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Editor’s note
- Original review date: November 2024
- No major changes
- Pricing remains a key point when compared to competitors
Update – November 2025: Any PDF editor, like PDFFiller, that relies on the web for its functionality will benefit from network improvements, so if you have a good ISP, and a stable and generous bandwidth, you’ll find PDFFiller as good as it’s always been: fast and responsive to the point where you easily forget you’re working in a browser window.
Pricing is a sticking point though. Its month-to-month subscriptions are quite high, ranging from $20, $30 and $40 for ‘Basic’, ‘Plus’ and ‘Premium’ respectively. Thankfully, its annual contracts are in line with the competition (if on the high side for the upper end), leaving the price at $8, $12, and $15 per month.
The actual review follows.
Steve Clarke
PDFFILLER is designed to help you deal with PDFs documents, such as splitting or merging files, converting files to and from this format, editing PDFs, signing them, password protecting them, and more.
Pdefler is made by Airslate Inc., an American software company. AirSlate maintains its headquarters in Brookline, Massachusetts. The service is part of Airslate Business Cloud, a software suite for businesses to create and manage documents. We put the latest version to the test, to see how it compares to the best PDF editor software out there.
PDFFILLER: Plans and Pricing
- Different options are open to you, depending on the price, and the more you pay, the more features you get. While there is no free plan, the 30-day free trial should help alleviate that
Since PDF Filler is an online service, you have to access its content through a purchase. There are no free tiers available, but either plan comes with a free 30-day trial, which should give you plenty of time to kick its tires and see how it fares.
For $8 a month (on an annual contract), or $20 on a month-to-month basis, ‘Basic’ gives you, well, the basics: you can edit documents, like delete parts, highlight others, merge files, and convert PDF to Word. You can access your documents online, or through the desktop app (for Mac and Windows), and support staff will get back to you within a day.
‘Plus’ make it a mark for $12 a month for a year, or $30 per month. Additional features include the ability to create templates, fillable fields, password-protect document entry, access iOS and Android apps, and have customer support get back to you within 30 minutes.
And finally there’s ‘Premium’ which adds the ability to sign documents and have others sign them too, offers a library of US legal forms, manages users and permissions, collects payments, sets up custom branding, and gets you instant support for $15 a month for a year, or $40 per month.
As mentioned above you can explore these features without giving the company your payment details, but rest assured that no money will be charged for the first 30 days.
You can check the pdf filer from AirSlate by clicking here.
Pdefler: Interface
- A busy, yet easy-to-navigate interface that makes it easy for you to upload your documents, templates, and contacts, and access them wherever you are, be it through a web browser, desktop app, or your iPhone or Android device (as long as you’ve chosen this plan, of course).
After logging in, you’ll be able to access PDFFILLER online, or by downloading an app. The concept is exactly the same, as whichever option you use, your documents will be uploaded to Pdefler’s servers, enabling you to work on them wherever you have access to a computer or web browser.
Upload a document and you’ll be able to interact with it in seconds. In this respect it creates a nice and easy interface: it doesn’t matter where you are, as long as your documents are with PDFFILLER, you will be able to access them, online or through a dedicated app.
The sidebar on the left allows you to view your documents, templates, contacts, and more, while the rest of the interface is dedicated to whatever menu you’ve selected in the sidebar. It’s all very simple and straightforward.
You can import your contacts from Google or add them manually, and your documents can be uploaded to PDF Filler as described above, or accessed from one of four online storage solutions: Dropbox, Google Drive, Box, or OneDrive. It shouldn’t take you any time to figure out your way around.
P. Defler: Tools
- All tools are available in one place, which is great for efficiency and simplifies workflow. They are easy to use, and do their job as expected. A nice interface with nice, powerful tools
What we really appreciated was the fact that once you’ve opened a document, you can do everything you need directly from there. When you consider the fact that many of Pdefler’s competitors require you to access certain tools at a time, close the document first, and then reopen it in that new tool to continue working, being able to do all of that definitely feels like a breath of fresh air. It feels like the interface is working for you, rather than against you.
The tools you’ve been looking for are right there: you can reorder pages, and delete others directly from the thumbnail sidebar on the left. If you need additional options, select ‘More’ from any of these thumbnails to display the ‘Rerange Pages’ pop-up window where you can add and duplicate pages, in addition to what you can already do in the sidebar.
The rest of the tools can all be found in a row, at the top of the page. You can add text boxes, images, ticks and crosses, draw on the page and more. It’s all very simple: select the tool, and apply it wherever you want.
And just like real premium PDF services, you’ll be able to convert existing PDF content, one line at a time. It’s not ideal because we prefer services that allow you to select entire paragraphs instead, but it works fine for replacing the odd word, or fixing a typo here and there. Difficulties can arise if your alternation needs to be more extensive.
Signatures are a simple matter of selecting the ‘Sign’ tool, and placing it wherever it needs to be on the page. You can even change it to your liking.
When it comes to redaction, you have the ‘Erase’ and ‘Blackout’ tool. They both do the same thing: a section of text, in white or black, prevents a reader from seeing those sections, and more importantly, prevents selecting the text that has now been reproduced.
Even better, your edits are automatically saved which means you can make changes on one device, and when you check in on another, that change is already reflected there. This makes for a seamless experience.
Should I buy PD Filler?
For more PDF recommendations, we tested it The best Adobe Acrobat alternative.
