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Editor’s note
- Date of original review: March 2024
- There are no major changes in features and workflow
We have once again seen what the current version has to offer. You can still edit text and images, password protect your documents, and apply digital signatures, among others. As part of the more advanced features Adobe is introducing with ‘Studio’, there are more AI tools.
Price-wise, you can subscribe to Adobe Standard for $13 a month, but if you already have a Creative Cloud Pro plan (for $70 a month), that subscription will include Acrobat Pro.
In short. , no major changes – it’s an excellent choice for business use, although large firms and PDF power users can get more out of Adobe Acrobat Pro.
The actual review follows.
Steve Clarke
Adobe Acrobat – the original PDF reader and editor – today comes in three different versions for different use cases. But the quality of Acrobat with broader appeal for document management.
In our Acrobat Reader review, we explored Adobe’s basic PDF viewer, while our Adobe Acrobat Pro review looked at the best option for business. Adobe Acrobat Standard sits in the middle of this lineup, as PDF creation and editing software capable of providing the most tools for most users, in both casual and professional settings.
We’ve long had Acrobat as the best PDF editor – but how does it compare to the competition? We put Adobe’s top tool to the test.
Adobe Acrobat Standard: Pricing and Plans
- Subscription-based software that is superior to some of the competition
As with most Adobe products, you’ll need a subscription to get the most out of Acrobat. But it’s not the same as the reader and pro version.
As mentioned in our Adobe Acrobat Reader review, Adobe’s basic PDF viewer is free, while Acrobat Pro offers you a free trial. To get to grips with Adobe Acrobat Standard, you must subscribe. There is no free trial, no free anything. Thankfully, you can request a refund after 14 days, but it still requires effort on the subscriber’s part to remember to cancel in time while trying out the app.
Alternatively, you can choose to get a free trial of Pro to get a feel for the standard offering. Apart from a handful of features such as bulk e-signature requests, and admin tools for managing teams, the toolset is practically the same.
If you decide that Adobe Acrobat Standard is for you, you have a choice of the usual Adobe subscription plans: monthly, monthly, and yearly plans are available (and, as you’d expect, paying up front for the year is the cheapest option).
The price is more expensive than some of its competitors, such as Ecess PDF Editor, Foxit PDF Editor, or ILOVEPDF, but if you are a PDF power user, you get a good bang for your buck.
Adobe Acrobat Standard: Interface
- Simple and easy to find tools, offering you a wealth of customization options
If you’re familiar with Adobe Acrobat Reader, you’ll feel right at home in Adobe Acrobat Standard, and the same will be true if you ever jump to Adobe Acrobat Pro. But unlike Acrobat Reader, all of the display tools actually work — rather than prompting you to upgrade. It might be one of the best free PDF readers out there, but for any real document management, Acrobat Standard or Pro is all that’s needed.
Acrobat’s sidebar on the left gives you quick access to your files, the ones you’ve recently worked on or read, those that live in your online Adobe cloud storage, any contracts you’ve signed or signed, and files on your computer, some support for some of the best cloud storage services, such as Box, Dropbox, Google Drive, OneDrive, and ShipPoint.
Click ‘Recent’ to see a handful of available tools, such as ‘Edit PDF’, ‘Create PDF’, and ‘Combine Files’, but if you want to see all the available options, click the ‘Tools’ tab, to the right of the ‘Home’ tab, at the top of the interface. If you’re already in the ‘Recent’ section, you also have a ‘See all tools’ button on the right which does the same thing.
These tools are listed by category, depending on what you need to do, and their headings are self-explanatory: ‘Edit and Create’, ‘Forms and Signatures’, ‘Share and Review’, etc. That sidebar is fully customizable: remove tools you don’t need by dragging the list up or down, and add none by selecting from the main list. This helps you focus on the important tools you find yourself using all the time.
Adobe Acrobat Standard: Tools
- An example of good design – the wealth of tools is well organized, versatile and easy to use, combined with a flexible interface that fits the way you work.
You might think that Adobe Acrobat Standard only lets you work on one particular function at a time, but that’s to misunderstand the underlying beauty of the software. Sure, each tool has its own icon, and you can customize the sidebar to the right as discussed above, but that doesn’t mean utility is isolated.
Take the ‘Collect Files’ tool for example. As the name suggests, this is where you import multiple PDFs and merge them into one. But what if you want to remove some pages, or rearrange others? Do you have to click another icon for that? Well, no. Once you’re in the editing section, you’re free to do pretty much anything you like with your PDF. So you can rearrange and delete pages from the ‘Combine files’ section. You can also annotate, or edit, existing text and images without selecting another tool. All of your editing options are available through the toolbar at the top.
Some tools will display another toolbar, such as the ‘Edit Text and Images’ icon, but you can do everything you need to do without interacting with the right sidebar… unless you want to, of course. do not want
It’s this kind of flexibility of working that we love in a well-designed app: you’re presented with multiple ways to perform the same action, and it’s up to you which one fits your workflow best, without being forced upon you by a developer.
Therefore, Adobe Acrobat Standard is an incredibly well-designed and flexible software, intended to help you manipulate, annotate and edit PDFs. You are able to do the simplest tasks, from converting PDF to a variety of other formats, such as Word, Excel, JPG, HTML and a few others, to initially creating the file and everything in between, and even to filing and signing a PDF. The list is quite extensive and what’s even better is how easy and intuitive the tools are to use.
Considering Adobe developed the format, it’s surprising that they would design a best-in-class application to manipulate it—even with some excellent Adobe Acrobat alternatives. It’s clearly much better than Acrobat Reader, which mostly makes us feel like an ad for this software. It’s Acrobat as you’d expect, with a wide array of tools to help you work with the PDF format and get everything you need – mostly.
There are some limitations, most of which are included under the ‘Pro’ version, such as converting files to PDF format, redoing information, and comparing two PDF versions. Such functions are considered high-end by Adobe, and should not be needed by the majority of its target audience, unless they do, which is where Acrobat Pro comes in.
Adobe Acrobat Standard: Scorecard
| Row 0 – Cell 0 | Row 0 – Cell 1 | Row 0 – Cell 2 |
Pricing and plans | Subscription based, no free trial | 3.5 |
Interface | Simple, well-designed interface to boost productivity | 4 |
tools | Loads of tools, intuitively laid out and flawless to use | 4.5 |
Should I buy?
If you buy it…
You need a well-designed piece of software that allows you to work with a PDF file, from basic management, to inserting and signing documents, to creating something from scratch.
If you don’t buy it…
You’d rather save money with the best free PDF editors, or edit your document more casually – Acrobat is packed with features, and you won’t need them all.
Adobe Acrobat Standard: Alternative
We’ve tested a range of Acrobat alternatives – and our top-rated apps include:
PDFFILLER, an amazingly feature-rich web-based editing tool.
Easeus PDF Editor, which offers a lower-cost annual subscription than PDF24 Creator, is our favorite, feature-packed PDF tool that you can use completely free.
We experimented Best PDF Readers for Windows — and here are our top picks
