Adobe Acrobat vs. Microsoft 365

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
Microsoft 365
Score 8.7 out of 10
N/A
Microsoft 365 (formerly Office 365) is a Microsoft Cloud subscription service that includes Microsoft Office products (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote, Outlook, Publisher, and Access). The software can be installed across multiple devices and ensures that users always have the most up-to-date version of the included Office applications.
$5
Per User Per Month
Pricing
Adobe AcrobatMicrosoft 365
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
Business Basic
$5.00
Per User Per Month
Individual
$5.84
*Per Month
Business - Apps
$8.25
Per User Per Month
Enterprise - F3
$10.00
Per User Per Month
Business Standard
$12.50
Per User Per Month
Business Premium
$20.00
Per User Per Month
Enterprise - E3
$32.00
Per User Per Month
Enterprise - E5
$57.00
Per User Per Month
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Adobe AcrobatMicrosoft 365
Free Trial
YesNo
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
YesNo
Entry-level Setup FeeOptionalNo setup fee
Additional Details*When billed annually.
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Adobe AcrobatMicrosoft 365
Considered Both Products
Adobe Acrobat
Chose Adobe Acrobat
I selected Adobe Acrobat because of the following reasons..

1. It provides the Ai powered features and straight forward cloud integration which is not available with other providers. 2.Adobe Acrobat has global certifications of market standards for security and compliance areas.
Chose Adobe Acrobat
Adobe stacks up very well against Microsoft 365. In addition, it also integrates well with many of the tools offered through our Microsoft 365 subscription and in many cases increases the value and functionality of those tools and programs. Adobe Acrobat serves to fill out our …
Chose Adobe Acrobat
Adobe Acrobat is the gold standard and you pay for it. It is easy to use and works how you expect it to. The alternatives are cheaper, but don't offer as many features, and require retaining everyone to switch applications.
Chose Adobe Acrobat
It offers functionality that the office suite just doesn't really seem to dabble in e.g. locking down documents or proper redaction abilities.
Chose Adobe Acrobat
Adobe Acrobat has more features and very convenient to use. Aside from that, because of the software integration of Adobe Acrobat. You can convert everything using that. The security feature of Adobe Acrobat is very reliable.

Then you can access that with other Adobe Products …
Chose Adobe Acrobat
Both of the alternatives Nitro and Foxit, lacks some functionalities. Eg: Foxit doesn't have a very user friendly UI, thats' the same issue Nitro as well. Also, Nitro's licensing is a bit complex. Adobe Acrobat is a plug and play product. The UI is friendly, one can learn it …
Chose Adobe Acrobat
Canva is a more creative, editing tool. I see Adobe Acrobat less of a creative tool and more of a tool to refine and finalize a document.
Chose Adobe Acrobat
Adobe Acrobat allows licenses to stretch across one account rather than just one device, and works across both Mac and Windows, as opposed to some of the other options.
Chose Adobe Acrobat
Kofax does just about everything Adobe does, but Adobe is more widely used so using Adobe helps with staying compatable with our customers. adobe also does the software functionality features a little better in our opinion.
Chose Adobe Acrobat
Microsoft's products have become cumbersome, especially for organizations. The requirement of having two log ins for each user is a headache, each and every time someone tries to use it. We have slowly been transitioning away from Microsoft, and are hopeful that Adobe …
Chose Adobe Acrobat
Because of its manyfeatures, intuitive interface, sophisticated functionalities, and wellestablished industry standing, Adobe Acrobat is the program of choice for managingdocuments in our company when compared to other programs.
Chose Adobe Acrobat
Being the industry standard, Adobe Acrobat exceeds other platforms as the common file format all parties can read and comment even with only the free reader version.
Chose Adobe Acrobat
I have not used products similar to Adobe Acrobat.
Chose Adobe Acrobat
Adobe is the leader in the ability to create professional grade documents to distribute internally and externally. The challenge is the pricing and the ease of use is not as ideal in relation to these other products. The learning curve can be steep and time consuming which …
Chose Adobe Acrobat
Adobe Acrobat is much more user friendly that the Microsoft print to PDF feature. Just having everything go right into Adobe Acrobat instantly is a huge time saver in our office.
