Square 9 Softworks vs. Tungsten Power PDF

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Square 9 Softworks
Score 9.7 out of 10
N/A
For document-intensive companies looking to improve business efficiency, Square 9 Softworks develops solutions for process automation that aim to drive increased productivity across all business applications.
$45
per month per seat
Tungsten Power PDF
Score 9.0 out of 10
Small Businesses (1-50 employees)
Tungsten Power PDF (formerly Kofax) is a solution to manage PDFs for businesses and individuals available with a one-time purchase with no subscription fees. It has a built-in eSignature integration with SignDoc and DocuSign for a complete end-to-end document…
$129
one-time fee per license
Pricing
Square 9 SoftworksTungsten Power PDF
Editions & Modules
Square 9 Process Automation Essentials
$45
per month per user (5 User Minimum)
Square 9 Digital Transformation Essentials
$68
per month per user (5 User Minimum)
Square 9 Enterprise Essentials
$75
per month per user (10 User Minimum)
Power PDF Standard
$129
one-time fee per license
Power PDF Standard for Mac
$129
one-time fee per license
Power PDF Advanced
$179
one-time fee per license
Power PDF Enterprise
Get a Quote
per year per seat
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Square 9 SoftworksTungsten Power PDF
Free Trial
NoYes
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
YesNo
Entry-level Setup FeeOptionalNo setup fee
Additional DetailsOffered via a three-tier pricing model that allows customers to scale their solution up or down based on the changing needs of their organization. Pricing excludes professional services and implementation feesDesktop licenses are buy once, own forever. No subscription fees. Enterprise server licenses are term-based with optional maintenance & support contract. Volume and upgrade discounts available.
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Square 9 SoftworksTungsten Power PDF
Top Pros

