality and security reasons.
Now some of you may want to carry out your PDF editing using a smartphone or tablet device. I wouldn’t recommend this because the smaller screen sizes can make editing a PDF quite a challenge. But if that’s the way you want to go then you need to check to see if there is a mobile app version of the software that’s compatible with your phone.
OK let’s take a look at five of the most popular Adobe Acrobat alternatives out there:
1. Nitro Pro PDF Editor
Nitro Pro is probably the closest PDF editing application to Adobe Acrobat DC Pro. It comes with so many PDF editing tools and functions and ideal if you want a professional PDF application.
The interface is great with Nitro Pro. Nitro Pro’s interface resembles the Microsoft Word ribbon menu structure which other PDF editors use. If you’ve used Word before then using this application will be easy for you and you won’t have to go through a big learning curve.
Professional PDF editing of this quality doesn’t come cheap but it’s less expensive than Adobe Acrobat Pro. You can purchase Nitro Pro with 10 user licenses directly from their website.
If you want to use a mobile device for your PDF editing then this is not the software for you because there are no mobile apps available. In fact you can only use Nitro Pro on a Windows computer at the time of writing this.
These are some of the things that you can do with Nitro Pro:
- Create new PDF documents
- Import documents from other applications such as Word, PowerPoint and Excel
- Integrate your emails
- Convert to PDF/A
- Add, edit or delete text
- Add edit or delete images
- Convert PDF’s to other formats such as Word and Excel
- Drag and drop functionality
- Electronically sign documents
- Review tracking features
- Optical Character Recognition for scanning
- Redaction and whiteout
- Implement different levels of security
One of the disadvantages of Nitro Pro is that it supports fewer formats than Adobe Acrobat. This will probably not be an issue for most people but if you need a specific format then check before purchasing.
2. Foxit Phantom PDF Editor
The Foxit Phantom range of PDF editor applications is another good alternative to Adobe Acrobat. For Windows users, there is the choice of the Standard or Business version and there is a version for the Mac OS too. You can also get a version for Linux as well.
There is also a mobile app available from Foxit if you really want to edit PDF’s with a mobile device. Again the Foxit Phantom product is for professional PDF editors who require a lot of functionality.
The interface is intuitive with Foxit Phantom based on the Word ribbon menu structure. It will not take you long to get used to it. You can see the pricing of the Foxit Phantom series and you can also download a free trial of the software.
Some of the features of the Foxit Phantom PDF editor include:
- Create new PDF documents
- Import documents from other applications such as Word, PowerPoint and Excel
- Add, edit or delete text
- Add edit or delete images
- Convert PDF’s to other formats such as Word and Excel
- Create tagged PDF documents
- Confidential information black out
- Electronically sign documents
- Review tracking features
- Implement different levels of security
There are not many drawbacks with the Foxit Phantom software, to be honest. The only language available is English at the time of writing, and if you need telephone support you will have to call a number in the USA which is not great if you live in another part of the world.
3. PDF XChange Pro Editor
If you use a Windows PC and are looking for a lot of functionality at a low price then the PDF XChange Pro Editor is a good option. A single-user license for this application is usually less than $60 which is a very good value for money. Go here for the latest pricing information.
One of the really good things about the PDF XChange Editor is that the free version has around 60% of the functionality of the full version. So the smart move is to download it first and see if it meets all of your PDF editing needs before you purchase a license.
There is no version of the PDF XChange Editor for the Mac user nor are there any apps available for mobile users. The application supports a number of formats such as the commonly used Microsoft Office formats.
If you want all of the functionality it’s best to go for the PDF Xchange Pro package as it contains all of the features provided by the standard version and the PDF tools package. With the PDF XChange Pro Editor, you will get features such as:
- Create new PDF documents
- Import documents from other applications such as Word, PowerPoint and Excel
- Add, edit or delete text
- Add edit or delete images
- Convert PDF’s into image or text format
- Use markup for commenting
- Confidential information black out
- Implement different levels of security
Although the PDF XChange Pro interface is pretty intuitive and you’ll be able to jump into editing tasks pretty quickly, editing a lot of text in a PDF can be a bit tiresome. Also, be aware that in the trial version of this application it will leave watermarks on PDF’s you create.
4. Qoppa PDF Studio
This is more expensive than the PDF XChange Pro but it does more. You can use the software on Windows PC’s, a Mac and Linux. There are also apps for mobile users but these are fairly limited in functionality.
Best Alternative To Adobe Acrobat Pro For Mac
There is a Standard version of Ooppa PDF Studio but for around $40 more you get everything in the Pro version. There is a free trial version you can download and you can find out more on the official website.
