Adobe InDesign Reviews and Ratings

Rating: 9.2 out of 10

Score

9.2 out of 10

Community insights

TrustRadius Insights for Adobe InDesign are summaries of user sentiment data from TrustRadius reviews and, when necessary, third party data sources.

Pros

Layering Feature: Users have appreciated the layering feature in Adobe InDesign for its ease of use in toggling specific elements on and off with a simple click, allowing for quick visual comparisons.

Master Pages Utilization: Users value the ability to utilize Master Pages in Adobe InDesign, finding it beneficial for extending styling options across different pages and effortlessly applying multiple styles like page numbers and company information selectively.

Cloud Libraries Collaboration: The Cloud Libraries feature in Adobe InDesign is praised by users for facilitating team collaboration efficiently, enabling access to shared elements such as images, fonts, and brand colors without requiring an online browser.

Reviews

101 Reviews

Adobe InDesign is great.

Rating: 10 out of 10

Incentivized

October 29, 2025

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

I use Adobe InDesign daily at work. We are a non-profit that specializes in fundraising, and we have an in-house marketing team that utilizes the Adobe products. We use InDesign for a variety of marketing materials such as brochures, one-pagers, proposals, social media graphics, web and digital graphics, cards, fundraising materials, etc.

Pros

Adobe InDesign does a great job at providing a blank canvas for design with easy-to-use tools.

Cons

It seems like we sometimes have issues with the software crashing randomly.
Having the ability to import and place raw photo files would be helpful!

Likelihood to Recommend

Adobe InDesign is well-suited for most design projects, including printed materials like brochures, posters, invites, note cards, proposals, magazines, and publication-type materials with layout and editorial designs. It is less suited for photo editing and video work.

Verified User

Director in Marketing (51-200 employees)

Vetted Review

15 years of experience

The best layout software for architects

Rating: 9 out of 10

September 2, 2025

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

I use InDesign very often in my job as researcher in the field of architecture. I use it as the main layout software for tables, projects' documentation files, books and papers layout and slides for video presentations . It's the main alternative to Office Suite and it's much more intituitive and useful for one main reason: it allows to insert easily not only images (jpeg, png and similar format) but also pdfs. This is fondumental for architects, since the majority of us elaborates projects on design programs (such as CAD softwares) which print drawings on a vectorial pdf format. But there are also some criticalities, such as the not really user-friendly panel.

Pros

Insertion and management of images and pdf files.
Creation of interactive pdf files.
Creation of interactive indexes
Creation of grids for the layout of images beyond texts.
Print of vectorial pdf files and great managment of the images quality

Cons

User interface (where to find specific commands, options etc)
Make some specific option more easy to use and visible (such as the creation of footnotes)
Creation of a more efficient and interactive way to create images' captions
Improvement of the interface that allows you to insert a PDF file consisting of many pages (it would be nice to be able to choose which page to insert more quickly and interactively, selecting them individually without having to specify from the outset which and how many pages).

Likelihood to Recommend

If an architect would ask me if I reccommend this software I would for sure say yes. I believe that InDesign is fundamental for our job and the one which suited most the realization of complex project tables, expecially in the field of urban planning. In fact in this case drawn vectorial data are to be mixed with analysis data which are quite always raster based. In case of an architecture project, such as the design of a building, the use of a drawing Software also for the layout phase may be more easy and quick to use, since in that case you don't have to do the output and later input-output on another software. But if the goal is a competition or to have high graphic performance InDesign will for sure supply better results.

Verified User

Engineer in Research & Development (1001-5000 employees)

Vetted Review

5 years of experience

InDesign remains the go-to design tool for publications.

Rating: 8 out of 10

Incentivized

April 30, 2025

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Adobe InDesign has been used for years as a go-to page design tool in our newsrooms. Following system changes, it has been successfully integrated with various content management systems and utilized for both newspaper and magazine design work. It is now primarily used for more complex magazine design work, since it has greater flexibility than the page design software embedded in our content management system.

Pros

InDesign is excellent at creating impactful page designs.
It gives great flexibility over the handling of images, including cut-outs.
It's excellent for headline and text editing on the page.