No answers on this topic

Top Cons

No answers on this topic

Features
Square 9 SoftworksTungsten Power PDF
PDF Editors
Comparison of PDF Editors features of Product A and Product B
Square 9 Softworks
-
Ratings
Tungsten Power PDF
8.7
7 Ratings
2% below category average
Edit Text and Images00 Ratings8.36 Ratings
Merge or Split PDFs00 Ratings9.07 Ratings
Add Annotations00 Ratings8.86 Ratings
Text Recognition (OCR)00 Ratings8.25 Ratings
Page Management00 Ratings8.47 Ratings
Form Creation and Editing00 Ratings8.86 Ratings
Secure PDFs00 Ratings8.86 Ratings
Convert to Different Formats00 Ratings8.47 Ratings
Comment and Review Tools00 Ratings9.35 Ratings
Undo and Redo Actions00 Ratings9.27 Ratings
Best Alternatives
Square 9 SoftworksTungsten Power PDF
Small Businesses
PowerDMS by NEOGOV
PowerDMS by NEOGOV
Score 9.6 out of 10
PDFfiller
PDFfiller
Score 9.0 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
MSB Docs
MSB Docs
Score 9.7 out of 10
PDFfiller
PDFfiller
Score 9.0 out of 10
Enterprises
Kofax Capture
Kofax Capture
Score 5.8 out of 10
Adobe Acrobat
Adobe Acrobat
Score 8.8 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
Square 9 SoftworksTungsten Power PDF
Likelihood to Recommend
9.6
(42 ratings)
9.0
(582 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
9.1
(6 ratings)
9.7
(111 ratings)
Usability
8.6
(4 ratings)
8.9
(46 ratings)
Availability
9.1
(1 ratings)
8.9
(13 ratings)
Performance
8.2
(1 ratings)
8.8
(13 ratings)
Support Rating
8.6
(22 ratings)
8.5
(424 ratings)
In-Person Training
7.3
(1 ratings)
3.6
(1 ratings)
Online Training
-
(0 ratings)
8.2
(1 ratings)
Implementation Rating
6.4
(3 ratings)
8.7
(33 ratings)
Configurability
-
(0 ratings)
8.5
(9 ratings)
Ease of integration
7.3
(1 ratings)
8.7
(10 ratings)
Product Scalability
7.3
(1 ratings)
8.7
(12 ratings)
Vendor post-sale
9.1
(1 ratings)
8.7
(7 ratings)
Vendor pre-sale
9.1
(1 ratings)
8.7
(7 ratings)
User Testimonials
Square 9 SoftworksTungsten Power PDF
Likelihood to Recommend
Square 9 Softworks
Square 9 Softworks is great in data management and flow. For us, they've done an excellent job with the Health Screening Tools, Cloud Storage/Management and Online Applications. It seems to be a very diverse product. I think because of that, you can talk with Square 9 Softworks about what you are envisioning to see if they are capable of it. I would not do that with many other products - they just don't have that flex.
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Tungsten Automation (formerly Kofax)
It is well suited for all scenarios that you would use Adobe. It is especially useful and a terrific option for small to medium businesses who need the functionality of a PDF creator/editor/writer without having to spend the exuberant costs of Adobe Acrobat reader/writer/editor. It has saved us time and money. There is no learning curve in switching to it, our staff was able to switch seamlessly.
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Pros
Square 9 Softworks
  • Fast Manual indexing with what we consider the best in point-n-click OCR indexing.
  • Webserver that incorporates Full-Text Content Searching, Workflow Queues, Full Document Management and Live document Signing on any mobile device or location.
  • Fast workflow designers for rapid implementation
  • Broad range of capture and information processing tools, easy to configure
  • Loaded with essential security options
  • Low price, and about 10X more powerful than MS SharePoint right out of the box.
  • Multi-database support for a very low price with disaster recovery licensing, this is very rare in the industry.
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Tungsten Automation (formerly Kofax)
  • Typewriter functionality is great, although can take some time to load. This allows you to fill in text wherever applicable without turning the rest of the pdf into editable text.
  • Fast load times
  • Has autogenerated text feature so anything in the pdf can become editable
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Cons
Square 9 Softworks
  • Some of the administrative/security configuration with Windows Active Directory can be tricky when managed by separate corporate IT personnel (alignment in strategy)
  • User adoption with any new process can be challenging, but overall user friendly menus
  • As Database sizes grow (200,000+ records) paging through records can be cumbersome, probably need to migrate to an archive process to offload some of the data.
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Tungsten Automation (formerly Kofax)
  • I find that quickly editing text within a document or adding a line of text is clunky and can snowball into things popping out of place. I prefer to export text, and then work on it elsewhere.
  • Sometimes it seems that text recognition is trying too hard and throws me paper punches as "O"s and wrinkles as shapes, so I have to get rid of those artifacts.
  • The "Update Available" popup which is usually not an actual update announcement but rather an offer to sell me something is annoying.
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Likelihood to Renew
Square 9 Softworks
We absolutely can't imagine not continuing software maintenance as there are always new additions that improve the system not to mention the excellent tech support when issues are encountered. Response times for troubleshooting are very quick and usually, my issue is resolved in less than an hour after connecting with support.
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Tungsten Automation (formerly Kofax)
This program can do everything that acrobat can do. Kofax PDF is priced so that we can afford to purchase for more employees when we need to. Since we are hoping to grow exponentially in the next few years, this product will be the one we go with. I'm very happy with Kofax Power PDF
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Usability
Square 9 Softworks
Super simple software to operate and configure. Very granular permissions and controls. Browser based setup with everything and very intuitive visual workflow building makes it easy to set things up. Troubleshooting document workflow issues is also made easy via the batch manager when you can track each document as it moves through the workflow.
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Tungsten Automation (formerly Kofax)
It is fast and easy to get the hang of. It really didn't take a lot of effort to learn how to use this program and I appreciated that it was pretty "plug and play" and there wasn't a long learning curve.
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Reliability and Availability
Square 9 Softworks
Square-9 can get this product out to you in almost the same hour your order it. We got ours very fast.
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Tungsten Automation (formerly Kofax)
Other that a PDF partially disappearing if left up for a long period of time - no issues. (If you close it and reopen it, it is all there. We have some PDFs that are 400-600 pages long.)
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Performance
Square 9 Softworks
With the PDF projected viewer, the document retrieval-to-display can drag for a second more than some systems, and the capture workflow if you overload a server array can also drag, but those are the only two issues we've ever seen with this product, and they are not serious issues at all.