The user interface for the Qoppa PDF Studio is not as straight forward as some of the other alternative PDF editors. I’d say that it looks pretty cluttered. You’re fairly limited with image editing but apart from that, the Pro version is a solid PDF editor.
Here are some of the features of the Qoppa PDF Studio Pro version:
- New PDF creation
- Edit existing PDF’s
- Document conversion
- Markup and annotation
- Append or delete pages
- Form design function
- OCR functionality
- Redaction
- Compare PDF Documents
- Digital signing of PDF’s
- Implement different security levels
5. Nuance Power PDF
The last of my alternative PDF editors is the Nuance Power PDF. It isn’t the cheapest alternative to Adobe Acrobat Pro but it will save you a lot of money of its feature provide what you want from a PDF editor.
There is a Standard and Advanced version for Windows PC’s and a Standard version for the Mac. You can see the latest pricing for the various packages on the official website. The company doesn’t offer any mobile apps for its PDF editors at the time of writing.
The interface with the Nuance Power PDF is pretty user-friendly and when you use the software there are two modes of editing which are comment/check and advanced. This is a very good PDF editor and as you would expect the Advanced package has all of the professional features. That said the Standard version should meet the needs of most.
With the Nuance Power PDF editor, you’ll get features such as:
- New PDF creation
- Edit existing PDF’s
- Document conversion
- Markup and annotation
- Scanner integration
- Redaction (Advanced)
- Digital signing (Advanced)
- Security implementation
Conclusion
Now that you know there are good alternatives to the Adobe Acrobat Pro you can decide which one is right for you and save a lot of money. If you want to create new PDF documents and edit existing ones then it’s unlikely that any freeware will be able to satisfy your requirements so you’ll need to purchase one of the good alternatives.
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Summary:
No doubt that Pdf is the most common file format used to exchange many different types of files. You may get your electicity bills, telephone bill, contract letter, receipt, etc. all in pdf formats. PDF stands for portable document format and it fairly justifies its purpose.
But managing or editing the Pdf files is really tough work. You can not easily edit any PDF file, add extra text, change its style, format, size, add editable controls, button, electronically signing them, add/editing graphics and so on.
If you have the perfect PDF editing tool then doing all the said things can be done with ease. There are many such software available like Adobe Acrobat etc. which lets you edit your PDF quickly and easily. However, Adobe Acrobat pdf editor is quite costly and it also has certain limitations. So, no doubt you might be looking for Adobe Acrobat alternatives.
Fortunately, there is another PDF editing software that comes encapsulated with all the features to fulfill your PDF editing requirements. Yes, you guessed it, its PDFelement 6 Pro.
Acrobat VS PDFelement
Though Adobe Acrobat is a great PDF editing tool, there are several things which make PDFelement a much better alternative to Acrobat. Let’s start with the compatibility, PDFelement is available for Windows 10/8.1/8/7/Vista/XP, Mac OS X 10.10 or later whereas Adobe Acrobat is only compatible with Windows 10/8/7 and you can use it on Mac OS X.
PDFelement is a feature-rich software and offers various efficient features which Adobe Acrobat lacks, like PDF to OCR, Redact PDF, and Bates numbering, all these features are absent in Acrobat. Other functions such as PDF conversion, you can only export PDF to Word, Excel, PPT, RTF, TIFF, PNG and JPG using Adobe Acrobat. On the other hand, PDFelement allows you to export PDF to Word, Excel, PPT, RTF, TIFF, PNG, JPG, BMP, GIF, EPUB, HTML and text documents. So, you get better file conversion range with PDFelement.
There is also a huge difference between the prices of PDfelement and Adobe Acrobat. You get the full version of Adobe Acrobat for $299 whereas PDFelement only costs you $59.95 for Standard Version and $99.95 for Professional Version. So, PDFelement is more efficient as well as cheaper than Adobe Acrobat.
Below are the full details of PDFelement and its features so that you can get the deeper knowledge of its working.
About PDFelement 6
PDFelement 6 is an incredible software and a product of Wondershare which offers you new cutting-edge techniques for handling your PDFs with the compatibility with Windows and Mac. systems. Not only the editing but you can perform a wide range of functions using PDFelement 6. It kinda 1-step solution to all your PDF related needs. PDFelement 6 offers efficient and handy features to carry out functions on PDF files or creating them with the easiest and the fastest way. It’s a complete PDF solution.
