Adobe Acrobat vs. Adobe InDesign

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Adobe Acrobat
Score 8.8 out of 10
N/A
Adobe Acrobat DC is the current version of the well-established document / PDF management solution, part of the Adobe Document Cloud (the other part being Adobe's eSign services based on technology acquired with EchoSign in 2011).
$29.99
per month per seat
Adobe InDesign
Score 9.0 out of 10
N/A
Adobe InDesign supports creating digital and print documents such as flyers, stationary, posters, and other types of media, with rich graphics, images, and more. Adobe InDesign is available standalone or as part of the Adobe Creative Suite collection of media management and creation products.
$31.49
per month
Pricing
Adobe AcrobatAdobe InDesign
Editions & Modules
Acrobat Pro for Individuals
$19.99
per month
Acrobat Pro for Teams
$23.99
per month per user
Acrobat Studio for Individuals
$24.99
per month
Monthly Plan
$31.49
per month
Annual Plan, Prepaid
$239.88 ($19.99)
per year (per month)
Annual Plan, Paid Monthly
$251.88 ($20.99)
per year (per month)
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Adobe AcrobatAdobe InDesign
Free Trial
YesNo
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
YesNo
Entry-level Setup FeeOptionalNo setup fee
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Adobe AcrobatAdobe InDesign
Considered Both Products
Adobe Acrobat
Chose Adobe Acrobat
This isn't really a good comparison, but Adobe Acrobat is more of a program that works among all of these, and I'll keep using it as long as it's a part of Adobe CC. Otherwise, I see DocuSign as suitable for secure/private documents, and Dropbox file previews allows a pretty …
Chose Adobe Acrobat
Adobe Acrobat works hand-in-hand with Adobe Illustrator, PhotoShop, and InDesign. Anything that is designed within those platforms can easily be exported as a PDF in order to be viewed in Acrobat DC. Where Adobe Acrobat excels is that we can send our final PDFs to our customers …
Chose Adobe Acrobat
Honestly, Adobe is the only company I think of when it comes to anything having to do with the Portable Document Format. I have tried a couple other more "simple" apps over the years for specific functions, but they paled in comparison. So much so that I do not recall the names …
Chose Adobe Acrobat
There's not really anything I've used before that's similar to Acrobat.
Chose Adobe Acrobat
We use all Adobe products. Adobe is the industry standard. I appreciate that they are constantly improving their products.
Chose Adobe Acrobat
PDF readers allow you to access PDF files, but that is a bare minimum in my work and not sufficient for my needs when preparing content, adapting it, or even combining content into new PDF files. I've not encountered any application that works as well or intuitively as Adobe …
Chose Adobe Acrobat
I would say Acrobat is more user-friendly, especially for those who aren't super tech savvy or doesn't have access to Adobe programs.
Chose Adobe Acrobat
I prefer Adobe Acrobat to Bluebeam because it has the functionality that I need and because I use so many other Adobe products, it's an easy transition for me. Bluebeam is much more cumbersome and really just has more construction-focused functionality that I don't need on a …
Chose Adobe Acrobat
For now, I use Adobe CC so it's part of that package for me. I have not really had any reason to look at other platforms all that much. I know that Microsoft Office has its own version of a PDF publisher that seems to work very similarly to Adobe. Other than these I am not …
Chose Adobe Acrobat
SignNow works well too, but Adobe Acrobat fits better since we use so many other Adobe products to conduct our business. It's easier to stay within one system rather than jumping between platforms. It's also nice to avoid paying two subscription fees and instead staying with …
Chose Adobe Acrobat
Illustrator and InDesign are necessary for creating the content we turn into PDFs, but Acrobat is useful for combining pages from multiple teams, sometimes from documents created from disparate programs. It's also a more widely used program, so we can trust that our internal …
Chose Adobe Acrobat
It doesn't stack up AGAINST...it compliments. It's a worthy peer and integral extension of all the other software we use.
