PDF Candy is an online PDF editor that offers a wealth of tools to - you guessed it - edit PDFs online for free (with some limits - see below). And by ‘wealth’, we mean an impressive 49 tools, including editing, merging, compressing, rearranging, and protecting files. The service is delightfully simple to use, although as with most free PDF editing tools, an upgrade is needed to unlock its full potential.

How does the latest version of this online tool compare to the best PDF editor and best free PDF editor software out there? We put it to the test.

PDF Candy: Pricing & plans

• Fair, free, with flexible payment upgrades

Users can freely access the tools via the browser PDF Candy Web - and there’s no restriction to which tools you can use - although you can only perform one task an hour, making the free version ideal for minimal or irregular PDF editing (or sloths). At least it's more generous than SmallPDF's one-task-per-day restriction.

Should you attempt to perform another task within the hour, a handy, if somewhat threatening, red countdown timer tells you how long you’ll have to wait.

Removing this time-lock requires a monthly or annual subscription - doing so also increases file size limits, too.

The lifetime license - a one-off payment - opens up PDF Candy, as well as offering a desktop PDF editor download free for Windows.

You can also get a yearly subscription for both the web and desktop versions for $4 a month (it’s advertised as usually being $18 monthly). If you’d rather not be tied down to a yearly contract, you can use the web version for $6 a month. Alternatively, you can purchase a perpetual licence for both the web and desktop versions for $99, which is slightly more than subscribing for 2 years.

• Pricing: 4/5

PDF Candy: Interface & experience

• PDF Candy could not be simpler to use

Using PDF Candy is child’s play. Literally. The ability to grasp a mouse and discern an icon is all that’s needed to get started.

When you first hit the homepage, you’ll find a bold ‘action’ button to add files from your desktop, or use third-party cloud storage services, Dropbox and Google Drive. Depending on the tool you use, this will slightly vary, but layout and workflow remains largely the same.

Dragging files onto the action button offers you a choice of the six most popular tools: convert a PDF, Compress it, Edit it, Merge it with others, Split it, or Delete pages. If those aren’t what you’re after, beneath that action button is the full list of tools offered by PDF Candy - including rearrange pages, and image and office doc conversion to PDF. Icons are big, bold, streamlined and uniquely identifiable in design - so you can generally find what you need if you know what you’re looking for.

If there’s a flaw here, it’s the lack of categorization. There’s no clear basis for their default order - it’s not alphabetical, for example. The first 14 are the ‘popular’ tools, and the rest seem to have been ordered by the designer’s preference.

There’s a search field at the top of the page which can help you find a tool quickly, and it’s also possible to ‘favorite’ a tool, which will make it appear first in the ‘popular’ or ‘other’ list after a page refresh.

That strong, simple interface extends once you dive into any of the tools. PDF Candy never leaves you in doubt as to what to do and what to expect.

• Interface & experience: 5/5

PDF Candy: Editing

• As easy as using a word processor

Editing PDF files online is as effortless as every other function in PDF Candy. Key tools run along a left sidebar, and, as with elsewhere, the icons leave you in no doubt what each button does.

Editing text in a PDF file isn’t a million miles away from editing a word processor document. Open up the PDF editor, highlight a word, line, or paragraph, then you’re free to replace it with your own content.

Alternatively, by clicking anywhere in the document, you can begin writing in the text box, before dragging it into position. You’ll also gain a handful of controls over the appearance, but it’s fairly lacking. You can’t even change the typeface, although you have the basics, such as bolding, italicising, resizing, and a choice of 10 colors.

Whiteout is a useful tool for hiding sensitive data from a PDF file - although, once exported, you might be unpleasantly surprised to realise you can still select this hidden text. It’s a great tool when printing out a document, but not when sharing it digitally. It you need proper redaction, where compliance weighs heavy on your mind, we still prefer Foxit PDF Editor.

The included eSign software works very well, offering three options for adding signatures to documents: via text, image upload, or drawing it with your mouse. And you only need to create this once. Your signature will then be saved, to be used across other documents (and you can add more if required).

• Editing: 4/5

PDF Candy: Conversion

• Packs an incredible 34 PDF conversion tools

PDF Candy boasts the ability to convert documents in just one click. And in our experience, the platform delivers on this promise. The only (admittedly optional) exception is when converting images to PDF and vice versa, where you can also select the image quality.

After waiting 15 seconds for the tool to process the document, a rapid-fire conversion takes place. Once converted, you can download or immediately open the document into another tool to make further alterations, such as merging PDFs or compressing PDF files.

