Wondershare PDFelement vs. Square 9 Softworks

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Wondershare PDFelement
Score 5.2 out of 10
N/A
PDFelement is a document management solution from Wondershare Software headquartered in China.
$79.99
per year per user
Square 9 Softworks
Score 9.8 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.
$250
per month 5 users
Pricing
Wondershare PDFelementSquare 9 Softworks
Editions & Modules
PDFelement
79.99USD
per year per user
PDFelement
129.99USD
one-time fee per user
Square 9 Process Automation Essentials
$50
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)
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Wondershare PDFelementSquare 9 Softworks
Free Trial
YesNo
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoYes
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeOptional
Additional DetailsFor Individuals: Yearly Plan: $79.99/user; 2-Year Plan: $109.99/user Perpetual Plan(one-time): $129.99/user For Teams: Yearly plan starts at $109/year for 1 user For Education: Yearly Plan: $47.99/user; Perpetual Plan(one-time): $99.99/userOffered 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 fees
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Wondershare PDFelementSquare 9 Softworks
Top Pros

No answers on this topic

Top Cons

No answers on this topic

Best Alternatives
Wondershare PDFelementSquare 9 Softworks
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Score 9.8 out of 10
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Score 9.4 out of 10
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Score 9.4 out of 10
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User Ratings
Wondershare PDFelementSquare 9 Softworks
Likelihood to Recommend
9.2
(55 ratings)
9.8
(60 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
10.0
(1 ratings)
6.9
(7 ratings)
Usability
8.6
(5 ratings)
7.7
(6 ratings)
Availability
10.0
(1 ratings)
7.3
(2 ratings)
Performance
7.5
(2 ratings)
7.3
(2 ratings)
Support Rating
8.4
(8 ratings)
8.2
(26 ratings)
In-Person Training
-
(0 ratings)
7.3
(1 ratings)
Implementation Rating
10.0
(1 ratings)
6.4
(3 ratings)
Configurability
10.0
(1 ratings)
7.3
(1 ratings)
Ease of integration
7.5
(2 ratings)
4.5
(2 ratings)
Product Scalability
10.0
(1 ratings)
7.3
(2 ratings)
Vendor post-sale
10.0
(1 ratings)
7.3
(2 ratings)
Vendor pre-sale
10.0
(1 ratings)
7.3
(2 ratings)
User Testimonials
Wondershare PDFelementSquare 9 Softworks
Likelihood to Recommend
Wondershare Technology
It's a wonderful asset to have when you lose your original Word doc, etc. so you can still edit a document (and not have to start from ground zero). That feature alone is why I bought this product and why I will continue to recommend.
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Square 9 Softworks
Can't say enough good things about the program. It allowed us to automate our document clerk function such that it can be managed by existing employees in a fraction of the time it was taking for our manual process. This allowed us to reduce cost by eliminating the doc clerk position and repurposing that individual to other value added tasks. The cost savings through this has paid for the software
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Pros
Wondershare Technology
  • PDFelement provides the same powerful features as Adobe Acrobat, but the interface is easy to learn and use. The product is extremely intuitive, which saves our clients from becoming frustrated as they learn the product.
  • PDFelement Pro's ability to create fillable forms with the click of one button is one of our clients favorite features. I was impressed at how accurately PDFelement performed this task and the ease with which these fields can be edited, if needed.
  • Security is more important than ever these days and PDFelement provides the encryption and permissions to protect documents quickly and easily. I especially like the batch encrypt feature, this makes it easy to protect multiple files with the same password.
  • PDFelement makes it easy to extract the data from form fields. This is a huge plus for our clients.
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Square 9 Softworks
  • The software is very flexible, and the technicians were great at implementing our customizations for the PO project.
  • While indexing fields in Global Search, the Key Free tool works great.
  • Global Search is well-organized. It's easy to navigate and find your documents.
  • The process for completing your project was well done. Communicating with individuals at Square 9 who were responsible for different aspects of the project was easy.
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Cons
Wondershare Technology
  • I wish there was a lighter program for just reviewing a document and then to transition seamlessly to an editing mode. It takes a few seconds longer to load than Preview on my Mac, and based on that frustration, I use Preview to view documents.
  • A lower price for upgrades.
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Square 9 Softworks
  • Overall, it is not as stable as other software. Some errors could not be fixed, such as a form going forward without approval because a user pressed "enter" twice in a row.
  • I probably only use 20% of the functionality. Beyond that, I'd have to pay for development. We did that once, and the project that we paid for never was implemented. They allowed us to request a design before my time that was so complicated that they never got it to work. Once I came on board, I implemented a much simpler solution.