Chose Adobe Acrobat
I have used other PDF editors through the years to test them against Acrobat, but Acrobat always wins due to the amount of usable features that it offers, as well as ease of use. Aside from Reader, I don't remember the names of the other software unfortunately.
Chose Adobe Acrobat
All of Adobes products work cohesively together making projects seamless. Adobe Acrobat DC is my go-to software to share files and documents with others that I know don't have access to more involved Adobe platforms such as InDesign or Illustrator. I know that users will be …
Chose Adobe Acrobat
I find it easier to edit and read pdfs in Adobe Acrobat.
Chose Adobe Acrobat
Adobe Acrobat DC is the best and is great for PDF editing, making editable fields, and print production checking. However, the commenting features do not stack up to services like Ziflow which make the commenting more user-friendly and easy to use.
Chose Adobe Acrobat
All are robust software packages. I can say that I am nowhere near scratching the surface of what these products will do. Their functionality is somewhat intuitive and you can seamlessly switch from one package to another when creating and editing documents. This holds true for …
Adobe InDesign
Chose Adobe InDesign
Adobe InDesign is a much different platform for document creation and publishing compared to Adobe PhotoShop. With Photoshop your goal is to start with or create an image and make all modifications and adjustments within that program. InDesign takes those finished images and …
Chose Adobe InDesign
While Quark stalled out, InDesign continued to improve its product features year after year. Also, the integration with other industry standard software (Photoshop and Illustrator) is a no-brainer.
Chose Adobe InDesign
Until the development of InDesign, I was a faithful user of QuarkXPress. I knew Quark like the back of my hand. Once I decided to make the change, I realized how robust InDesign was compared to "old faithful." It took a little time to learn the nuances. Now, I can't imagine …
Chose Adobe InDesign
I have used proprietary composition web applications at other publishers, and I have used Quark (which is less powerful/feature-rich) and LaTeX (which is great for what it does but is not right for all projects). I prefer InDesign for its universality. It can be used on just …
Chose Adobe InDesign
So basically, we just use Word Docs, generated PDFs from them, and combined them all into the reader. We decided to move to InDesign, because we were working with a graphic designer and it made a lot more sense to have an entire rebrand that read and felt differently. InDesign …
Chose Adobe InDesign
We can use AI to make catalog or sellsheets too, but it can not compete with [Adobe] InDesign, AI is useful for single page stuff, but it's a bit heavy while carries more pages and more links. While we are doing some artworks, we prefer to use AI, but once it has few more …
Chose Adobe InDesign
Microsoft products do not match the aesthetic tools that [Adobe] InDesign offers, cannot support the customizable options available for export, and do not produce documents with as high a degree of accessibility. That said, they do have their place in collaboration in a team- …
Chose Adobe InDesign
There aren't even any worthy of mentioning. There is an open-source Scribus, or Microsoft solutions like Word and Publisher. But those shouldn't be used in the same breadth as InDesign. Are you sending a document to a professional press? You use InDesign. I really do wish …
Chose Adobe InDesign
All Adobe products are great for their specific use cases. InDesign is great for us at Legal Books Distributing because we create annual editions of books and InDesign is an AMAZING book creating tool. Once you get the hang of using these tools, your life can become much easier!
Chose Adobe InDesign
InDesign is much more user friendly and is compatible with other Adobe products. InDesign is more versatile and more widely used. Compatibility with other designers, agencies, and promo companies makes work and collaboration easier.
Chose Adobe InDesign
Adobe InDesign is easier for me to use and has more features. When teaching myself how to use the software, I was able to find more videos online for helpful tips.
Chose Adobe InDesign
The main product I compared it against was Microsoft Publisher. It is not included on the list, but it is like a lite version of InDesign. If you really want to step it up a notch, then InDesign is for you. I included Photoshop because it can be similar in some cases of 1-2 …
Chose Adobe InDesign
InDesign had more features and flexibility many years ago when I learned how to use it, and compared to Quark, I found it to be a better product and haven't gone back since.
