I use Affinity Publisher to create all kinds of items to print. For example, I create business card templates for clients. They then in turn take that to the publisher of their choice and get their cards made. Letterheads and envelopes are also big sellers. I don't honestly know where I would be without it.

Pros and Cons

drag and drop functionality to create faster
Ability to save in multiple formats
Costs way less then the others

Help is a little lacking in some areas.

Likelihood to Recommend

It works better than the competitors and costs way less

September 27, 2021

Affinity Publisher is a worthwhile tool no matter the budget

John Bergmann, MSM

Business Owner

Bergmann Photography (Photography, 1-10 employees)

Score 10 out of 10

Vetted Review

Verified User

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Assemble page layouts for signage, manuals, ads, other published materials. Large manuals are of particular significance as the file handling of attachments allows the users to port the working file around the network.

Pros and Cons

Master page templates
File and resource handling
Compatibility with other software files

Menu differences can be an impediment to new users from other softwares
Some functions are not in places I would expect

Likelihood to Recommend

For the price and function, this suite should be the go-to for organizations large and small. Serif has executed a competent product [that] can replace the function of the Adobe systems for most users at a fraction of the cost. The knowledge base, particularly the video side, is incredibly useful and complete.

August 16, 2021

Create classy documents with text and images

George Freeman

Associate Professor

University of Waterloo (Higher Education, 1001-5000 employees)

Score 10 out of 10

Vetted Review

Verified User

Incentivized

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

I use it to create complex documents with flowed text boxes and images. I'm relatively new to it and use it as an individual person mostly for things like course syllabi where I like to have text flow around images or graphics.

Pros and Cons

Easy to place and control fixed items like images or graphics.
Easy to create linked boxes of flowed text.
Nice control over alignment with global grid so text in different boxes looks right.
Handy to switch personas to Affinity Photo or Designer for editing components
Easy to add a table of contents.

Complex interface takes a while to get comfortable with (training book helps with this).
The actual page being worked on is crowded in the interface (but fine if you have a second monitor).
I find the color selector non-intuitive and it seems to not remember previous choices.

Likelihood to Recommend

I think it's good for newletter-type layouts with multiple text boxes and mixed images and graphics and text. It is not good for mixed text and mathematics.

April 26, 2021

Affinity Publisher, desktop publishing and design made easy

Paul Gully

Director

Elevated Online (Marketing & Advertising, 1-10 employees)

Score 10 out of 10

Vetted Review

Verified User

Incentivized

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We use Affinity Publisher extensively for a lot of our document design, both for customers and ourselves. All our booklets and printed design work are done / completed using Publisher, as well as a lot of the design process for social media graphics and assets. It's easy to use with great features; enabling us to complete projects a lot quicker. It also works great for us as an alternative to the equivalent Adobe products in most situations.

Pros and Cons

Quick start up and get going on projects.
Great tools and features.
Works well with all file types.

How it handles opening some file types.
Full compatibility with Adobe files would be fantastic (maybe not possible though).
Auto resizing of picture frames if you adjust the spread size would be amazing.

Likelihood to Recommend

If you are looking to get started using a publishing / creation application, Affinity Publisher is the one to go for. With a quick learning curve on all the basic functions, you'll be flying in no time. And then there is a whole heap of great features to get into as you become more comfortable with the software. The only down side is if clients are using Adobe programs, there are sometimes problems working with imported layers, but this is minor compared to the ease of use and features.

March 12, 2021

Full featured and will apply to more projects than you expect!

Verified User

Project Manager in Social Media

Education Management Company, 201-500 employees

Score 9 out of 10

Vetted Review

Verified User

Incentivized

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Affinity Publisher is a powerhouse of a program. It is used by our technology department for some mock-ups and detailed outlines. It's also used by a few of our secretaries when they need to make detailed diagrams. We use a lot of the layouts to avoid spending time and effort with a custom project -- they're great to jump start projects.

Pros and Cons

Supports just about any format you'll need for your project.
The variety of templates makes startign projects simple.
The program is just really powerful and fairly priced.

The learning curve takes a bit to get comfortable.
If you're used to InDesign, you'll need some Publisher tutorials to get going.
More people probably use adobe still, so you may encounter compatibility issues if switching between products while working with others.

Likelihood to Recommend

Honestly, I thought our department would use this more for creating documentation for our staff and doing some mock-ups and layouts to envision future projects. I also run the social media for us, and I didn't expect to come to rely on Publisher for some of my social media layouts. There are other apps and subscription services that can streamline some social media posts, but with a bit of usage I've come to like using Publisher, as well.

January 18, 2020

A cost-effective way to get out of Adobe's expensive, fractionated product model!

Verified User

Director in Product Management

Internet Company, 11-50 employees

Score 9 out of 10

Vetted Review

Verified User

Incentivized

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Our design team uses Affinity Publisher in place of Adobe InDesign. It helps us to build out print design campaigns as part of our broader marketing efforts for our clients. We are all in on the cost-effectiveness of Affinity's tools versus Adobe's, with a more than comparable feature set.

Pros and Cons

Affinity Publisher has to be number one. You can do ~99% of what you can do with Adobe's InDesign, for $50/user lifetime (even cheaper if you buy in bulk), as opposed to a recurring charge from Adobe every month.
Affinity Publisher helps us do all of our print design work for our clients, including seminar stands, marketing flyers, and even billboards.

Affinity Publisher is very similar in look and feels to Adobe products, which was suitable for our transition to using it. The downside is it uses different terminology for some of the tools/functions. These were minor gripes from our design team, and usually, a quick Google would help them to do what they were trying to accomplish. I'm sure there are probably copyright/legal reasons why, but worth mentioning, no doubt.
I think Affinity Publisher will come with time and is to be expected, but the amount of web articles/YouTube videos, while growing, is still a fraction compared to Adobe's products. That being said, there is a very passionate community of users behind Affinity's product line that makes up for quantity, with quality. There have been rare instances where we couldn't find a resolution when seeking help online about this product.

Likelihood to Recommend

We had a few small growing pains in the transition from Adobe InDesign, but Finance is happy about the cost savings, and now we're fully on board with Affinity Publisher. We use it for all of our print design work, save for a single designer who pays for their own version of Sketch because that is their tool of choice. Other software (also made by Affinity) is better for working on web graphics (Affinity Designer) or photo manipulation (Affinity Photo). Still, for print, this is a no brainer for our org for several reasons mentioned above.

December 23, 2019

Affinity Publisher...cost saver/Adobe replacer

Verified User

Director in Marketing

Graphic Design Company, 11-50 employees

Score 10 out of 10

Vetted Review

Verified User

Incentivized

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We use Affinity Publisher for a variety of tasks, most commonly a weekly print material for our Sunday services. Affinity Publisher has completely replaced InDesign for us, and we love it! It creates an opportunity for us to save money monthly vs Adobe Cloud, and we're able to accomplish the same goals as easily across the board.

Pros and Cons

Content Layout
Large scale documents

Graphical User Interface
Tool crossover from other Affinity products

Likelihood to Recommend

Affinity Publisher really shines by allowing our organization to create large (in pages) documents that are easy to layout, adjust content, and eventually print via ourselves or an outside source. We love Affinity's cost and the ability to interwork with other Affinity programs. The only issues we wish weren't present is Affinity Publisher cannot currently open InDesign files from our previous Adobe CC use.

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