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    Overview
    ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price

    Adobe Acrobat

    Score8.8 out of 10
    N/AAdobe Acrobat DC is the current version of the well-established document / PDF management solution, part of the Adobe Document Cloud (the other part being Adobe's eSign services based on technology acquired with EchoSign in 2011).

    $29.99

    per month per seat

    OneNote

    Score7.8 out of 10
    N/AMicrosoft's OneNote is a digital note-taking app, supporting photos, annotating, web page clipping, emailing, and synchronizing notes across devices.N/A
    Pricing
    Adobe AcrobatOneNote
    Editions & Modules
    Acrobat Pro for Individuals
    $19.99
    per month
    Acrobat Pro for Teams
    $23.99
    per month per user
    Acrobat Studio for Individuals
    $24.99
    per month
    Microsoft OneNote
    Free
    Offerings
    Pricing Offerings
    Adobe AcrobatOneNote
    Free Trial
    YesNo
    Free/Freemium Version
    NoYes
    Premium Consulting/Integration Services
    YesNo
    Entry-level Setup FeeOptionalNo setup fee
    Additional Details
    More Pricing Information
    Community Pulse
    Adobe AcrobatOneNote
    Considered Both Products
    Adobe
    Chose Adobe Acrobat
    Other products like Word and PPT can help me create PDF files; however, I cannot actively edit and work within a .pdf file without Adobe Acrobat (to my knowledge). Adobe Acrobat almost feels like a required product for any organization that wants to work with and actively edit …
    Incentivized
    Chose Adobe Acrobat
    We try to keep standards. We only offer Adobe products besides what is available with the built-in Edge PDF. It seems to offer decent options for general PDF viewing purposes and allows some basic features like highlighting and adding text boxes.
    Incentivized
    Chose Adobe Acrobat
    I use adobe for quick efforts with large PDFs, like combining them with other PDFs or optimizing the file size. I use Bluebeam when I need to spend time working on the PDF and adding comments, color, and other medications.
    Incentivized
    Chose Adobe Acrobat
    DC able to edit.. Reader can't
    Incentivized
    Chose Adobe Acrobat
    Adobe Acrobat DC is the most user-friendly PDF platform I have used. Compared to other platforms where the tools to edit and organize a PDF will still be there, Adobe Acrobat DC offers a graphical user interface that is very simple and easy to understand. The icons used for the …
    Incentivized
    Chose Adobe Acrobat
    There are several "Pro" style PDF applications available, but I honestly have not tried any of them. I'm very satisfied with Adobe Acrobat DC and feel no reason to try others. Having Adobe Acrobat DC also be apart of the Creative Cloud eco-system is helpful because updates get …
    Incentivized
    Microsoft
    Chose OneNote
    I tried organizing various online hard drive storage products like Dropbox, iCloud and Google Drive and One Drive. However, I like the visual aspects of OneNote when I save a document or webpage. It's simpler and I am able to know immediately if I have found the item I am …
    Incentivized
    Chose OneNote
    OneNote provides better integration into the Microsoft platform. It also excels over Evernote due to OneNote being ad-free and offline supported.
    Incentivized
    Key User Insights
    Would buy again
    97%
    Would buy again
    897 Answers
    96%
    Would buy again
    25 Answers
    Delivers good value for the price
    95%
    Delivers good value for the price
    768 Answers
    100%
    Delivers good value for the price
    25 Answers
    Happy with the feature set
    97%
    Happy with the feature set
    899 Answers
    96%
    Happy with the feature set
    25 Answers
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    96%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    594 Answers
    100%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    14 Answers
    Implementation went as expected
    99%
    Implementation went as expected
    683 Answers
    94%
    Implementation went as expected
    16 Answers
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    Adobe AcrobatOneNote
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    User Ratings
    Adobe AcrobatOneNote
    Likelihood to Recommend
    8.9
    (967 ratings)
    8.3
    (74 ratings)
    Likelihood to Renew
    8.9
    (46 ratings)
    10.0
    (13 ratings)
    Usability
    8.5
    (382 ratings)
    7.7
    (14 ratings)
    Availability
    8.6
    (4 ratings)
    10.0
    (2 ratings)
    Performance
    5.2
    (11 ratings)
    8.8
    (3 ratings)
    Support Rating
    9.6
    (64 ratings)
    8.7
    (10 ratings)
    Online Training
    9.0
    (1 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Implementation Rating
    9.9
    (16 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Configurability
    7.7
    (5 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Contract Terms and Pricing Model
    3.9
