Adobe Acrobat vs. Soda PDF

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Adobe Acrobat
Score 8.8 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
Soda PDF
Score 8.0 out of 10
N/A
LULU Software in Montreal offers Soda PDF Anywhere, their flagship product, a full-featured desktop and online PDF solution.N/A
Pricing
Adobe AcrobatSoda PDF
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
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Adobe AcrobatSoda PDF
Free Trial
YesNo
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
YesNo
Entry-level Setup FeeOptionalNo setup fee
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Adobe AcrobatSoda PDF
Considered Both Products
Adobe Acrobat
Chose Adobe Acrobat
We ultimately decided to go with Adobe Acrobat as they are a well recognized name in the industry. We deal with a lot of private agreements, business and marketing plans and we needed a top tier known program to ensure safety and compliance as well as confidentiality. It is …
Chose Adobe Acrobat
I think Adobe Acrobat is better designed, has better and more robust options and is more secure than the cloud services that those sites provide. Acrobat also is already integrated in the Adobe Creative Cloud Suite, so is cheaper to use it, because in those tools above you have …
Chose Adobe Acrobat
There really is no comparison. Although we use other PDF programs, we mainly utilize Adobe. Not only because we find it to be a better program but also because everyone is more familiar with it. However, the other products are implemented for various reasons, such as a feature …
Chose Adobe Acrobat
I found Adobe to be richer in features than Foxit or Soda, more intuitive to learn and more reliable when in use. Both alternatives were more prone to crashes or had needed features missing, which is how i made my decision to go with Adobe
Chose Adobe Acrobat
Although Adobe Acrobat DC is not a lightweight application like some other competitors for just the ease of viewing PDFs, it makes up with all of the features available. It is universal across multiple platforms which was an important factor when we were making a decision for a …
Chose Adobe Acrobat
Ultimately I chose Adobe because I can access it via the cloud on all of my devices. I also chose it because I can cancel the software immediately and switch to something else if I need to. Adobe constantly has some better features and although I wish it was more intuitive, …
Soda PDF

No answer on this topic

Best Alternatives
Adobe AcrobatSoda PDF
Small Businesses
Tungsten Power PDF
Tungsten Power PDF
Score 9.8 out of 10
Tungsten Power PDF
Tungsten Power PDF
Score 9.8 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
MSB Docs
MSB Docs
Score 9.4 out of 10
PDF Xchange Viewer and Editor
PDF Xchange Viewer and Editor
Score 9.4 out of 10
Enterprises
Tungsten Capture
Tungsten Capture
Score 9.4 out of 10
Bluebeam
Bluebeam
Score 9.0 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
Adobe AcrobatSoda PDF
Likelihood to Recommend
8.9
(958 ratings)
8.4
(2 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
8.9
(45 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Usability
8.6
(373 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Availability
9.1
(3 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Performance
5.3
(10 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Support Rating
9.5
(63 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Online Training
9.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Implementation Rating
9.9
(15 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Configurability
7.9
(4 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Contract Terms and Pricing Model
4.5
(2 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Ease of integration
8.0
(8 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Product Scalability
7.1
(4 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Vendor post-sale
1.0
(2 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Vendor pre-sale
1.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
Adobe AcrobatSoda PDF
Likelihood to Recommend
Adobe
It is highly reliable for heavy office workloads as it securely handles legal documents workflow and got some advanced form creation facility. It has got some cool features such as Pdf compression, can edit any form of text or images precisely and most importantly it has got an amazingly accurate OCR engine -Optical Character Recognition, which gives it an edge over any other document editing softwares. Ofcourse every thing has got its own pros and cons, similarly with Adobe Acrobat too, this software is not highly recommended for basic Pdf viewing or lightweight editing as the software eats up a large part of the processor to run which makes our work slower.
Read full review
LULU Software
When I get any pdf form to fill, I use this software to fill in all the required details. It is very easy to fill any form in pdf format in this software. Whenever I need to sign any official document digitally, I use this software. It also helps us to protect our confidential documents with password protection. We add passwords to our confidential documents with the help of this software.
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.
Read full review
LULU Software
  • OCR comes in handy when you need to scan a document image for embedded text for edits. This feature is a common tool but the accuracy of OCR helps for quick edits.
  • Conversion options are a plus and a must-have when you need to convert between Microsoft Office and PDF.
  • During the pandemic, the ability to offer digital signing with personalized signatures is a major plus. Glad to have this tool available when needed.
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.
Read full review
LULU Software
  • After the edit when I see my documents in full screen view, I find the header of my documents blocked by editing tools.
  • Its Url to PDF creator doesn't work well.
  • It does not have mobile application for PDF editing
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.
Read full review
LULU Software
No answers on this topic
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.
Read full review
LULU Software
No answers on this topic
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
Read full review
LULU Software
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.
Read full review
LULU Software
No answers on this topic
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.
Read full review
LULU Software
No answers on this topic
Online Training
Adobe
Answered basic questions.
Read full review
LULU Software
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
Read full review
LULU Software
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.
Read full review
LULU Software
I tried Smallpdf for sometime. It is also a very good tool for pdf related tasks but it doesn't provide a comprehensive functionality to edit a pdf document. I couldn't modify the text of my pdf documents in Smallpdf. But SodaPDF gives me the functionality to edit/change the text of my pdf documents. So I shifted from Smallpdf to this software.
Read full review
Contract Terms and Pricing Model
Adobe
I am not responsible for sales or purchasing
Read full review
LULU Software
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.
Read full review
LULU Software
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.
Read full review
LULU Software
  • A recent project came across my desk where we had to recreate static files into editable word documents. Thank goodness for the OCR feature. It made for an almost flawless conversion. Minor edit here and there, no fault of the program. It was more due to the file quality of the original scan. Saved me time.
  • The feedback option is another plus: The review/comment function is great for easily getting document feedback. We just started using this feature. Another time-saver.
  • Document management due to file conversion options makes it easier to keep documents all in one place. Also, the ability to share these documents with coworkers is a major plus!
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.