Buyers Guide

Table of Contents

• What is PDF Software?
• The benefits of PDF Software
• Typical features of PDF Software
• The cost of PDF Software
• Considerations when purchasing PDF Software
• Relevant PDF Software trends

What is PDF Software?

Portable document format (PDF) software, also known as a PDF editor, is a software tool that allows users to create and edit PDF documents, rearrange a document’s pages, and add digital signatures. It also lets them convert a PDF file to other formats such as Word, Excel, HTML, and JPG, and vice versa.

PDF software is used in businesses of all sizes across industries such as legal, construction, medical, and professional services.

The benefits of PDF Software

The benefits of using a PDF software solution include:

• Enhanced security: PDF software offers features such as password protection, user restrictions, and encryption to restrict unauthorized users from modifying, copying, or printing file contents. These security features help prevent information misuse. Some tools also offer redaction, a security feature that allows users to remove sensitive and classified information from within a document.
• Seamless collaboration: A PDF editor lets multiple users collaborate on the same document. Users can add notes or comments to a specific word or an entire section. They can also digitally sign the document from within the same interface.
• Version control: A PDF software solution allows users to effectively track document changes by maintaining a version history, which lists the changes made to a document over its lifetime. It highlights who created each version, when the version was created, and what changes were made under that version.

Typical features of PDF Software

Here are some common features of a PDF software app:

• Merge/append: Combine multiple PDF pages into a single document, and rearrange the pages in a preferred order.
• Digital signature: Sign PDF documents electronically.
• Collaboration: Add comments to PDF documents to ask questions or make suggestions to team members.
• File encryption: Add encryption keys, such as passwords, to protect sensitive files.
• Redaction: Remove sensitive information from a document before publishing or before sharing it with stakeholders.
• Watermarking: Add your company’s watermark to PDF documents to protect contents and indicate ownership.

The cost of PDF Software

Most products in the market are priced on a per user, per month basis and can be divided into three pricing tiers based on their starting price.

Price ranges*:

• $6 - $20
• $20 - $35
• $35+

*The pricing included is for the entry-level/lowest-priced offering found on vendor websites on July 3, 2021. These ranges correspond to the 25th, 75th, and 100th percentiles of pricing information gathered from vendor websites of sample products.

The above list summarizes pricing for the base plans of most products. An enterprise or premium product that’s priced higher may include additional features such as built-in spell checks, language support, merging of multiple files, and validating PDFs for ISO standards.

Considerations when purchasing PDF Software

Here are some parameters to consider when purchasing a PDF solution:

• Mobility: Select an online PDF editor that runs smoothly on your laptop and desk computer as well as your phone and tablet. This capability will let you work on PDF files from any device and will be especially useful when you’re on the field and need to get a document signed urgently.
• Collaboration: Ensure the PDF editor you choose allows multiple collaborators to edit and review a PDF document simultaneously. With the collaboration functionality, you and your team members can simultaneously add comments and make changes to a document while collaborating with other stakeholders.
• Integration: You may need to integrate your PDF software with other tools such as document generation, optical character recognition (OCR), and document scanning to convert an output document into the PDF file format, to edit the document’s text contents, or to sign it digitally. Therefore, check for integration capabilities during your software research.

Relevant PDF Software trends

Here’s a market trend to keep in mind when selecting PDF editor software for your business:

• Increasing use of artificial intelligence (AI) technology in PDF software. AI-enabled PDF tools can analyze and process documents faster and identify the most relevant sections such as a particular clause in a contract or a specific question that needs to be addressed immediately. They can also process corrupted images to extract necessary elements such as texts, barcodes, and labels without the need to improve the image or document quality beforehand. Additionally, these tools can recognize complex scripts in multiple languages. Many vendors have already implemented AI into their PDF software offerings, and more are expected to follow suit.