But the real draw here is the sheer number of PDF converter options. There are 34 ‘convert to PDF’ tools, including Word to PDF, Excel to PDF, and PowerPoint to PDF. There's even an option for Pages, the Apple format, although this feels somewhat superfluous as converting any file format to PDF has been baked into the Mac since the launch of macOS X, all the way back in 2001. There are also options for converting images and popular eReader formats to PDF.

On the flip side, ‘convert from PDF’ has 17 tools, such as PDF to Word, PDF to JPG, and PDF to Excel. If you find yourself regularly converting to and from PDF, you'll find a lot of utility in PDF Candy.

• Conversion: 5/5

PDF Candy: Extra features

• Loaded with bonus tools you didn't know you need

So, PDF Candy nails down the basics. Here’s a platform that offers everything most PDF users will need to get the job done. But it doesn’t end there.

Beyond editing, converting, and otherwise altering pages, the free online PDF editor also features the ability to encrypt and password-protect files, edit a document’s metadata, and add watermarks to PDF files. And, as expected by this point, everything is equally easy to use.

PDF OCR was startlingly accurate - ‘reading’ text in a PDF and exporting it to a .TXT file. The formatting may not match what’s on the page, but the content itself was precise. Depending on the amount of ‘unreadable’ images you have in the document, wait times will vary.

Also available are Image Candy and Video Candy, the company’s free online image editor and video editor respectively. Like PDF Candy, these editors have a good selection of tools, such as removing backgrounds, watermarking images, and even generating memes, on the image side of things, or changing speed, adding music or even creating a slideshow, with the video editor. Using them is just as easy as its document management suite.

• Extra features: 5/5

PDF Candy: Scorecard

Should I buy?

Buy it if...

Don't buy it if...

Alternatives

Nitro PDF Pro - now there’s a name that packs a powerful punch. The PDF editor is positioned as an essential tool for small businesses and individuals, and includes a mass of must-have features, like PDF conversions, eSignatures, OCR. Ideal, then, for improving workflow efficiencies and productivity within a single tool.

Available for Windows and Mac, there’s also a version of the PDF editor app for iPad, iPhone and iPod Touch. But how does the latest version measure up to the best PDF editor software we've used? We put it to the test. 

Nitro PDF Pro 14: Pricing & plans

• One-time purchase with volume licensing available

There’s been a few changes since the release of version 14 of Nitro PDF Pro, not least of which is its pricing structure. Don’t worry: if you’re not a fan of subscription services (you know you’re in trouble when car manufacturers are starting to get in on the act), and that aversion is driving you to find the best Adobe Acrobat alternatives: this multi-platform PDF editor can still be purchased outright for the one-off fee of $180.

Yes, that’s not cheap, and you have to pay for every device you want to use this software on. Whether you need a PDF editor for Mac or Windows, the price per licence is the same. It's a far cry from the best free PDF editors available, for sure.

However, you now also have the option of subscribing to the service for $11.24 per user, per month. This ends up being roughly $135 for the year for each person.

Whichever path you wish to take, you’re offered a 14-day free trial, no credit card required (although you do need to set up a free account and give Nitro a valid email address, which has been pretty much de rigueur for most online services for a while now). So hop on over to www.gonitro.com, and let’s check it out.

• Pricing: 4/5 

Nitro PDF Pro 14: Interface & experience

• Clean and doesn’t get in the way 

Launch the software, open up an existing PDF, and Nitro PDF Pro’s interface is revealed to you. 

The layout is quite clear and simple: all the tools you need are at the top, in a row of large icons showcasing the main tools, with a toolbar underneath, displaying additional ones (which are grayed out if the selected main tool doesn’t support that feature).

There’s a sidebar on the left hand side, which displays by default thumbnails of all your PDFs’ pages, but you can change that to show other useful information, such as your annotations, or any included attachments, among others.

• Interface & experience: 4/5 

Nitro PDF Pro 14: Tools

• Pretty much everything you need to annotate and alter a PDF 

The purpose of Nitro PDF Pro is to allow you to make alterations to PDF documents, and it comes with all the tools you might expect. 

Take online collaboration, for instance. You have at your disposal many ways to leave notes on pages. There’s a highlight tool which allows you to mark text in a variety of colors. You’ll find four default shades, with the ability to create three custom ones should you so wish. You’re also able to underline, strikethrough, or add a squiggle under any part of the PDF you’re working on.

All of this is most useful, but it can be hard to convey exactly what changes you want to see with a bit of a highlighter and some lines over the text. That’s where the Annotate tools come in.

