Adobe InDesign supports creating digital and print documents such as flyers, stationary, posters, and other types of media, with rich graphics, images, and more. Adobe InDesign is available standalone or as part of the Adobe Creative Suite collection of media management and creation products.
$31.49
per month
Apache OpenOffice
Score 9.9 out of 10
N/A
Apache OpenOffice is a free open source office suite that includes six applications: Writer (word processor), Calc (spreadsheets), Impress (presentations), Draw (diagramming and graphics), Base (database), and Math (formulas).
Adobe InDesign is very well-suited to creating professional-looking page designs. If you want a newspaper or magazine to have attractive pages that go beyond simple templates, InDesign is the best option out there, to my knowledge. It's less suited to scenarios where people without page design skills are responsible for creating pages, as it requires some training and skills to use effectively.
In my opinion, Apache OpenOffice is best suited for writing, editing and proofreading texts in any language. You can also download additional language packages that really take up little space in your PC's storage. Of course, Apache OpenOffice is comprehensive of spreadsheet-/drawing-/database-related softwares and so on, but I primarily use it for writing and editing my own texts. I don't see any scenarios where it is less appropriate, at least so far.
Customization - With Adobe InDesign, as well as many other applications in the Adobe Creative Suite, I can fully customize my workspaces and save different workspaces. This makes it easy to navigate through my project and have the panels and tools I need easily accessible and configured based on my project needs.
Styles - Adobe InDesign has character styles, object styles, and tables styles. This speeds up my workflows and allows me to easily apply the same format across multiple elements. This is super helpful, especially when working with length documents.
File compatibility - I can easily export my files into so many different file types.
The Book feature - This feature is really helpful when creating books or very long documents with multiple sections.
The number one strength of OpenOffice is the flexibility it gives. We can open any file type, save any file type - it's pretty much invincible. Even if we're going to work on this in a different program, just being able to open some of these ancient files that we get from local city governments is a huge win for us.
It's also administrator friendly - I'll use it a lot on the road because the licensing is so much easier to deal with than trying to check out a license from a server or make sure that everybody has internet connectivity.
It just looks pretty! It's legitimately a quality product, the layout looks good, it's not nearly as pushy as "other suites," and for the money it's the best!
I've had great experiences with the product and plan to continue to use it. It has been my go-to product for designing and creating materials. I have had great luck with it and have been able to create all of the needed marketing materials that have been requested for our company.
It is a cheap alternative; however, with Microsoft 365 licenses also dropping significantly, we might opt to go in that direction to maintain uniformity.
If you know what you are doing it is an amazingly granular and powerful application. You can control pretty much any aspect of the design and layout of your documents and make changes globally and rapidly. But, if you don't know what you are doing...you will be staring at your screen in bewilderment for a long time. You can learn it, but be ready for a hefty time investment.
It's good overall, just the UI it's not the prettiest, feels like an older version of MS office, but gets the job done. Once get the hang of it it's easy to use, besides it has great documentation on how to use it and there are many forums that discuss many related topics.
Adobe support is ok but not great. Chat support often doesn't initially understand the question at-hand and it takes awhile to get to the right agent. Phone support has long wait times, and though I've had more luck there, it does take quite a time investment if you are looking for help. However, Adobe does have some online learning solutions available as well as a knowledgebase for frequently asked questions. If you're looking to learn how to use the platform, there are lots of resources which can typically be found in a few Google searches. If you have a technical issue with the system, that's going to be a bit more of a time investment as far as getting a tech's assistance to resolve the problem.
Is there really support? There is a user forum but I do not see much developer input. Support options are limited. The most recent (Sept 2019) version of the product seems to have issues operating under Windows 10, yet there are few recent comments in the community forum, most comments are regarding older versions.
Microsoft products do not match the aesthetic tools that [Adobe] InDesign offers, cannot support the customizable options available for export, and do not produce documents with as high a degree of accessibility. That said, they do have their place in collaboration in a team- I'd consider Office to be the first step and [Adobe] InDesign to be the final product.
Apache OpenOffice is less intense on our computer systems and saves us a ton of financial resources. Since our document creation and editing needs are typical of a small business and not very complex, Apache OpenOffice is sufficient for us. We think that almost any smaller to medium sized business would feel the same way if they don't have a need to make or edit complex documents.
A great ROI for time in my small architectural practice, [especially] when a design has been updated and a report needs to be submitted. We can be submitting many reports that all look similar, clean and beautiful. We just save as the file and replace the images with more updated images. This way the client finds it easy to navigate updated reports, as many as they can be.