Chose Adobe InDesign
The two big guns in page layout software are InDesign and Quark Express. At one time, Quark was the go-to software. A majority of Pre Press shops employed Adobe Illustrator, Photoshop, and Quark Express. Over the years, though, InDesign has surpassed Quark.
Chose Adobe InDesign
Adobe InDesign is much more intuitive, has much more advanced tools, and is fully integrated with Adobe's other image and graphics editing software. It works better with text distribution and combining text with images. It provides better dynamic resources for a more …
Chose Adobe InDesign
First, Microsoft products are notoriously difficult to work with, so the bar is already set pretty low. In my limited experience with MS Publisher in the past, the tools were not intuitive and the files did not save / share well outside of MS platforms. It has been many years …
Chose Adobe InDesign
InDesign fits in perfectly with the Adobe Creative Suite and really works hand in hand with the other applications.
Chose Adobe InDesign
I can’t offer a fair comparison between Adobe InDesign and the other software mentioned above because I have used Adobe InDesign the most and have only used the others one or two times.
Chose Adobe InDesign
Publisher is something that we as an organization used to use at the beginning phase of our organization, and, as we grew and the team grew bigger and the needs increased, we needed a more professional tool. That's where Adobe InDesign came in. With Publisher, there was limited …
Chose Adobe InDesign
I use InDesign to incorporate these other two programs. Illustrator and Photoshop are used for creating graphics and images, and I am able to place them into my working InDesign file to create a more visually pleasing proposal. One thing that InDesign does better is allow you …
Chose Adobe InDesign
I used Quark for over 4 years professionally prior to InDesign coming out, but all I can do is compare it to the original InDesign of 1999/2000. We exclusively use InDesign for multi-page layouts currently. Since it's the most recognizable industry format, we don't bother with …
Chose Adobe InDesign
Not fully integrated with Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Illustrator. We used Quark before we migrated to InDesign. Users don't want to go back, mostly because of hte tight integrations with the Adobe products. Even our freelancers and vendors use InDesign and would not go back to Qu…
Chose Adobe InDesign
If you use the Adobe Suite you must use InDesign. Quark will work as a good standalone product, but my experience was that there are more available users and support for InDesign. Quark is an inferior product.
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Adobe AcrobatAdobe InDesign
Small Businesses
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Score 9.6 out of 10
CorelDRAW Graphics Suite
CorelDRAW Graphics Suite
Score 9.7 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
MSB Docs
MSB Docs
Score 9.4 out of 10
Canva
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Score 9.1 out of 10
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Tungsten Capture
Score 8.0 out of 10
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Score 9.7 out of 10
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User Ratings
Adobe AcrobatAdobe InDesign
Likelihood to Recommend
9.0
(481 ratings)
8.7
(98 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
9.7
(26 ratings)
10.0
(3 ratings)
Usability
9.3
(237 ratings)
7.7
(8 ratings)
Availability
10.0
(2 ratings)
9.0
(1 ratings)
Performance
8.2
(8 ratings)
9.0
(1 ratings)
Support Rating
7.8
(56 ratings)
5.0
(64 ratings)
In-Person Training
-
(0 ratings)
10.0
(1 ratings)
Online Training
9.0
(1 ratings)
8.0
(1 ratings)
Implementation Rating
9.5
(9 ratings)
9.0
(1 ratings)
Configurability
8.5
(2 ratings)
8.0
(1 ratings)
Contract Terms and Pricing Model
6.0
(3 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Ease of integration
9.0
(8 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Product Scalability
10.0
(2 ratings)
9.0
(1 ratings)
Vendor post-sale
4.0
(3 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Vendor pre-sale
5.5
(2 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
Adobe AcrobatAdobe InDesign
Likelihood to Recommend
Adobe
When given a very creative mind, Adobe has solutions that are tailored for you, and it has spent a great deal of time in end-user focus groups and surveys to consistently improve its products. In other words, someone is thinking at Corporate! Continue to make the quality of the product a major focus, as well as SMB pricing.