Here, various text boxes reside, from just a plain box, to a comment, a thought bubble, a note (think of it as a collapsible post-it note), and a few others. More than enough for you to populate a PDF with as many comments as you need in order to convey what you need changed to other team members. 

Editing the content of an existing PDF is also possible, of course, using the ‘Correct Text’ tool. Select a word, a sentence, or multiple paragraphs, and that tool will transform your selection into a changeable text box.

We did encounter an issue with the PDFs we experimented with: turning a section into editable text affected the line spacing, often making the paragraph overlap the following one. We tried with multiple PDFs. We encountered the same problem with each of them.

Although there are many tools available to modify text, like changing its color, italicizing it, changing its alignment, etc, we couldn’t find one that altered the line spacing. There are other competing software that do a better job at preserving the look of a document, like EaseUS PDF Editor.

• Tools: 4/5 

Nitro PDF Pro 14: Document creation

• Start from scratch and convert into other formats 

Altering PDFs is one thing, but like so many others, Nitro PDF Pro lets you create documents from scratch, using all the tools mentioned above, and more besides. This even includes form building, something Adobe Acrobat can struggle to present. This is a useful addition as it allows you to stay within a single app when working on all things PDF.

But people don’t always work within one PDF editor app, and that’s where Nitro’s format conversion comes into its own. 

Like similar PDF editing software - think Foxit PDF Editor or Readdle PDF Expert - Nitro PDF Pro can convert PDFs into other formats, and vice versa.

However, it doesn’t do this via a dedicated ‘Convert’ command. Instead, the process is a lot more intuitive: need to convert Word to PDF? Go to File > Open, locate it, and Nitro will convert it automatically for you as it opens up in the software. 

Nitro PDF Pro is compatible with a wide variety of file formats, including images. When it encounters a file with no selectable text within it, it will offer to initiate the OCR (Optical Character Recognition) process. Select the language the document is in, and Nitro will get to work. We found the results very acceptable, and of course, they are editable.

Should you need to convert a PDF into a different format, just go to File > Export. You have a few options at your disposal, such as Microsoft Office files - Nitro is a easily one of the best PDF to Excel converters and PDF to PowerPoint converters on the market. There’s also RTF, TXT, a handful of image formats, and PDF/A - which is used for archival purposes.

This is not all you can do with Nitro PDF Pro of course: there are other features, which include being able to merge PDFs together from emails to text files to spreadsheets, condensing them into a single, searchable PDF), digitally eSign documents, and create tables of content.

• Document creation: 4/5 

Nitro PDF Pro 14: Scorecard

Should I buy Nitro PDF Pro 14?

Buy it if...

You need a feature-rich PDF editor
Nitro PDF Pro offers you many tools you would need to edit, annotate or even create a PDF document from scratch. You can bring in documents straight from your scanner, and its OCR capabilities are excellent. If you or your business often need to alter and annotate PDF documents, it might be worth downloading the free trial version and check it out. 

Don't buy it if...

You're a casual user or your needs are simple
If your needs are simpler, and you only want to browse through a PDF, then Nitro PDF Pro risks being overkill. It might also not be ideal with you like to edit the content of a PDF without altering its formatting, especially the line spacing. 

Alternatives

For additional PDF editing software, we reviewed the best Adobe Acrobat alternatives you can download right now. 

Editing PDFs is something you can’t easily do - most free tools just let you read the content and search for keywords. There are some services that broaden the capabilities of what you can achieve with no down payment required, and I Love PDF is one such option.  But is it still one of the best free PDF editors out there? We put it to the test. 

I Love PDF: Pricing

• A free service with added functionality for those who subscribe 

Your first point of call is I Love PDF’s website. From there you get access to its 26 online tools, displayed in a grid-like pattern, from merging PDFs, to converting to and from Microsoft Office documents, to signing and redacting files, and more besides.

You’ll find login and signup options top right of the interface, but you don’t actually need to register to start using I Love PDF.

Although the service is free, there is a subscription option of $4 / £4 per month (billed annually at $48 / £48). You’ll find that there are some restrictions with the free service compared to the subscription one, like batch processing for instance, forcing you to convert files one at a time if you’d rather not pay. 

If your needs are modest, you’ll find the free service more than sufficient. However, the option to expand your capabilities, even downloading software so you can work offline, on a PC, Mac, Android or iOS device, enable OCR software functionality, remove adverts, and gain access to customer support, can prove valuable to those who would rather subscribe. 

You can check out I Love PDF by clicking here.

• Pricing: 4/5

I Love PDF: Interface and experience

•  The interface is simple to understand and consistent throughout 

 Using I Love PDF’s available tools is pretty straightforward: you click on an icon, and add the file(s) you need to work on - whether stored on your computer or through either the Google Drive or Dropbox online storage services.

