Adobe Acrobat vs. PandaDoc

PandaDoc

Overview
Product	Rating	Most Used By	Product Summary	Starting Price
Adobe Acrobat	Score8.8 out of 10	N/A	Adobe 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
PandaDoc	Score8.5 out of 10	N/A	PandaDoc headquartered in San Francisco offers their eponymous electronic signature platform for sales teams, containing sales proposal automation and CPQ (configure, price, quote) features, and integration with CRMs.	$35 per month per seat

Pricing

Adobe Acrobat

PandaDoc

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

Starter: $35
per month per seat
Business: $65
per month per seat
Enterprise: Contact Sales

Pricing Offerings
Adobe Acrobat	PandaDoc
Free Trial
Yes	Yes
Free/Freemium Version
No	No
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
Yes	Yes

Optional

—

PandaDoc offers a free eSign plan and 3 paid packages for eSigning and document automation. All plans include unlimited documents and eSignatures. Evaluations start with a free 14-day trial. Up to a 46% discount for annual pricing.

Pricing Info

Community Pulse
Key User Insights
	Adobe Acrobat	PandaDoc
Considered Both Products	Adobe Verified User Chose Adobe Acrobat PandaDoc did not offer a time and date stamp with the signature, which is why we had to stop using their services, as it is a requirement with Social Security. Our office was using Adobe Acrobat for separate uses, and we also used DocuSign specifically for retainer documents, … Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Chose Adobe Acrobat We considered getting PandaDoc, which seems to perform well, but the cost was ultimately not as competitive. TaxDome is a CRM for tax firms. It contains a PDF editor, available at no additional cost. Ultimately, we do plan to divest from Adobe Acrobat and use TaxDome's … Incentivized Helpful? Mark Pero Loan Officer in Sales at A+ Services (Banking, 11-50 employees) Chose Adobe Acrobat PandaDoc is less customizable for creating/editing documents, less security but is much better when sending to a client and needing them to add text since the client would a paid subscription with Adobe Acrobat if I sent it that way Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Chose Adobe Acrobat Adobe Acrobat has an easier interface and more functions. Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Chose Adobe Acrobat Really, this was not much of a competition for anyone standing up next to Adobe. There is so much more scalability and functionality in a team such as ours that we did not have any issues or concerns going with Adobe compared to any of the other competitors out there Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Chose Adobe Acrobat Adobe has more features than the others and they are included in my Adobe software. No other integrations needed Incentivized Helpful?	PandaDoc Jason Fluegge Associate Director of Business and Development at Breakthrough (Non-profit Organization Management, 1-10 employees) Chose PandaDoc Both DocuSign and Adobe Acrobat have some strong features for e-signatures, but the additional bells and whistles have meant overly complex systems that are cumbersome for us. Additionally, there are a lot of added features we would have been paying for that we had no use for. … Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Chose PandaDoc Our office selected PandaDoc since it was better in terms of saving money. The cost was the most important factor when determining which site to use. Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Chose PandaDoc ease of use and simplicity for the customer experience Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Chose PandaDoc PandaDoc has a simple, integrated eSignature component, which is our primary reason for using it over its competitors. Incentivized Helpful? Jason Frazell Founder at Jason Frazell, LLC (Professional Training & Coaching, 1-10 employees) Chose PandaDoc I found PandaDoc's ease of use to be the superior solution to all of the other software I tried. Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Chose PandaDoc much better. The pricing structures worked a lot better than the other companies because we are a small clinic Incentivized Helpful? Steve Foster Vice President and CFO in Finance and Accounting at NorthStone Country Club, LLC (Recreational Facilities & Services, 51-200 employees) Chose PandaDoc PandaDoc provided similar features and functionality at a better price, but the "tipping point" was integrated e-signatures. Incentivized Helpful? Chris Lee Managing Director in Information Technology at Netcare (Information Technology & Services, 11-50 employees) Chose PandaDoc It was easier to set up and use than both of those products. Incentivized Helpful? Ashley Mareko Partner and Director in Corporate at SurrogateFirst (Professional Training & Coaching, 11-50 employees) Chose PandaDoc We chose PandaDoc for its ease of use and tools that allow a professional feel. The convenience for our clients to review and sign agreements also helped us make the decision to go with PandaDoc. Incentivized Helpful? Nesanel (Nate) Moeller COO in Corporate at The Penguin Group (Computer Software, 11-50 employees) Chose PandaDoc PandaDoc is so much simpler to use. It is also the cheapest option that has full integrations via its API! Incentivized Helpful? Roman Gurule CEO (Chief Executive Officer) in Corporate at thedigital505 (Internet, 1-10 employees) Chose PandaDoc PandaDoc is way easier to use than any other document system that I’ve experienced. The value proposition is definitely better than competitors, both the desktop and mobile user experience is significantly better, the functionality is much more intuitive, and the product is … Incentivized Helpful? Lonnie Ayers, PMP, CSM, Capt. USAF (IRR) Founder and President in Sales at SAP BW Consulting, Inc. (Marketing and Advertising, 1-10 employees) Chose PandaDoc At the time of evaluation, it had the functionality we were looking for at price point we could afford. Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Chose PandaDoc PandaDoc offers a free version with basic features and several tiered pricing options. The pricing is generally considered to be competitive and offers good value for the range of features provided. we often find PandaDoc intuitive and user-friendly. Its interface is designed … Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Chose PandaDoc Easier to use. Cheaper. Faster. Less stiff. Incentivized Helpful? Kat Olarte Consultant in Professional Services at Tangible Results Now! (Professional Training & Coaching, 1-10 employees) Chose PandaDoc PandaDoc stacks up above and beyond. It's replaced having to create a document in Word, save it to PDF, and then upload it for signature in an e-sign tool. I can create my documents in the editor. Present proposals in presentation mode instead of powerpoint and send directly … Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Chose PandaDoc We selected PandDoc initially for the cost savings and grew very happy with it after using for several months. Incentivized Helpful? Brendan May Managing Director in Corporate at Hotel Res Bot UG (haftungsbeschränkt) (Hospitality, 11-50 employees) Chose PandaDoc PandaDoc has a better UI and a competitive pricing Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Chose PandaDoc PandaDoc is more accessible and easy to use then several of its competitors which we have trialed but do not match up to all of the functionalities available in this software. Lacking straight forward navigation and all of the field tools offered even in the unpaid version. We … Incentivized Helpful? Benjamin Schlader Project Manager at B2 Builders, LLC (Construction, 1-10 employees) Chose PandaDoc PandaDoc is hands down a better sales tool than all mentioned above. There is no comparison with the ability to change and adjust contracts or proposals. There is nothing like PandaDoc when it comes to document manipulation prior to putting it in front of the end user. While … Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Chose PandaDoc We selected PandaDoc because DocuSign continued to increase the price each year and charged per document instead of just a simple contract like they started with. PandaDoc had all the same features for a much better price. Incentivized Helpful? Mary Ellison Real Estate Attorney in Sales at Green Door Realty (Real Estate, 1-10 employees) Chose PandaDoc just as good if not better Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Chose PandaDoc Cost is less and ease of use Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Chose PandaDoc PandaDoc is free for what I use. Incentivized Helpful? James Lajoie Chief Operating Officer in Professional Services at PSP Compass Solutions (Marketing & Advertising, 1-10 employees) Chose PandaDoc Great value and it won't break the bank! Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Chose PandaDoc While much less powerful, PandaDoc gives much more aesthetic depth. Incentivized Helpful?
	Would buy again
	97% Would buy again 897 Answers	96% Would buy again 222 Answers
	Delivers good value for the price
	95% Delivers good value for the price 768 Answers	97% Delivers good value for the price 204 Answers
	Happy with the feature set
	97% Happy with the feature set 899 Answers	96% Happy with the feature set 221 Answers
	Lived up to sales and marketing promises
	96% Lived up to sales and marketing promises 594 Answers	97% Lived up to sales and marketing promises 174 Answers
	Implementation went as expected
99% Implementation went as expected 683 Answers	97% Implementation went as expected 182 Answers