    (3 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Ease of integration
    8.0
    (9 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Product Scalability
    7.2
    (5 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Professional Services
    7.3
    (1 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Vendor post-sale
    5.7
    (3 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Vendor pre-sale
    6.0
    (2 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    User Testimonials
    Adobe AcrobatOneNote
    Likelihood to Recommend
    Adobe
    In my opinion there isn't a better document program that works with everyone. In a previous role; I had advocated for staff across departments to get Adobe Acrobat licenses because they kept sending every little thing to me since I had the main Adobe license. It really made their departments (sales & finance) run much smoother for a very minimal cost.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Microsoft
    In my opinion OneNote is a must for anyone who does business. It’s versatile, stable and sustainable. It can keep private information private - like passwords. It can be used for collaborative work - like standard operating procedures. It is fairly easy to use and far superior to pen and paper. When used for meeting notes, it can be flagged with icons that are searchable - like ideas or important items. You can even create Outlook tasks on the fly
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Pros
    Adobe
    • It is easy to sign and send a document.
    • It makes it easy to scan and save a document.
    • It is easy to add text to any document.
    • You can create an editable PDF form for others to complete based on the questions you include.
    • You can create and send a secure document to a client for their signature.
    • It is easy to add photos to any document.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Microsoft
    • Because of its flexibility and ability to hold different types of content (text, images, tables), it is a great tool for collecting content from different resources and organizing it in one place.
    • Technical support analysts are using sections for their support case analysis; they paste pieces of logs, screen-shots, document their steps in troubleshooting etc., all in one section, to get the full picture yet stay organized.
    • The logic of content structure; Notebook>Section>Page>Paragraph, allows you to manage and collect all needed information by the areas of the user's responsibility. For example; each of my projects has its own section, in which each page is a task.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Cons
    Adobe
    • I wish the backward compatibility was a little more friendly. PDFLyer had to be updated sooner that we would like when we updated from Adobe 2017 to Adobe 2026.
    • I wish it had list processing like Excel where it could remove duplicates, change formatting, etc.
    • Sometimes after an update we lose our plugins and have to restablish the connection to the plugin or reinstall.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Microsoft
    • The table editing tools are too simplistic and lack the features found in other Office products.
    • Some content loses its rich text formatting when being pasted into OneNote. A workaround is to paste the content first into Outlook or Word and then copy/pasting that into OneNote.
    • Microsoft is moving away from a local install of OneNote, which means notebooks have to be in the cloud in Office 2019. This will actually reduce the usefulness of OneNote in some environments and opens the door to competitor products.
    • Update: Microsoft has now announced that it will continue to support OneNote 2016 through 2023. https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/Office-365-Blog/Your-OneNote/ba-p/954922
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Likelihood to Renew
    Adobe
    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
    Read full review
    Microsoft
    As this is not a compulsory tool in our organization, I would say all depends on the decision makers, however since this is a part of MS Office, I am sure we will have it for as long as we will possibly need it. However, I would not be so sure, if it was a separate product
    Read full review
    Usability
    Adobe
    I would say overall, the product is great and as someone who has used it for many years now, I'm quite familiar with the ins and outs of the application. However, we found that when users were shown it for the first time and a bit after, they would feel a bit overwhelmed by the options and what everything meant. I think the UI could be simplified or an option to have a simplified mode and an advanced mode added.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Microsoft
    I find OneNote incredibly usable. I'm fairly middle of the road when it comes to tech savvy-ness. The platform was very easy to learn and explore. I like that OneNote is no clunky and offers a clean interface. This is important when it comes to deciding if a tool is usable for multiple people.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Reliability and Availability
