Which Adobe Acrobat PDF editor is right for you?

There’s no escaping PDFs in your personal and professional life, but finding the right PDF editor can make all the difference in your ability to work with these files. With Acrobat, Adobe offers a range of solutions that can serve your every need, including paid Standard and Pro options plus a free online editor that’s ideal for quick tasks.

So, which one’s right for you? Let’s break down what Adobe’s Acrobat Pro, Acrobat Standard, and the free PDF online editor have to offer, so you can make an informed choice on which route to take.

Adobe Acrobat free online editor for quick edits to PDFs

• PDF reader functionality
• Basic editing facilities: add doodles, highlight, strikethrough and underline text
• Add comments to PDFs for collaborative working
• Fill in and sign documents
• Share edited PDFs

One of the best options for most folks will be the Adobe free PDF online editor. This service allows you to open and read PDFs, and also to add comments, whether those are single words or full paragraphs. When working in teams, you can even mention someone and alert them to the comment by tagging them by name.

This free PDF editor also enables you to add drawings to a PDF, such as arrows or doodles. Highlighting content, striking through areas that you want removed, or underlining important bits is also easy enough to do with this free edition of Acrobat.

One of the most useful features for regular users will be the ability to fill in and sign documents, which can otherwise be difficult to achieve. Once you’re done, you can just share the edited PDF with all your notes embedded in the file.

Advanced PDF editing with Adobe Acrobat Standard and Pro

All the above, plus:

• Desktop, mobile and web access
• Advanced text and image editing
• Collect e-signatures
• Track responses
• Compress PDFs
• Split PDFs into multiple files
• OCR technology for editing scanned documents
• Create web forms (Pro only)
• Compare versions (Pro only)

For those who want more advanced features, Adobe Acrobat Standard and Pro are available for a fee. Standard starts at $12.99 per month with an annual plan, while Pro is $19.99 per month with an annual plan. You don’t need to sign up for a full year, but the price goes up if you’re only paying for one month of either of these services.

Adobe’s Acrobat Standard plan includes access to the service on desktop, web, or mobile, plus the ability to view, print, share or comment on files. You can also edit text and images, organize documents, collect e-signatures, and track responses to your edits. Pro users get all this plus the ability to create web forms, compare versions, and 70 additional features.

One of the great things about using Acrobat Standard or Pro is you can edit text as simply as you might in Microsoft Word, adding new inline text, fixing typos, or resizing images.

The ability to compress a PDF shouldn’t be overlooked either–edited files can become very big and thus impossible to email, which can be a pain to deal with.

Acrobat’s OCR technology, built into the Standard and Pro versions, is another appealing feature: it extracts text from scanned documents and lets you edit it. Pro subscribers will find they can take things a step further as the app will even recognize fonts and formatting.

With one of these subscriptions, you can also easily split a single file into multiple PDF files.

Which PDF editor is right for me?

If you’re a casual user you’ll find Adobe Acrobat’s free online service is sufficient in most situations. However, if you’re regularly editing PDF files, especially in a work situation, you may well find this warrants a subscription to Acrobat Standard or Pro.