Adobe Acrobat vs. DocuSign vs. Nitro Productivity Suite

When preparing artwork for print production from an application like Adobe Illustrator, Photoshop, or InDesign, the best way to preview and preflight the work is to export to PDF and use Adobe Acrobat's output preview to check process colors, spot colors, dielines, and any special requirements, like foil stamping or varnish. Adobe Acrobat is also where you make any needed final adjustments to ensure correct reproduction on press. Documents intended for screen viewing must be exported to PDF and edited in Adobe Acrobat so as to add and edit needed accessibility features critical for legislative compliance.

Incentivized

This product is well suited in the use case that I provided before: when it comes to onboarding employees and providing a clear channel for decision making for human resources, this is an excellent tool to accomplish that. I would say the weak points is when you have back and forth communication with users that it might seem a little redundant to have that back and forth communication in that scenario.

Incentivized

I run a professional services business from home. I need to edit documents quickly and easily and with minimal subscriptions to minimize overheads. I love that Nitro is a one-off payment to get a license to the software, and you can simply upgrade to the latest version if that's what you want, but you're not obligated to. I've been using the same version of Nitro for 7-8 years now. Despite the fact the upgraded versions have a lot of great, nice-to-have features, the version I'm on still does the job.

Incentivized

• Ability to manipulate a PDF in various ways.
• Print production is incredibly helpful for checking off and making sure PDFs are ready for print.
• Commenting in Adobe Acrobat is awesome! So nice to be able to hand off a PDF and get it back with edits that are easy to navigate and resolve!

Incentivized

• Ease of sending the same document out to multiple recipients, at multiple locations, for multiple signatures
• Quick turnaround - once the recipient signs the document, we receive notification and the document back immediately
• Can resend, alter, change, and/or add to the email and/or document that is sent out very easily
• The recipient can save the document after signing, so they too have their own electronic copy for their records

Incentivized

• Ability to combine files SEAMLESSLY and order them around as necessary (so underrated)
• Signing not only for yourself but for others. Helpful for those who have been granted the authority to sign for VPs and directors
• Much easier to use than some other PDF viewing services

Incentivized

• More printing settings, like being able to adjust the margins and place the print area on the page when the file size is larger than the page, and I only want to print one section. Illustrator has this feature. Often, we print from Illustrator instead, because of this limitation.

Incentivized

• Tracking, particularly when collecting signatures through connected applications, such as an ATS, is not always clean or easily traceable.
• Formatting documents to handle electronic signature types (signatures, initials, etc.) is not always easy, and highly dependent on the partner's technology.
• It is not convenient to have to use DocuSign as a stand alone product if the signatures are required for 3rd party applications. It definitely excels on its own, but the scope of that usage, at least for us, is slim.

Incentivized

• Converting from PDF to Microsoft Word can be complicated at times. Some parts of a document such as tables are not converted properly.
• Sometimes it appears to be easier to save MS Word documents to PDF rather than using NPS to convert. It can be a bit slow to convert at times.
• In my view, it wasn't user friendly at the beginning.

Incentivized

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.

Incentivized

I can't imagine doing business without DocuSign now. I would never want to go back to the way we used to do things. The "new way" is "the way" is "the right way." We can honestly be proud of a "one right way" process and not have to suffer through "5 ways for 5 days."

Incentivized

We will definitely be renewing the Nitro Productivity Suite. Saves the company a lot of money for something we use everyday

Incentivized

It’s a very easy app to learn and software is essential. I feel like the app could load a bit faster but overall, is one of my go to apps. Makes reading and editing pdfs easy and I enjoy the usability of the app. It is definitely something I make sure to have downloaded on any computer I’m working from

Incentivized

Generally user-friendly once you have command of the basics, but also has a lot of nuances that can make it difficult to train others on. DocuSign University is a helpful tool, but understandably a lot of content to get through to become a well-versed user. A lot of different functionalities but only a few I use on a weekly basis.

