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Affinity Publisher

Affinity Publisher

Overview

What is Affinity Publisher?

Affinity Publisher replaces the former PagePlus desktop publishing application, from Serif Europe headquartered in Nottingham.

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Recent Reviews

TrustRadius Insights

Affinity Publisher has become a go-to software for users looking to design documents with ease and efficiency. Users have extensively …
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Reviewer Pros & Cons

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Pricing

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Affinity Publisher

$24.99

Cloud

Entry-level set up fee?

  • No setup fee

Offerings

  • Free Trial
  • Free/Freemium Version
  • Premium Consulting/Integration Services
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Product Details

What is Affinity Publisher?

Affinity Publisher Technical Details

Deployment TypesSoftware as a Service (SaaS), Cloud, or Web-Based
Operating SystemsUnspecified
Mobile ApplicationNo
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Comparisons

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Reviews and Ratings

(27)

Community Insights

TrustRadius Insights are summaries of user sentiment data from TrustRadius reviews and, when necessary, 3rd-party data sources. Have feedback on this content? Let us know!

Affinity Publisher has become a go-to software for users looking to design documents with ease and efficiency. Users have extensively utilized the software for a wide range of projects, including booklets, printed design work, and social media graphics. The software's intuitive interface allows users, even those who are relatively new to it, to create complex documents with flowed text boxes and images. One of its key strengths is its ability to handle large manuals with attachments, making it easy to share across a network. It has found particular use in assembling page layouts for signage, manuals, ads, and other published materials. Affinity Publisher has also been embraced by design teams who prefer it over Adobe InDesign for print design campaigns because it provides a cost-effective solution without compromising on powerful features. Additionally, departments such as technology and secretaries rely on the software for creating mock-ups, detailed diagrams, and layouts. Sunday service materials have also benefited from Affinity Publisher's capabilities as users can easily create weekly print materials without the need for Adobe InDesign, resulting in cost savings. Overall, users appreciate the opportunity to achieve their goals effortlessly and cost-effectively with Affinity Publisher.

Users have provided several recommendations for Affinity Publisher based on their experiences and preferences. Firstly, many users suggest trying the free trial of Affinity Publisher before making a purchase to explore its features and determine if it meets their specific needs. Additionally, users recommend considering Affinity Publisher as an alternative to subscription-based publishing software due to its affordable price compared to Adobe products. They appreciate that Affinity Publisher offers a one-time payment option with free updates. Lastly, some users suggest purchasing all three Affinity products, including Affinity Designer and Affinity Photo, to have a complete set of design tools that work well together and provide a seamless workflow for their projects. In summary, users find that Affinity Publisher is a powerful and affordable option for desktop publishing software, offering professional tools with extensive documentation, an enjoyable interface, and an inspiring community.

Attribute Ratings

Reviews

(1-2 of 2)
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Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
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.
  • 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.
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.
  • We went from paying several hundred dollars per month for Adobe's suite of products to a one time, a lump sum of transferrable licenses with Affinity Publisher.
  • Assuming our output is the same, the cost savings provide huge ROI since the software is already paid for, and yet we keep producing and getting paid for more work.
Affinity Publisher has a comparable feature set to Adobe InDesign, but for a fraction of the cost. You can technically create print graphics in Illustrator and Sketch (and some of our people still do), but you have to worry about converting pixels to inches pretty regularly to make print graphics. Additionally, Sketch is Mac only, while Affinity Publisher is cross-platform. This has been an excellent decision for our organization to switch.
Our team typically uses other online resources instead of contacting developers/manufacturers for support. That being said, there is a forum and a growing, vibrant community of users available to answer questions and "make the switch." A simple "whatever function we used to use in Adobe InDesign," followed by "Affinity," usually gets us on the right track to an answer. YouTube and their forums are our team's go-to sources for help.
Yes
Affinity Publisher is a direct replacement for Adobe's InDesign in our org. We have transferrable, one-time fee licenses that can transition if our employees do. No more expensive monthly charges from Adobe when we only use about 3-4 of their products out of the 20+ we're paying for, we didn't feel like they were innovating enough to justify the considerable monthly expense, so we transitioned, and are happy we did so. We hit a few snags, which is to be expected in a transition like this, but we're satisfied with the tremendous cost savings!
  • Price
  • Product Features
  • Product Usability
  • Prior Experience with the Product
  • Vendor Reputation
Pricing, pricing, pricing. I can say that in terms of features, it's almost 1:1 against InDesign, so when you compare cost, it's an absolute no brainer for our organization. We have 6 in-house designers, so for smaller teams, it's worth it. I'd imagine that the transition would be met with more resistance at a larger organization, just in terms of sheer volume, but we are so thrilled we made the switch. The finance team is happy, and so is our Design team who uses it.
I don't think we would. I personally tried the product first because I have personal experience in print design before getting into leadership. After I vetted it, we picked one team member to try/advocate to the rest of the team. This helped to get everyone on board. Finance was thrilled. We'd do it again if we needed to.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
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.
  • Content Layout
  • Large scale documents
  • Graphical User Interface
  • Tool crossover from other Affinity products
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.
  • Saves money monthly over Adobe CC
  • Also works as a PDF editor (replacing more software!)
Affinity Publisher is a more cost effective way to achieve the same goals as InDesign and Quark. I'm sure there are various differences that Affinity may lack, however we have yet to run into one that our business has needed, or even recognized. It has completely replaced any desktop publishing for our organization without issue.
So far, when we've needed support, it has been top tier. However, I rate it an 8 because sometimes searching for things within the application hasn't yielded answers I've hoped for, so I've had to turn to YouTube or other outside sources. Thankfully there's a fantastic community that surrounds Affinity and their various apps that's been quite beneficial.
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