  • Our upgrade took much, much longer than expected, and was disrupted by so many software issues.
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Likelihood to Renew
Wondershare Technology
Excellent, easy to use product
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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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Usability
Wondershare Technology
I am a novice and I am using it like a pro because it is so easy to work with
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Square 9 Softworks
The items I am searching for are easily found. They are found in at least 95% of the searches. The failure rate generally is related to another employees user error or a template error set up by our Square 9 team in house.
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Reliability and Availability
Wondershare Technology
No issues. Works perfect
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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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Performance
Wondershare Technology
There is a lot of learning. Although some of the functions you can probably pick up relatively quickly, some of them, including compressing the size or using a different language, remains a myth to me.
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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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Support Rating
Wondershare Technology
PDFelement is always in contact with me, by email and by giving constant tips and recommendations. But what makes me give you a 10, was the outstanding support service received on July 9th by one of your support professionals Amanda, who helped me with a tariff issue, and makes me [rate] your product.
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Square 9 Softworks
Support is always extremely helpful and responsive. Whenever we have a question, it is simple contacting them and also setting-up an appointment, if necessary. Scheduling the appointment is easy and they are willing to talk on the phone, which is not always true with software companies. Their report support tools are also really east to use.
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In-Person Training
Wondershare Technology
No answers on this topic
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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Implementation Rating
Wondershare Technology
Just pay, download, activate and start using it
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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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Alternatives Considered
Wondershare Technology
I didn't try or buy other programs, but did a good bit of research on them. I went with PDFelement because of the lower pricing, and because of the rich features I learned it had. I also appreciated the great customer service I received from reps in the community forums, which showed me they have an aim in keeping their customers happy - which is always good to have when using fairly complex technical apps.
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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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Scalability
Wondershare Technology
Super easy Word style layout and format.
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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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Return on Investment
Wondershare Technology
  • For me, it's been very important to me that my business as a pet sitter and dog walker not leave a negative footprint on the environment. To that end, it's been very important that i'm able to do as much paperwork as possible without using paper. PDFelement is wonderful at helping me meet those goals.
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Square 9 Softworks
  • Having less paper in the office has saved space and supplies. We no longer need to purchase those expensive cardboard folders for archiving.
  • Having someone do their own health screening is safer and saves us from keeping a staff member devoted to that task.
  • I used to have to spend hours physically culling archive records. Now I can sort it and weed it with clicks of a button!
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ScreenShots

Wondershare PDFelement Screenshots

Screenshot of AI-powered support for chatting with PDFs/summaring/proofreading/rewriting/explaining/translating the PDF file content.Screenshot of file conversion to and from PDF format in high quality.Screenshot of PDF generation, which can be done from images, Word documents, and various formats, including batch create.Screenshot of certificate-based legal signatures, and documents can be sent to bulk signers, and signatures collected and tracked from anywhere, on any device.Screenshot of text recognition, from scanned PDFs and images.Screenshot of the PDF text editor, with images, forms, and pages.

Square 9 Softworks Screenshots

Screenshot of GlobalSearch, which allows users to organize and sort documents based on extracted dataScreenshot of automated data extraction from documents using Square 9's AI-powered extraction tool, TransformAI.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.