Adobe Express vs. Adobe InDesign

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Adobe Express
Score 8.8 out of 10
N/A
Adobe Creative Cloud Express (formerly Adobe Spark) is a task-based, web and mobile product used to create and share rich multimedia content – from social media posts and stories to invitations to marketing materials like logos, flyers and banners.
$0
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 ExpressAdobe InDesign
Editions & Modules
Free
$0.00
Premium
$9.99 / $99.99
per month
Teams
$9.99
per month per user
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 ExpressAdobe InDesign
Free Trial
YesNo
Free/Freemium Version
YesNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional DetailsContact Adobe directly for Enterprise pricing plan details.
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Adobe ExpressAdobe InDesign
Best Alternatives
Adobe ExpressAdobe InDesign
Small Businesses
Pexels
Pexels
Score 10.0 out of 10
CorelDRAW Graphics Suite
CorelDRAW Graphics Suite
Score 9.7 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
Pexels
Pexels
Score 10.0 out of 10
Canva
Canva
Score 9.1 out of 10
Enterprises
Pexels
Pexels
Score 10.0 out of 10
CorelDRAW Graphics Suite
CorelDRAW Graphics Suite
Score 9.7 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
Adobe ExpressAdobe InDesign
Likelihood to Recommend
8.8
(33 ratings)
8.7
(98 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
-
(0 ratings)
10.0
(3 ratings)
Usability
9.4
(10 ratings)
7.7
(8 ratings)
Availability
-
(0 ratings)
9.0
(1 ratings)
Performance
-
(0 ratings)
9.0
(1 ratings)
Support Rating
7.9
(10 ratings)
5.0
(64 ratings)
In-Person Training
-
(0 ratings)
10.0
(1 ratings)
Online Training
-
(0 ratings)
8.0
(1 ratings)
Implementation Rating
-
(0 ratings)
9.0
(1 ratings)
Configurability
-
(0 ratings)
8.0
(1 ratings)
Contract Terms and Pricing Model
9.5
(6 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Product Scalability
-
(0 ratings)
9.0
(1 ratings)
Professional Services
10.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
Adobe ExpressAdobe InDesign
Likelihood to Recommend
Adobe
Express is a great product for anyone that is more of a design novice than a seasoned designer. The tools can help you do lots of complex things that used to take lots of work very quickly. For example the 'Remove Object' and 'Remove background' tools work very well amazingly fast. You don't need to painstakingly trace around objects or worry about accidentally including something you didn't want.
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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
  • Out-of-the-box templates save a lot of time and effort for designers and new users.
  • Collaboration to share resources and monitor task status centrally.
  • Great design elements bring a wow factor to digital content.
  • Single design tool for all types of content design.
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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
  • Canva has a better interface, in my opinion... I like that this one is friendly to Adobe users, but I would likely recommend Canva to someone who's never used design software for a complete beginner.
  • Removing the background from images doesn't always work well. I almost always need to switch to Photoshop for this.
  • The touch screen interface could be better; graphics on mobile apps are tough in general but specifically, the iPad interface could use some improvement.
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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
I use it daily for almost all my marketing needs. So far it is the program that has the most and best to offer for what I need and is the easiest to use
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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 overall usability of the software was strong. The application, especially relative to other Adobe services like Photoshop that can demand a lot of knowledge and skill, was highly easy to use. At the same time, that also speaks to the somewhat limited amount of customization opportunities that allow content designers to truly create content that is dynamic, engaging, and different than the standard stuff that floods our vision every day.
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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
No answers on this topic
Adobe
I've needed Adobe InDesign team very little which is a bonus in and of itself.
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Performance
Adobe
No answers on this topic
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
Because adobe is so widespread the community support is amazing. I have never actually used adobe support short of their website, but I go to youtube a lot to get my questions answered. You can google any problem you have and not have any issues finding an answer. In my opinion, community support is much more meaningful and helpful than support directly from the company
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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
No answers on this topic
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
No answers on this topic
Adobe
Implementation was smooth and easy.
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Alternatives Considered
Adobe
The Adobe Express Creative Cloud (premium) version is all you need. But even the free version is so much easier to edit than in Canva. Canva is cool for certain projects that don't need too much editing (editing in Canva can cause migraines). But, almost no matter what I think up to create, I will almost always open up AE rather than struggling through the learning curve in Canva.
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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
Adobe Creative Cloud Express is included with an Adobe Creative Cloud account. Our company has a corporate team membership so it is nice to have a professional and powerful tool that anyone on our team can use for free. The pricing structure of giving the tool away for free will be fundamental to users utilizing the tool. Similar tools, such as Canva, cost significantly more but do not offer the same features
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Adobe
No answers on this topic
Scalability
Adobe
No answers on this topic
Adobe
Working in a cloud environment makes it easy to scale and share resources.
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Professional Services
Adobe
The professional services for Adobe Creative Cloud Express is top notch and should be highly commended. I am thoroughly impressed with how far Adobe has come. In the past, I had several issues with how something were handled, but in the past few years things have been better than ever and they get no complaints from me
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Adobe
No answers on this topic
Return on Investment
Adobe
  • It has allowed us to complete more demos and projects in less time by being so flexible.
  • It has positively impacted our efficiency in delivering creatives such as YouTube thumbnails, event poster designs, Instagram story posts, etc to clients in a timely manner no matter where work takes us.
  • I would say the ROI has been seeing more projects completed and invoiced per month. I would estimate overall a 20% increase in volume on deliverables.
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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 Express Screenshots

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