Incentivized

For the most part, the entire software is extremely easy to navigate and use. You won't need to follow tutorials or anything for the bulk of the core features, as it's all pretty seamlessly designed.

Incentivized

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

Incentivized

It does not go down. I have had zero issues with DocuSign, approaching 4 years.

Incentivized

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.

Incentivized

Everything loads quickly. Reports are generated in a reasonable time. No noticeable difference in integrated software processing speeds.

Incentivized

It works as advertised.

Incentivized

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.

Incentivized

I'd give them a 10, but there has been 1 or 2 small cases that seemed to fall to the wayside, but I was able to call them up and get them resolved. We were having a bad implementation night (after midnight) and we needed assistance from Docusign. They were able to get an engineer to help us in the early morning hours

Incentivized

Nitro checks all the boxes for what we need. It is fairly priced, it allows us to read and edit PDF documents, convert PDF to MS Word and convert MS Word to PDF. It allows us to combine multiple files and do all the post processing like adding page numbers and adding headers and footers

Incentivized

Answered basic questions.

Incentivized

Docusign is super easy to use, and apart from a few administration details, there was really nothing to train on. Post implementation, there were issues with configuration of auto-filled documents with the integrating 3rd party. That training required some time, because the DocuSign expert took the time to walk me through the 3rd party's configuration (how often does that happen?) so I could see how DocuSign should be best used to overcome weaknesses in the 3rd party platform. 10/10 expert care.

Incentivized

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

Incentivized

Until you get the hang of it, I recommend doing several internal tests before sending a document to a client. As I mentioned earlier, you have to go through a bit of trial and error at first to verify that the workflow works as expected.

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.

Incentivized

There has never been anything that we could really compare to Docusign. We have tried sending documents in a PDF version, but that was not nearly as efficient. DocuSign saves your signature in the system and uses that as it goes through your documents.

Incentivized

Every 1-2 years will do a check on current PDF options to include trialing the software. Have tried Foxit and several that seem to have failed in the marketplace. Over the last 4 years, I have always stuck with Nitro. Unfortunately, we still need to keep Adobe Acrobat (free version) installed to view a small percentage of some PDFs we receive.

Incentivized

I am not responsible for sales or purchasing

Incentivized

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.

Incentivized

In my years of using DocuSign, I have never had an outage. I haven't even encountered a bug.

Incentivized

• Adobe Acrobat has saved us time in managing documents. In this day, everything is fast, moves fast, and keeping up with that pace demands software that functions at the same level. Adobe Acrobat does that. It has streamlined the steps I need to take to edit and create documents we need to manage our customers.
• Adobe Acrobat removes the worry and stress associated with managing a large influx of documents. Something as simple as a document featuring an image that was sent to us upside down. Using the old method, I would have to open other software, click 'Edit', find the 'Rotate Image' button, click it a couple of times, save it as a JPEG, then attach it to Word, and finally save it as a PDF. It was a grueling process that consumed a great deal of time. Now, I simply open the image, and Adobe automatically recognizes it is upside down and fixes it for me. I can save and move on; it literally takes me seconds. Amazing.
• Adobe Acrobat is intuitive and easy to use, and the additional apps are relevant to the needs that come up. If I have an idea, I can go to the available apps and find exactly what I need. Impressive and speaks to the years of experience this company has had to fine-tune its product and make it obvious that it is aggressive in staying on top.

Incentivized

• Less paper use, faster signature times, less time standing at the printer/scanner to send documents to yourself
• Security over your signature! Security over your company's signature and authorization to approve projects, cash flow etc
• Love audit trails and the seamless tracking of the status of the document

Incentivized

• ROI was very quick as the license costs were so low. We purchased 8 licenses versus the initial 2 we were planning on for Adobe.
• More people were able to use the product than we initially thought due to low purchase costs.
• We haven't had any further costs to own the product after the initial purchase. We would need to purchase new licenses if we wanted to upgrade.

Incentivized