Cons

InDesign integrations with third-party systems can operate more quickly, but depending on the integration, saving and loading may be a bit slower.
The handling of cutouts imported into InDesign is good, but creating cutouts within InDesign could be quicker and easier.
Adding and removing pages from multi-page documents could be smoother.

Likelihood to Recommend

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.

Verified User

Director (51-200 employees)

Vetted Review

17 years of experience

Adobe InDesign, the best at what it does

Rating: 9 out of 10

January 30, 2025

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We use Adobe InDesign to create slide decks, pamphlets, flyers, pretty much anything a pre-existing client or potential customer might see. Adobe InDesign gives you improved control over type, type placement, image placement, and general formatting compared to rival products. My business specifically had an issue with mismatched templates in the workplace and we were able to create a template in Adobe InDesign for everyone to use moving forward.

Pros

Strong use of the grid system
Easy image placement
Great formatting for multi-page layouts

Cons

Large amount of features
Photos need to be manually embedded
Some lag with larger documents

Likelihood to Recommend

Adobe InDesign is best suited for creating slide decks and client presentations, portfolio and work showcases, and booklets/manuals. I recently used Adobe InDesign to create a storyboard for a product photoshoot as well as an installation manual for a new product.

Adobe InDesign is less appropriate for some quicker internal slide decks, or standard decks not focused on presentation or aesthetic.

Verified User

Employee in Research & Development (11-50 employees)

Vetted Review

6 years of experience

Adobe InDesign, there’s nothing like. And that’s the problem.

Rating: 7 out of 10

Incentivized

October 3, 2024

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Adobe InDesign doesn’t address problems, it provides a service. We use InDesign for all our publication creation and layout needs. If a project has words, it will most likely be created in InDesign. We create about 400 pages of printed material each month. InDesign is the standard all our creators use. It functions as expected.

Pros

Page layout
Graphic design
Data merge

Cons

Simultaneous multiuser modifications.
Better Network attached file access
The creative cloud auto sync font system is flaky.

Likelihood to Recommend

Print page design. Page layout. Text heavy layout is the purpose of InDesign. Multipage documents are the go to for InDesign. We create a magazine each month without InDesign it would be a time consuming process. I use InDesign when I should probably use Microsoft word. When designing fluid layouts InDesign shines.

Danny Weston

Wannabe Polymath at Alabama Rural Electric Association of Cooperatives (11-50 employees)

Vetted Review

10 years of experience

The best publisher on the market

Rating: 8 out of 10

Incentivized

October 1, 2024

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

I use InDesign for a variety of publication designs for clients. As a graphic designer I'm asked for things like business cards, flyers, brochures, documents, letterheads and even books. InDesign makes designing and editing these documents very easy. With features like character and paragraph styles I can make quick edits to entire documents that affect every part without having to make dozens of small edits.

Pros

Design
Publication
Automation

Cons

Price
Integration with other apps
Text frame options

Likelihood to Recommend

Adobe InDesign would be well suited to all things publication. If you're a designer that designs anything for print then a software like this is a must have and InDesign is one of the best, especially if you use other Adobe products and they work seamlessly together. It's not so good for raster based design work but the assumption would be that if you have InDesign you also have photoshop and can use them both in tandem.

Verified User

Professional in Marketing (51-200 employees)

Vetted Review

12 years of experience

Excellent Toolset for Interactive and Fixed-Layout eBooks

Rating: 9 out of 10

March 12, 2024

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Adobe InDesign is used to format various print layouts, mostly in the desktop publishing space. The software supports detailed design, more than Microsoft Word. I believe it excels over Canva due to the precise nature of things can be tweaked, such as font spacing and layering.

The software has recently been used to create and tweak interactive fixed-layout eBooks, in which Adobe InDesign has the tools to embed media (video, audio, etc) for iTunes. As far as I can tell, this is the only software that supports this type of design.

Pros

Page overview and layout
Media implementation to eBooks
In-depth control of elements in layout
Preflight review feature to spot errors

Cons

Not naturally a WYSIWYG display (this is an option, and doesn't always work as intended)
Moving images and photos around while holding an additional key
Layers or objects are not easily clickable behind other objects.
Adobe InDesign does require some fair system resources to work smoothly

Likelihood to Recommend

Adobe InDesign is very well suited to image-heavy publications, such as children's books, cookbooks and coffee table books. It gives you almost complete control how to arrange these elements, and to be able to tweak them with precision.