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Tungsten Automation (formerly Kofax)
Pages nearly always load at the expected rapid speed. Some documents that print quickly from Adobe Reader print much more slowly from Power PDF. I have never generated a report - that's a feature I didn't know existed until now and do not know what it's for
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Support Rating
Square 9 Softworks
The support we received from Square 9 Softworks was exceptional. From deployment to implementation, we always felt supported. The team we worked with had patience and exceptional response time. They were amazing to work with, I always felt supported. No matter how simple or complex my question was they always delivered.
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Tungsten Automation (formerly Kofax)
I have used it for 15 years and have only needed support once: a simple update that allowed me to use the software as intended. The support team was attentive and responsive, and I was on my way very quickly.
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In-Person Training
Square 9 Softworks
It would have been higher, but the training is a bit muted for the lesser qualified office equipment vendors who signed up as partners to sell and support it. The more experienced ECM vendors and customer end-users will find the training very good, but a bit slow.
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Tungsten Automation (formerly Kofax)
I got an overview of the product from my predecessor who was about to retire from the job I now hold. He did not go into very many of the features and probably only knew about the ones he used most frequently.
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Online Training
Square 9 Softworks
No answers on this topic
Tungsten Automation (formerly Kofax)
We watched the training videos and tested out the features and functionality side by side. Some features are not used on a regular basis is it is convenient to go back and review training on that particular functionality when needed.
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Implementation Rating
Square 9 Softworks
I think the implementation could have gone a little smoother than it did. Now that I know how to use the software, I could do it myself. I feel that as an organization, we could have been a little better prepared. If the consultant was more aware of what we were looking for, they could have assisted in setting up some workflows for us as per the contract. But because we were not prepared, the initial implementation process was a little painful. That said, adding a document management system to ANY business kinda means everyone has to re-think the way they do their work which can be difficult for some staff.
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Tungsten Automation (formerly Kofax)
Easy and quick, with no problems or support needed. Worked as intended right out of the box. E-signing was the only area that implementation was dificult and required support
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Alternatives Considered
Square 9 Softworks
A similar product I have used was Time Matters. For a Law Firm, I think Time Matters is more useful as it keeps track of everything for a client, including billing. However, since I now work for a legal department of a corporation, SmartSearch is definitley more useful. It is not possible to seperate the documents we have internally in neat client files. We have various miscellaneous documents for many different services and customers or vendors. SmartSearch allows us to organize in broad categories that make sense to internal employees using it and to make sure security is set on specific documents. Time Matters would not have been sufficient for our managers to have access to, since it uploads all documents to the file - some of which are confidential.
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Tungsten Automation (formerly Kofax)
I think Adobe Acrobat is very slow and does not perform well with large documents. I often have documents that are thousands of pages long and with Adobe it's very difficult to open and load the document, let alone make changes. Kofax Power PDF, on the other hand, responds and performs well regardless of the document size.
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Scalability
Square 9 Softworks
The scale-ability is quite good actually, but you need competent sales/support folks providing it to you, so the scale is set right for the demands of your system use. Some resellers are not good at doing this, some are fantastic. If you are scaled correctly at first implementation, you'll be very happy with this system.
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Tungsten Automation (formerly Kofax)
Not really familiar since I'm the only person who uses it. But in the past it has been my understanding that Power PDF was offered only on a single-license basis, so it's been expensive for me to use it at home and at work because I had to pay for it on my own. In my current position management supports it so I at least only have to pay for it once.
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Return on Investment
Square 9 Softworks
  • OCR capabilities allow users to quickly and accurately index files without data errors from manually keying in data
  • Administrators can update users access through active directory without ever opening Square 9 and without generating accounts in yet another system
  • Users can find files needed without ever leaving their desk
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Tungsten Automation (formerly Kofax)
  • Saved time and paper putting together binders of documents or Affidavits electronically, not to mention very functional when working from home!
  • It's one price, no monthly or yearly payments. I loved Kofax Power PDF so much that when I moved to a smaller firm I recommended it as a good purchase for the company to invest in.
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ScreenShots

Square 9 Softworks Screenshots

Screenshot of GlobalSearch, which is used to organize and sort documents based on extracted data.Screenshot of indexed data, where users can performs a 3 way match against an order receipt and purchase order.Screenshot of GlobalCapture, which is used to build workflows and automatically assign tasks to users.Screenshot of a front-facing Portal for new hires and applicants. This lets them fill out important employee documents such as job application, Direct Deposit and W-4 forms.Screenshot of the hiring and onboarding portal, where new hire documentation is completed.Screenshot of GlobalForms, which has new hire government forms such as I-9 and W-4 forms.

Tungsten Power PDF Screenshots

Screenshot of The PDF Create Assistant can be used to create multiple PDFs at the same time from a variety of source formats. Create individual PDFs, or combine into one PDF package.Screenshot of PDF Profiles can be created to apply commonly desired settings to new PDF documents that you create in Power PDF.Screenshot of Users may choose to change the application's color to purple, blue, light gray or dark gray.Screenshot of Some lightweight document automation can also be achieved with the Watched Folder and Sequence features.Screenshot of Packages can be signed with pre built templates using Kofax Sign Doc or other integrating e-signersScreenshot of PDFs can be navigated with a thumbnail view