Microsoft 365
Chose Microsoft 365
Microsoft 365 is in almost all cases the best option for office solutions in a professional environment. If there is a budget for software like this, I would generally recommend Microsoft Office. However, where your requirements for features are basic, you might enjoy free …
Chose Microsoft 365
Microsoft has all the tools you need in one place, easily accessible and easy to use. The Teams app is reliable and doesn't glitch or make it hard to hear someone on a meeting like Google Meet does. Zoom has vulnerabilities making it not as reliable or me as comfortable using it.
Chose Microsoft 365
Microsoft has quite a bit more functionality versus Google Sheets. Plus there are times that I want to work locally and not be connected to the cloud. Microsoft 365 allows for that.
Chose Microsoft 365
It's all about the network effect. Since everyone else at my school using Microsoft 365, eventually I had to bite the bullet and join the crowd. Using the officially supported file syncing and sharing solution solves a large number of problems right out of the box. Other …
Chose Microsoft 365
We have tried using an in-house Microsoft Exchange server as well but ultimately moved to using Microsoft 365 because it decentralized our email and gave all the users access to Microsoft Excel and Word programs at the same time. It also gives each user 1 terabyte of cloud …
Chose Microsoft 365
Google Drive and Google Docs I believe is the biggest competitor to Microsoft 365. However, if you really want to unlock the power and potential in your business you need more horsepower behind you and that is what the MS365 suite of products provides. Google Docs is …
Chose Microsoft 365
No comparison, we can do more with Microsoft 365 and we are more efficient. The pricing model is very fair. We don't have to worry about updating the software on each machine, the updates are handled by Microsoft directly and the Microsoft 365 programs seem much more stable and …
Chose Microsoft 365
We really haven't evaluated other Office-like productivity suites/collaboration tools, since Microsoft 365 (formerly Office 365) does everything that our organization needs for the work that users do on a daily basis. This combined with the fact that it is the perfect …
Chose Microsoft 365
Google Docs, Sheets, Calendar, etc. were not available in the listings, but to me, these would be Microsoft's competition in this space. Google seemed to have basically copied what Microsoft has done with these apps [and] made them web-browser friendly and cloud-based. …
Chose Microsoft 365
Microsoft 365 is a complete package. If your work is business more than creative than it 100% suits your needs. The pieces it offers, the desk top apps available on demand, and the integrations are far reaching and hard to match with other products. It's clear they've been used …
Chose Microsoft 365
Please consider our consideration of alternatives dates back seven years ago, so the alternative offerings today are likely to be rather different.

We did consider continuing with Exchange on site, but deemed the increasing cost and complexity to justify adopting [Microsoft 365 …
Chose Microsoft 365
InDesign is more powerful than Microsoft Word as a publishing software, but fewer people use it, so I use Microsoft Word more frequently.
Chose Microsoft 365
I have tried open-source alternatives such as OpenOffice but compatibility issues arise sometimes. We selected Microsoft 365 because it is the business gold standard of office productivity suites and nothing else comes close.
Chose Microsoft 365
Skype is a similar communication tool to Microsoft Teams, however Microsoft is more commonly used in our business so it's easier to use a product that communicates and works with the other products you have
Chose Microsoft 365
Thought about using Teams in certain situations, but have been concerned about universal access to content. Often feel that third party applications that are not aligned to a specific format are better. Users are not favored if [there] are Google or Microsoft or Apple people.
Chose Microsoft 365
Using Dynamics as a business application was the best decision I ever made. Between all its functionalities we are able to connect any Office 365 tools into your personalized app and you do not have to leave your page, it’s all right there.
Chose Microsoft 365
I like these applications, but Google does them for free. You can't beat that. I still use OneNote frequently, but for most work, Google is a winner here.