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Adobe
Adobe InDesign is very well-suited to creating professional-looking page designs. If you want a newspaper or magazine to have attractive pages that go beyond simple templates, InDesign is the best option out there, to my knowledge. It's less suited to scenarios where people without page design skills are responsible for creating pages, as it requires some training and skills to use effectively.
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Pros
Adobe
  • For the business account, the Adobe Acrobat rep assigned to your account will actively look for ways to save you money.
  • We have found that our rep from Adobe Acrobat Business Account reviews our usage and related apps and has offered helpful tips on better ways to complete tasks we historically undertake with their software. They have saved us a great deal of time and money. They make us efficient.
  • The apps they offer that combine with the primary program are relevant to the tasks our business performs, and they function at a high level and never fail. It's really quite remarkable.
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Adobe
  • Customization - With Adobe InDesign, as well as many other applications in the Adobe Creative Suite, I can fully customize my workspaces and save different workspaces. This makes it easy to navigate through my project and have the panels and tools I need easily accessible and configured based on my project needs.
  • Styles - Adobe InDesign has character styles, object styles, and tables styles. This speeds up my workflows and allows me to easily apply the same format across multiple elements. This is super helpful, especially when working with length documents.
  • File compatibility - I can easily export my files into so many different file types.
  • The Book feature - This feature is really helpful when creating books or very long documents with multiple sections.
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Cons
Adobe
  • Fonts can default (but not always) if the designer doesn't perform due diligence before generating PDFs.
  • The one area Adobe Acrobat is not good at: generating PDFs straight from a website. The results are touch-and-go.
  • The basic nav controls take a little getting used to. What I initially expected to be in one spot could only be found elsewhere.
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Adobe
  • Not naturally a WYSIWYG display (this is an option, and doesn't always work as intended)
  • Moving images and photos around while holding an additional key
  • Layers or objects are not easily clickable behind other objects.
  • Adobe InDesign does require some fair system resources to work smoothly
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Likelihood to Renew
Adobe
Adobe Acrobat works seamlessly with the other Adobe products we use that are industry-standard. We will certainly continue to use Adobe InDesign, Photoshop, and Illustrator, meaning it will always be convenient to work seamlessly with Adobe Acrobat for our organization. We are happy with the performance of Acrobat and it's meets our expectations.
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Adobe
I've had great experiences with the product and plan to continue to use it. It has been my go-to product for designing and creating materials. I have had great luck with it and have been able to create all of the needed marketing materials that have been requested for our company.
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Usability
Adobe
The features on the desktop version are all toolbar based, which makes it a little more cumbersome on a smaller device (and much simpler on a large screen). The web forms adjust well to different screen size so work well on mobile, tablet and computer
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Adobe
If you know what you are doing it is an amazingly granular and powerful application. You can control pretty much any aspect of the design and layout of your documents and make changes globally and rapidly. But, if you don't know what you are doing...you will be staring at your screen in bewilderment for a long time. You can learn it, but be ready for a hefty time investment.
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Reliability and Availability
Adobe
We have not had availability issues with Adobe Acrobat, or at least none that I am personally aware of. Some may encounter crashes of the software during outages of electricity in their city or neighborhood, which no one can plan for, but with generators in our organization, we have been lucky not to have outages
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Adobe
I've needed Adobe InDesign team very little which is a bonus in and of itself.
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Performance
Adobe
One of the best features of Adobe Acrobat is its speed and stability. When dealing with massive multi-page files, having to reload a crashed program over and over again would slow down progress unnecessarily. And expanding on that, having the table of contents generated allows me to skip to different pages with ease, a necessary feature with exceptionally long files. word searches are even more helpful with text recognition.
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Adobe
One of the advantages of Adobe InDesign is it is faster and less glitchy than Microsoft Word.