The software is an absolute necessity if one is developing interactive eBooks, especially for the Apple iTunes store. Unless coded by hand, I am not aware of any other tools to handle this.

It is a powerful toolset, and can take on most anything publishing related that you throw at it. I personally have found that it doesn't do too well with reflowable eBooks (like for Kindle Amazon), but it retains that capability.

Janeil Harricharan

Freelancer at Janeilh.com (1-10 employees)

Vetted Review

7 years of experience

Control your design work down to the very small details

Rating: 10 out of 10

Incentivized

August 10, 2023

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We use Adobe InDesign for a number of design jobs, including brochures, booklets, programmes, catalogues etc, for internal and external use.

Pros

Able to design down to minute details
Cross platform use with other Adobe products is great
Adobe support centre and online communities are great for if/when you get stuck

Cons

I have found a few bugs in recent years
Broken image links are the bane of my life when working on other people's files

Likelihood to Recommend

We always use Adobe InDesign for creating brochures, as you can control very specific details of your design which other platforms can't. It has some really useful tools to help save time with duplication, numbering, master pages etc.

Verified User

Manager in Marketing (501-1000 employees)

Vetted Review

6 years of experience

Ease of creating printable booklets

Rating: 8 out of 10

Incentivized

April 28, 2023

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Adobe InDesign is a perfect pick for designing and publishing layouts. I almost use this software daily in my work to present ideas in a creative manner and. It is best suited for organizing content and used to make most print and digital stuff. Integrates seamlessly with Adobe creative suite.

Pros

Creates perfectly balanced layout
Precise image placement and manipulation
Software provides collaboration tools to streamline content creation while working with team
Great for creating eBooks, magazines, and other print material

Cons

It would be great to have a few wizards to help beginners set up a document properly
For beginners, it can take a considerable amount of time to understand the layout concept
The software is expensive
There can be glitches at times

Likelihood to Recommend

While working on print materials like eBooks, Magazines, etc. I found the software compatible. It is not good for creating standalone graphics, and often a bit cumbersome if you are just looking to do a single page layout. Also, not suited for retouching or editing a photo.

Ruchika Save

Graphic Designer at DaurCom (11-50 employees)

Vetted Review

3 years of experience

The Perfect Design for your Creativity

Rating: 9 out of 10

August 26, 2022

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Adobe InDesign is the perfect choice for the design and visual organisation of information and content. For my work, I used Adobe InDesign to collect, brainstorm, and present ideas to be perfectly suited to the communication style of the brand. Adobe InDesign allowed me to quickly and effectively organise content in a great way.

Pros

Visually organise content
Create perfectly balanced layout
Effectively producing content

Cons

Simplify tools
Make the work area more intuitive
Provide cues to improve the final result of the project

Likelihood to Recommend

Adobe InDesign is perfectly suited to organise, visualise and prepare well-polished visual content produced with balance, good layout, and structure. Yet, it can sometimes be a little too complicated to prepare scratches or for simply "getting the idea" of something because it can take a little bit more time to have everything well fixed.

Linda Galota

Content Creator in Social Media at Danié Made in Sicily (1-10 employees)

Vetted Review

1 year of experience

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Reviews and Ratings

The best layout software for architects

Rating: 9 out of 10

September 2, 2025

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Pros

Insertion and management of images and pdf files.
Creation of interactive pdf files.
Creation of interactive indexes
Creation of grids for the layout of images beyond texts.
Print of vectorial pdf files and great managment of the images quality

Cons

User interface (where to find specific commands, options etc)
Make some specific option more easy to use and visible (such as the creation of footnotes)
Creation of a more efficient and interactive way to create images' captions
Improvement of the interface that allows you to insert a PDF file consisting of many pages (it would be nice to be able to choose which page to insert more quickly and interactively, selecting them individually without having to specify from the outset which and how many pages).

Likelihood to Recommend

Verified User

Engineer in Research & Development (1001-5000 employees)

Vetted Review

5 years of experience