Converting Word documents to PDF files can be expensive with Adobe Acrobat especially if you’re a casual pdf’er who only needs it occasionally and doesn’t want too much tech support mess. The best anti-Adobe product that we like is Fox-it Creator. It takes word documents and other Office files and converts them to pdfs. The pdfs are then viewable and useable by anyone, including just those who use Adobe Reader. The best part is that you can sign up for a 1-year trial to decide if you want to keep it for only $29.99. Adobe’s cheapest pdf creator is $299 by the way.
Other anti-pdf creators that didn’t make the cut for us are: cutePDF, deskUNPDF Professional, and pdf995 probably the most popular low-cost pdf’ers out there besides Adobe. The problem with those are that the editing functions did not allow for easy removal/additions of text on existing pdf files. Instead, they prompted you to export the current pdf to a word doc to edit, and then you could convert them back to the final pdf. Not too quick or handy for quick pdf edits.
Adobe’s family of products for Acrobat pdf’ing is great. Dont’ get us wrong. And they bundle in nice-to-have mark-ups and advanced editing tools. However, if you just need a simple pdf converter, and that’s it, Fox-it is the way to go. Otherwise, you’ll be paying a lot of dough for extra fluff.