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Support Rating
Adobe
For a while, Acrobat DC crashed pretty frequently. I contacted Adobe Acrobat support about the problem. At first support was unable to provide a solution. After about a month Adobe's software engineers provided a fix. I just wish it had taken less than a month to solve the problem.
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Adobe
Adobe support is ok but not great. Chat support often doesn't initially understand the question at-hand and it takes awhile to get to the right agent. Phone support has long wait times, and though I've had more luck there, it does take quite a time investment if you are looking for help. However, Adobe does have some online learning solutions available as well as a knowledgebase for frequently asked questions. If you're looking to learn how to use the platform, there are lots of resources which can typically be found in a few Google searches. If you have a technical issue with the system, that's going to be a bit more of a time investment as far as getting a tech's assistance to resolve the problem.
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In-Person Training
Adobe
No answers on this topic
Adobe
Attending Adobe MAX each year is extremely valuable.
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Online Training
Adobe
Easy to follow and understand
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Adobe
The online training works well and is not wholly necessary as it is user-friendly and you can learn by doing.
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Implementation Rating
Adobe
I was not involved with the implementation process, so I cannot answer this question. However, when it was installed on my computer system, they did so virtually. I just sat there while they took control of my computer over the network and watch them install it, lickety split
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Adobe
Implementation was smooth and easy.
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Alternatives Considered
Adobe
Adobe Acrobat integrated fully into our human resources processes and effectively helped consolidate multiple variations of employment documents which helped decrease HR costs and simplified recruitment. We can track the status of documents which means greater security and with the ability to sign HR documents electronically, anywhere and on any device, it gives us the speed and efficiency to process everything more quickly.
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Adobe
Microsoft products do not match the aesthetic tools that [Adobe] InDesign offers, cannot support the customizable options available for export, and do not produce documents with as high a degree of accessibility. That said, they do have their place in collaboration in a team- I'd consider Office to be the first step and [Adobe] InDesign to be the final product.
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Contract Terms and Pricing Model
Adobe
The only thing I can think of that may be helpful would be a more flexible tiered pricing options based on usage or document volume.
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Adobe
No answers on this topic
Scalability
Adobe
I find that many users aren't aware of many features of the software they use, nor may they be comfortable with learning multiple-step processes. For the simplest of PDF purposes (scanning, downloading, exporting), it gets a thumbs-up. For anything involving electronic signatures, meh--causes eyes to glaze over, or forgetting what all is involved.
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Adobe
Working in a cloud environment makes it easy to scale and share resources.
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Return on Investment
Adobe
  • reduction of redundant tasks can be handled through Adobe Acrobat
  • esignatures save a significant amount of time when finalizing contracts versus printing, signing and faxing documents to clients or other parties
  • increased efficiencies by reviewing external document sources or images that require further analysis or repurposing.
  • improved security and compliance with the ability to redact documents and limit sharing to segmented users
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Adobe
  • A great ROI for time in my small architectural practice, [especially] when a design has been updated and a report needs to be submitted. We can be submitting many reports that all look similar, clean and beautiful. We just save as the file and replace the images with more updated images. This way the client finds it easy to navigate updated reports, as many as they can be.
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ScreenShots

Adobe Acrobat Screenshots

Screenshot of where to create, edit, convert, and share PDF files all from within Microsoft Teams – as part of Acrobat integrations with Microsoft 365 apps.Screenshot of Liquid Mode in Adobe Acrobat Reader mobile app, where users can read PDFs on phones and tablets without having to pinch and zoom. Navigate lengthy documents with intelligent outline and search tools, while maximizing readability and comfort with font size and line spacing that are adjustable.Screenshot of where to fill and sign PDF forms from anywhere and on any device. Here, users can collect signatures, digitally track progress, and automatically archive the signed document.Screenshot of the Adobe Scan mobile app, used to capture and convert documents into high-quality, interactive PDF documents that can be filled out, signed, and shared. This eliminates the hassle of finding a printer, filling a form by hand, and scanning it again.