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).
$19.99
per month
Tungsten Power PDF
Score 9.4 out of 10
Small Businesses (1-50 employees)
Tungsten Power PDF (formerly Kofax) is a solution to manage PDFs for businesses
and individuals available with a one-time purchase with no subscription fees. It has a built-in eSignature integration with SignDoc and DocuSign for a complete end-to-end document…
$129
one-time fee per license
Pricing
Adobe Acrobat
Tungsten Power PDF
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
Power PDF Standard
$129
one-time fee per license
Power PDF for Mac
$129
one-time fee per license
Power PDF Advanced
$179
one-time fee per license
Power PDF Business
Get a Quote
per year per seat
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Adobe Acrobat
Tungsten Power PDF
Free Trial
Yes
Yes
Free/Freemium Version
No
No
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
No
No
Entry-level Setup Fee
Optional
No setup fee
Additional Details
—
Desktop licenses are buy once, own forever. No subscription fees.
Business server licenses are term-based or perpetual with optional maintenance & support contract.
Volume and upgrade discounts available.
Adobe Acrobat is well-suited for editing documents and combining them into a single document if you have such a need. It is super easy, and you can even rearrange the order in which you combine them by simply dragging the documents into the desired order. Adobe Acrobat is great for adding contact documents to your website that customers fill out and complete. Adobe sends it to your email and alerts you so you can then manage the contact from there.
Tungsten does not handle movement of pages well inside of document. Small documents with under 10 pages is fine, but 100+ page documents are extremely difficult to move pages or groups of pages around. We replace Adobe with Tungsten and in general the reception has been fine. It is a little clunky with clicking on links instead PDF's as you have you click the hand, and then to copy text you have to go back and click the arrow.
Typewriter functionality is great, although can take some time to load. This allows you to fill in text wherever applicable without turning the rest of the pdf into editable text.
Fast load times
Has autogenerated text feature so anything in the pdf can become editable
I find that quickly editing text within a document or adding a line of text is clunky and can snowball into things popping out of place. I prefer to export text, and then work on it elsewhere.
Sometimes it seems that text recognition is trying too hard and throws me paper punches as "O"s and wrinkles as shapes, so I have to get rid of those artifacts.
The "Update Available" popup which is usually not an actual update announcement but rather an offer to sell me something is annoying.
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.
It was very easy to learn the software and find the features I needed, and I was able to use the help menu for any questions I had. Staff was easily able to start using with no additional training. It easily works with things created in Adobe - handling field forms just fine.
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
It is fast and easy to get the hang of. It really didn't take a lot of effort to learn how to use this program and I appreciated that it was pretty "plug and play" and there wasn't a long learning curve.
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
Other that a PDF partially disappearing if left up for a long period of time - no issues. (If you close it and reopen it, it is all there. We have some PDFs that are 400-600 pages long.)
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.
Pages nearly always load at the expected rapid speed. Some documents that print quickly from Adobe Reader print much more slowly from Power PDF. I have never generated a report - that's a feature I didn't know existed until now and do not know what it's for
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.
I haven't had much interaction with support for this product as it is relatively easy for me to use and intuitive. When Kofax acquired the program it rewrote some of the features and I think I reached out for help at one point but tech support provided a quick answer. I did have a very positive experience with the sales staff who helped me get a discount on the current version because I'm a long-time user.
I got an overview of the product from my predecessor who was about to retire from the job I now hold. He did not go into very many of the features and probably only knew about the ones he used most frequently.
We watched the training videos and tested out the features and functionality side by side. Some features are not used on a regular basis is it is convenient to go back and review training on that particular functionality when needed.
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
It was simple and we were using the program the same day. It was as easy as downloading the program and getting in there and playing around. We felt comfortable with it within the first few hours of use.
In my opinion, both complement each other. Microsoft clearly has with Copilot the AI Edge. However, the visual dynamics of Adobe Creative are Outstanding and provide a balanced approach to creativity, utilizing both Excellent, user-friendly Tools.
I initially selected Tungsten Power PDF because it was more affordable; however, I soon discovered the features and stability of the Tungsten product was comparable to working directly within the Adobe environment. I feel very confident now, that I would select Tungsten Power PDF ABOVE any of the Adobe products and not just because of the price point!
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.
Not really familiar since I'm the only person who uses it. But in the past it has been my understanding that Power PDF was offered only on a single-license basis, so it's been expensive for me to use it at home and at work because I had to pay for it on my own. In my current position management supports it so I at least only have to pay for it once.
I save hundreds every month by not sending documents to outside editors.
On a monthly basis, I have received files that would be very limited in use, but the PDF software allows me to work with them, saving hours of human power otherwise wasted.
The software is worth the money, but it can be more competitively priced.
