Microsoft Publisher vs. Venngage

Microsoft Publisher is well suited for almost any situation. It is something that I'm sure has far more advanced tools than I use or am aware of, but it is also very simple for entry-level users to create professional documents quickly. I have used it for very involved brochures in real estate scenarios and I have also used it for very simple "Construction Zone" signs at a job site under construction. There are so many uses for this program!

Incentivized

If you are a small business or even a small team within a larger firm, Venngage is extremely useful. Larger enterprises, with in-house designers or multiple design stakeholders, may not find the offering appropriate as it's THAT easy to use that it could lead to folks going outside the lines of official, corporate-mandated brand guidelines. That said, for small businesses, this is absolutely the best tool I have come across (after trying many from Adobe Spark to Canva and others), and for the monthly price of $49, you cannot beat the amount of original graphics and materials you are able to produce, without having any prior "design" experience to boot

Incentivized

• Business cards
• Internal memos that use a logo or a little bit of design.
• Quick and simple flyers for internal events.

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• Venngage comes with a good suite of templates for starting projects from. For anyone working with infographics, getting started is usually 3/4 of the battle and having a good set of templates to choose from is a nice feature to save you time searching the internet.
• Venngage makes it easy to change colors on most of their shapes, lines, backgrounds, etc.. ie., it is simple to customize in Venngage, which is incredibly important if you have a large team of users and not a great deal of time to train them in working with these types of tools.
• Venngage's auto-save feature is not only one of it's best assets, but it has saved our team many times! Not all competitors have this feature and when you're working with precision as intricate as you typically are with an Infographic, auto-save is imperative!

Incentivized

• The greatest shortcoming is large (300+ page documents) that require lots of internal hyperlinks. While it can do it, I can tell, due to the way it bogs down, that I am pushing the program to its limits.
• I would like to be able to work better with pdf's. I would like the ability to import a pdf of a graph, picture, or some other object directly into a Publisher document. Currently, I have to first convert the pdf to a jpeg and then import the jpeg. I have not found a way around this issue.
• At one point, I thought I had the option to automatically turn off hyphenation. Somewhere along the way, it seems as if the default for everything is hyphenation is turned on. I detest hyphenation and turning it off on every box I create becomes cumbersome.
• More options for graphics. Particularly the defaults that allow you to place "frames" and effects around photos. More options.

Incentivized

• On closer inspection, many templates were the same.
• I also found it a little difficult to edit for my purposes, which included being able to show more detailed analysis, for example, placing excel data in the file.
• If you want to download in an editable manner, such as into Powerpoint, which is currently offered in beta production, you had to upgrade beyond the $19 charge to a more costly business plan.
• There were constant email bots asking me to upgrade. I then went to cancel the subscription and the refund has been refused, after three emails explaining my situation.
• I understand Venngage wishes to grow its business, but refusing refunds is not the way to do it. They should be trying to develop fans, not frustrated business people exploring this new product. I believe the Customer Service personnel should be empowered to do the right thing. If this poor customer service had not happened, I would have tapped this product from time to time for catch graphics. Now instead, I am steering clear and using products such as Canva

I use Venngage for a new project 1-2 times per week... I could not see using another program at this point.

Incentivized

It has a great feature set but does not overwhelm me with its complexity. This is not an entry-level program, but it is also not one of the top of line graphic designer programs, like Abode In-Design. I can use Publisher to do 95% of what I need to get done. The other 5% I farm out to the graphics design person in the organization. It simply works and does so in a simple to use manner.

Incentivized

While I have not directly used support for Microsoft Publisher, I have used their help files and found them to be useful. I have also found that most answers that I need can be found through simple web searches and chat platforms. In all though, there are very few times when the preloaded help files have not given me the answers that I need.

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I think that the attention that I get as a small business owner from Venngage is excellent. They quickly respond to questions and provide information that helps to resolve the issue that I am having.

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Microsoft Publisher is more for beginners, or for basic needs, anyone with some familiarity with the Microsoft suite should be able to use it easily. If you’re looking to create something more graphic and advanced, you’d probably want to look into something like InDesign, which is not as user friendly if you’re not familiar with it at all. For basic needs the average employee should be able to use Microsoft Publisher with ease.

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We prefer Canva but feel Venngage is easier for us. In comparison to Adobe, we prefer Venngage because of the ability to have everything in one system and not have to jump around.

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• Allowed us to created our own documents/educational material for patients. In previous practices I have worked we had to buy "pamplets and brochures" which were very costly.

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• We used this basic platform for some our lower paying clients v/s using a more expensive tool.
• We eventually had to take another platform to supplement Venngage, impacting our overall marketing investment.
• Positively helped employee onboarding in terms of time commitment

Incentivized