The thing which makes it even better from the other PDF editing tool is the ease of use it offers to the users and the simple, professional and interactive interface. The flat design and the smooth functioning of PDFelement 6 can attract the users at the very first sight. But why should you prefer PDFelement 6 over other PDF editors like Adobe Acrobat?
For that, you will have to look at its features. Below are best and the new features of PDFelement 6 which you should consider.
Below are the new capabilities of PDFelement 6 which have been included in latest version of the software to make it even better.
Create Fillable PDF Forms With Ease
Fillable PDF forms are in demand and very handy. These forms have made it easier to send the documents to other people for filling out the information. Due to these fillable PDF form, a person can get rid of the long process of filling the form as one can directly fill the form without taking the print of the form, fill it manually and then again scan it for the submission using PDFelement 6 Pro.
PDFelement 6 Pro has made the process of creating fillable PDF forms a piece of cake. Using PDFelement 6, you can now create unlimited fillable PDFs with textboxes, drop-down selectors, checkbox, radio button etc. quickly. You can turn any non-fillable form created in word, excel etc. into fillable and editable PDF forms with one-click.
You can even get the pre-designed form templates according to your purpose and then customize it accordingly. There are multiple pre-designed templates available in case you don’t want to start from the scratch.
For creating or converting any form to fillable PDF form, you need to open that particular form in PDFelement 6 and then add the fillable controls in it wherever you want. From the top bar toolbox you can choose any fillable control like checkbox, radio, button etc. and add them anywhere in the form. It also lets you resize the fillable controls.
Export Form Data Into Excel
Want to export data from hundred of identical PDf forms to excel? Well, PDFelement 6 has a solution for this too. With the help of PDFelement 6 Pro, directly export the form data of hundreds of identical forms into a single, easily manageable excel sheet within no time. There is no need to learn javascript or any other coding language for achieving the same.
Export Data From Scanned PDF
Now get rid of all the tedious and time-consuming manual data entry which can also commit some errors. PDFelement 6 allows you to scan the data from PDFs and convert into office files. The OCR feature of PDFelement 6 helps you to avoid error due to manual data entry and lets you to covert piles of papers into analyzing friendly office documents.
Faster Text Editing
PDFelement 6 has made it pretty easier and faster to edit the PDF files. It was never that easy to convert and edit the PDF files. But with the help of PDFelement 6, you can take better control of your PDF documents and change its font size, type and the style of the text. Edit the graphical objects and rotate, mirror and crop them with ease. This smart text editing feature in PDFelement 6 is startling.
Better And Faster
Edit your PDf files in a better and the easier way. PDFelement 6 helps you to edit the PDF files just like editing the word documents without losing fonts and formatting. PDFelement is devoted to providing the best user experience.
Some Other Features
PDF OCR – Free text from the photos and the scans and convert them to editable and searchable texts.
Spell Check – Fix all the typos and the other spelling mistakes as the software highlights all the spelling errors so that you can spot and fix them.
Annotate PDF – Markup your PDfs with the comment box, highlights, freehand drawing and so on.
Sign PDF – Applying electronic signature to your PDFs is one click away. Quickly add esign to PDF by typing, uploading files, or drawing.
Split PDF – Split your PDF file into several files using split PDF feature of this software.
Combine PDFs – If you have multiple PDF files and you need to combine them to form a single one then use the combine PDFs of PDFelement 6 Pro.
Protect PDF – Secure and protect your PDF files by applying open password and permission password to prevent unauthorized access to your PDFs and viewing, copying, editing and printing them.
Share PDF – Share PDFs via email or upload them to the Dropbox.
So these were some of the excellent features of PDFelement 6 Pro. There is also PDFelement 6 Std available that you can buy. Though PDFelement 6 Std is cost effective and you can get it $59.95 but you will miss some of the advanced features which you are getting in PDFelement 6 Pro. So, it’s better to spend a little extra money and get the advanced features with PDFelement 6 Pro for $99.95. PDFelement 6 Pro is totally worth the money. there is also the trial version available so that you can check the software for yourself and decide whether it meets your requirements or not.
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Big News!!!
Now, here is a great news.
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And if you share your review on the social media platforms and grab the maximum number of likes then you will get MacBook pro for free. Guys, you are just this close to getting a brand new MacBook Pro
Whats more, even if you don’t win the contest, all the eligible participants will get the free license of PDFelement worth $59.95.
Try to write an attractive and genuine review to gain more views and likes to it as only your original and genuine work will help you to win the contest. There are some rules regarding the contest which you can read on the page of the contest and work accordingly.
So, you have limited time for joining the contest as it ends on 13th nov. So, write an impressive review, drive the maximum likes and win the contest.