Best Alternatives
	Adobe Acrobat	PandaDoc
Small Businesses	M‑Files Score8.9 out of 10	BoldSign, by Syncfusion Score10 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies	Esker Score7.4 out of 10	OneSpan Sign Score9.6 out of 10
Enterprises	Tungsten Capture Score9.5 out of 10	DocuSign Score8.7 out of 10
All Alternatives	View all alternatives	View all alternatives

User Ratings
	Adobe Acrobat	PandaDoc
Likelihood to Recommend	8.9 (967 ratings)	8.5 (329 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew	8.9 (46 ratings)	9.1 (18 ratings)
Usability	8.5 (382 ratings)	8.3 (23 ratings)
Availability	8.6 (4 ratings)	9.1 (4 ratings)
Performance	5.1 (11 ratings)	9.6 (21 ratings)
Support Rating	9.6 (64 ratings)	6.1 (23 ratings)
Online Training	9.0 (1 ratings)	- (0 ratings)
Implementation Rating	9.9 (16 ratings)	6.3 (4 ratings)
Configurability	7.7 (5 ratings)	2.8 (3 ratings)
Contract Terms and Pricing Model	3.9 (3 ratings)	- (0 ratings)
Ease of integration	8.0 (9 ratings)	9.0 (20 ratings)
Product Scalability	7.3 (5 ratings)	8.6 (4 ratings)
Professional Services	7.3 (1 ratings)	- (0 ratings)
Vendor post-sale	5.9 (3 ratings)	9.7 (20 ratings)
Vendor pre-sale	6.1 (2 ratings)	6.7 (4 ratings)