Chose Microsoft 365
It's more secure and has more powerful tools for the classroom and it integrates well with our LMS. Office 365 provides our students with the ability to work on or offline and having a tool that has the immersive reader, translator built right into the system is extremely …
Chose Microsoft 365
It's different. Oracle is used by big corporate clients where the security of the financial data is paramount. Manhattan was a more specific property management system and Office 365 didn't appear to have a natural fit. Business Objects is a reporting tool designed to sit over …
Best Alternatives
Adobe AcrobatMicrosoft 365
Small Businesses
Square 9 Softworks
Square 9 Softworks
Score 9.6 out of 10
Google Workspace
Google Workspace
Score 9.1 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
MSB Docs
MSB Docs
Score 9.4 out of 10
Google Workspace
Google Workspace
Score 9.1 out of 10
Enterprises
M‑Files
M‑Files
Score 8.9 out of 10
Microsoft 365 Business Premium
Microsoft 365 Business Premium
Score 8.8 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
Adobe AcrobatMicrosoft 365
Likelihood to Recommend
9.0
(481 ratings)
7.9
(240 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
9.7
(26 ratings)
9.5
(6 ratings)
Usability
9.3
(237 ratings)
7.3
(8 ratings)
Availability
10.0
(2 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Performance
8.1
(8 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Support Rating
7.8
(56 ratings)
8.9
(54 ratings)
Online Training
9.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Implementation Rating
9.5
(9 ratings)
9.0
(2 ratings)
Configurability
8.5
(2 ratings)
-
(0 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)
-
(0 ratings)
Vendor post-sale
4.0
(3 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Vendor pre-sale
5.5
(2 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
Adobe AcrobatMicrosoft 365
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.
Read full review
Microsoft
Office everyday things since time immemorial. It's hard for Google Suite or any other to compete with Microsoft. They have everything, and it all works great, with incredible tools and capabilities. The new integrations work seamlessly most of the time, such as embedding a Power BI in a PPT. Expecting too much AI, like note taking, or LLM-based PPT, is not available in my tier at least, so depending on the budget, you won't get all you may expect from an AI leader. For diagramming and process maps, you're better off with other tools like those above.
Read full review
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.
Read full review
Microsoft
  • It allows us to keep our email organized. I like the fact that I can create folders in Outlook, and they replicate on my mail server.
  • Excellent for drafting and saving those documents as PDFs without needing PDF editing software.
  • Spreadsheets - what more is there to say?
Read full review
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.
Read full review
Microsoft
  • Microsoft 365 really needs to work on protection part. In complex environment it is not reliable as compared to its competitors like Proofpoint. There are many instances where it fails to perform effectively.
  • In SharePoint Online the versioning feature of the document needs to be improved by Microsoft. Sometimes when we have to roll back to the previous version it does not work as expected.
  • In Teams messaging and app permission policies can be improved. There are some settings where we have to add a lot of things manually.
Read full review
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.
Read full review
Microsoft
There are many features of Office that we cannot replicate in any other tool. Plus people know it already. It's not going away anytime soon.
Read full review
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
Read full review
Microsoft
It being the default office suite means it's user experience and idioms are things that everyone is generally very used to and fluent with.
The sharing is relatively simple, being directly hooked into Entra AD, and expiry being a first class concern.
It's usability decreases at scale, with multiple people simultaneously making edits can make documents unusable.
Read full review
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
Read full review
Microsoft
No answers on this topic
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.
Read full review
Microsoft
No answers on this topic
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.
Read full review
Microsoft
Over the past 8 years of using Microsoft 365, I have noticed that they change vendors often. This always leads to a poor experience in the beginning, then levels out after some time for the company to get things worked out. As a customer, it is really frustrating because I don't have time when something isn't working to have them "look into my issue" and get back with me. They have even closed a ticket I specifically told them to keep open. Your applications are only as good as the support.
Read full review
Online Training
Adobe
Easy to follow and understand
Read full review
Microsoft
No answers on this topic
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
Read full review
Microsoft
Everything works and I use it all the time.
Read full review
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.
Read full review
Microsoft
Its very user-friendly, collaborative and efficient that boosts productivity using cloud tools. their security is strong and it provides data protection. There are regular updates that shields us from attackers too. It offers a wealth of learning resources, including tutorials, help articles and video guide to help users make the most of the application and personally upgrade their skills.
Read full review
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.
Read full review
Microsoft
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.
Read full review
Microsoft
No answers on this topic
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
Read full review
Microsoft
  • It has helped keep the high-energy culture my company has since it allows easy communication and calls.
  • Positively impacts responses from clients, since we can see how many times they have been contacted. (the more someone is contacted, the less likely they are to respond. Microsoft helps make sure we all know who and who not to contact)
  • positively impacts my ability to focus, since you can mute notifications. Since I look at my computer all day, it is helpful to lock in and not get distracted by the many emails I receive a day. You can also change preferences, so emails with high urgency are still seen.
Read full review
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.