    Adobe
    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
    Read full review
    Microsoft
    No answers on this topic
    Performance
    Adobe
    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
    Read full review
    Microsoft
    Overall, I rate OneNote's performance highly. In general, notebooks, sections and pages load quickly. OneNote integrates with other apps and info ca easily be shared/copied to and from the tool to other tools. Moreover, Notebooks tend to sync quickly meaning shared notebooks are up to date almost immediately provided there are no syncing issues.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Support Rating
    Adobe
    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
    Read full review
    Microsoft
    Since it is part of Microsoft Office and used across the globe there are a lot of support options available. It's quickest to just do a google search which will have plenty of articles to help you since there are so many OneNote users but as an Office customer you also have access to Microsoft support and I have had good experiences with their support (probably because I'm with a large company who is a large customer to them).
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Online Training
    Adobe
    Answered basic questions.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Microsoft
    No answers on this topic
    Implementation Rating
    Adobe
    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
    Read full review
    Microsoft
    No answers on this topic
    Alternatives Considered
    Adobe
    Adobe Acrobat has the most premium features that other software can't offer. The seamless UI is consistent on any device, and the ease of use. The security and the advanced AI features are what you won't get on any other platforms or apps.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Microsoft
    I tried using Evernote and it is an equally usable tool, however, I prefer the interface and capabilities of OneNote. OneNote seems much easier to use and understand. I think that may primarily be because OneNote is a Microsoft application and I am very used to using Microsoft applications such as Word, Excel, etc. I also use OneNote to keep my grocery list. It does as good of a job as the grocery list applications out there, only I like the flexibility I have with OneNote and how I specifically do my shopping.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Contract Terms and Pricing Model
    Adobe
    I am not responsible for sales or purchasing
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Microsoft
    No answers on this topic
    Scalability
    Adobe
    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
    Read full review
    Microsoft
    No answers on this topic
    Return on Investment
    Adobe
    • Definitely a positive ROI when I can receive clear notes/direction on edits for a PDF via Acrobat's comment system, rather than chicken scratch on a printed document.
    • The ability to password-protect my PDFs so I can make sure only the workforce I want to see the information has been priceless!
    • As I mentioned before, a huge positive impact is the ability to edit PDFs without having to return to the original file's native software.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Microsoft
    • OneNote has become our organizational standard method of taking electronic notes (though some still prefer pen and paper.) It has been a zero cost outlay due to its freely available nature.
    • Its integration with other Microsoft Office products makes it easy to share notes and content between products, allowing for easy collaboration where needed.
    • OneNote's integration with OneDrive ensures that individual's notes are always safe and secure, taking away the tedious responsibility of backup from the user, and makes it happen seamlessly in the background.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    ScreenShots

    Adobe Acrobat Screenshots

    Screenshot of where to create, edit, convert, and share PDF files all from within Microsoft Teams – as part of Acrobat integrations with Microsoft 365 apps.Screenshot of Liquid Mode in Adobe Acrobat Reader mobile app, where users can read PDFs on phones and tablets without having to pinch and zoom. Navigate lengthy documents with intelligent outline and search tools, while maximizing readability and comfort with font size and line spacing that are adjustable.Screenshot of where to fill and sign PDF forms from anywhere and on any device. Here, users can collect signatures, digitally track progress, and automatically archive the signed document.Screenshot of the Adobe Scan mobile app, used to capture and convert documents into high-quality, interactive PDF documents that can be filled out, signed, and shared. This eliminates the hassle of finding a printer, filling a form by hand, and scanning it again.