User Testimonials
	Adobe Acrobat	PandaDoc
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 Scott Draft Senior Graphic Designer Read full review	PandaDoc Best suited for after demonstrations when requested by the prospect when they are looking for pricing with T&C. The data room is also great that acts like a drop box for opportunities and their contacts. Helps share pertinent information with others in the organization. Incentivized Verified User 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 Dominic Liberoni Practice Manager Read full review	PandaDoc Allows clients to remotely execute documents. Tracks the progress of document execution. Emails clients to remind them to sign documents so we don't have to follow up. Emails us when documents have been fully executed. Provides an easy-to use interface to place signatures, dates, and other information on our forms. Incentivized Phil Goldberg Attorney 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 Andrew Indovina Infrastructure Support Specialist Read full review	PandaDoc Sometimes the fillable fields don't automatically map properly and you have to manually adjust. Plan tiers and pricing recently changed, so now we get less value and less features (limited templates, no more pricing tables or invoicing/connected payment) for the same price, which is pricy for a small business. Easier, integrated invoicing as an included feature (so we don't have to use a different software for invoicing/payment collection) would be ideal. You have to upgrade to the Business Plan for this. Incentivized Verified User 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 Avery Chipman Interior Designer Read full review	PandaDoc The reason I gave it a rating of 7 is because it's probable, but not for sure. This is because there are a few little things we don't love about pandadoc. Mostly that there is not conditional logic such as: they must either fill this field out OR this one. Also it's a little pricey. But we'll probably stay because it's good enough and a pain to switch to something new Incentivized Verified User 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 Scott William Halewood UI / UX Designer Read full review	PandaDoc Once you get the hang of it, it's very easy to use. There can be a slightly steep learning curve to get fully in on the system. The new editor v2 has really improved usability and allows us to collaborate on documents simultaneously. Once the templates and library items are set up, a new document, whether it be a sales or HR document, takes very little time to complete. Incentivized Carl Thaisen Founder 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 Rod Lott Manager of Marketing Strategy Read full review	PandaDoc We haven't had any real issues regarding downtime as of yet. Incentivized Verified User Read full review
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 Daniel Epstein Senior Clinical Quality Analyst Read full review	PandaDoc The documents load quickly for the most part but sometimes if there are larger documents with a high number of variables it could take a bit longer to get the document to show up. Most of the time the document comes on the screen relatively quickly allowing for quick access to documents to be edited and sent out. Incentivized Verified User 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 Bradley Pearce Managing Member Read full review	PandaDoc Recently I could not upload a pdf to a contract - support was very responsive and easy to work with. They got back to me the next day with an apparent fix - however when I opened the document nothing had changed. I then could not respond to the rep who was helping me because it was a "no-reply address", the problem still has not been solved and we had to make alternate arrangements to get this to the client. Never had it happen before and was only with this one contract. Incentivized Melissa Veinotte Registered Storage Designer Read full review
Online Training	Adobe Answered basic questions. Incentivized Michael Craven President Read full review	PandaDoc 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 Rod Lott Manager of Marketing Strategy Read full review	PandaDoc Implementation was before the time I was here at Riafox, however, support has been great in assisting to merge spaces and upgrade to 2.0 Editor. Incentivized Linda Stefani Operations Director Read full review
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 Md Ashraful Islam Senior Brand Designer Read full review	PandaDoc We used Dropbox back when it was still HelloSign. At the time, new templates were very hard to create. We had to upload a PDF and then add the fields from there. With PandaDoc, we are able to drag and drop the text, images, logos, and fields we need easily. This has saved our team an immense amount of time. Incentivized Verified User Read full review
Contract Terms and Pricing Model	Adobe I am not responsible for sales or purchasing Incentivized Sean Moore Marketing Specialist Read full review	PandaDoc 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 Jamie Caroland Independent Consultant Read full review	PandaDoc It's scalable Incentivized Verified User Read full review
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 Mark Rhodes Communications Manager Read full review	PandaDoc We have greatly increased the efficiency in which we can get signatures from individuals for documents and increase productivity. We have been able to find older documents very easily. W-9 have been very difficult due to Section 3, but this was addressed with conditional logic Incentivized Verified User Read full review
ScreenShots	Adobe Acrobat Screenshots	PandaDoc Screenshots

Adobe Acrobat vs. PandaDoc

Adobe Acrobat

PandaDoc

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