What happens next depends on your chosen tool of course: ‘Split’ for instance will display large thumbnails of the PDF’s pages on the left of the interface. You’ll find contextual options in the sidebar to the right. In this case you either get to select a range of pages, at which point I Love PDF will cut the document for you, or, more interestingly, you get to set multiple ‘Ranges’. This is where you can select any page - contiguous or not - to combine them into a separate document, or save them as individual pages.

You’ll find all tools work in that way: large icons, easy-to-understand features, and thumbnails big enough to just about make out which page you need to keep and which to discard.

Any option that isn’t available to the free service will have a yellow ‘Premium’ label next to it, making it easy to see what’s off limits.

To get out of a selected tool and return to the main menu, either select a new one from the menu bar at the top of the page, or click on the large ‘I Love PDF’ title, top left.

• Interface & experience: 5/5

I Love PDF: Tools

• Some tools are implemented in a very clever way 

Out of the usual suspects for a service of this type, there were a few implementations that we quite liked.

For instance, ‘Sign PDF’. The eSign software allows you to add a signature somewhere on a PDF page. You’re given a few options on how to do this - type your name using a script font, use your laptop’s trackpad to create a digital signature, or, and this is the part we liked, choose ‘Draw from your mobile device’. 

When you select that feature, a QR code appears. Use your phone’s camera to hover over it to reveal a URL. This takes you to a special page where you can draw your signature straight on your mobile device. Once you’re done, tap on ‘Apply’, and that squiggle will be sent back to the page you’re working on on your computer, ready to use.

This is a great blending of technologies, which works seamlessly.

This feature is also used with the ‘Scan to PDF’ tool. You might find that your phone already has the capability of scanning documents with its camera, but here, once the document is scanned, it is sent right back to your I Love PDF page on your computer, ready for you to continue working from there. It’s a great feature which we enjoyed using very much.

Another one we appreciated, although somewhat lacking the wow factor of the previous one, is ‘Page Numbers’. If you need to add them to a PDF, this is a fantastic and quick way to do so: load the PDF, and you’ll be presented with a series of thumbnails for each page. Choose where the number will be displayed on the pages, and you’re done.

Yes there are other options, such as changing the number of the first page to a value other than 1, selecting how the number is displayed, its font, style, and other options, and so on. All this is an added bonus, but if you need to number the pages of a PDF document quickly and easily, this is an ideal tool.

• Tools: 5/5

I Love PDF: PDF editing

• From adding new text boxes, to editing a PDF’s existing content, I Love PDF can do it all

I Love PDF’s ‘Edit PDF’ tool comes in two flavours: Annotate, and Edit. Annotate is part of the tools available for free, and lets you add new text boxes, images, shapes, and even draw on the PDF document you’ve uploaded. It’s a great way to make notes, but not entirely ideal if you wanted to use the service to alter the original content, like fixing a typo for instance. 

This is where ‘Edit’ comes in. Now as you can see from its yellow premium label, this one’s only available to paying customers, but I Love PDF does let you explore its features. When a PDF is created it segregates paragraphs, images, and anything else into boxes. I Love PDF lets you manipulate these, resize them, move them around and delete them. You’re even able to alter the very words that were written, and once done, download the modified document back to your computer (you definitely have to be subscribed for that last part).

For more advanced editing, we reviewed the best PDF editors and best Adobe Acrobat alternatives.

• PDF editing: 4/5

I Love PDF: Scorecard

Should I try?

Try it if...

You want to see why we rated it as one of the best free PDF readers out there. I Love PDF's interface is easy to navigate, and the capabilities on offer are often only available to paying customers with competing services. 

There is a lot of clicking around though to get from one tool to another, but the proof’s in the pudding: the tools are good, they are easy to use, and you get your modified PDF in seconds. 

Don't try it if...

You don’t like the concept of working in your browser, nor of paying a subscription to get the software you can download to your computer, and would rather just use what’s available for free elsewhere.

Alternatives

EaseUS provides a vast array of tools for both Macs and PCs from backups and data recovery to multimedia capabilities like its video editor and screen recorder. Each tool to roll out has reviewed exceptionally well on TechRadar Pro, thanks to exceptional utility and a relaxed, intuitive user experience. But how does the firm’s  fare compared to the best PDF editor software available for download? We re-reviewed the latest version to find out. 

EaseUS PDF Editor: Pricing and plans

• Free but limited, monthly subscriptions, and one-off lifetime purchase available

EaseUS PDF editor offers plenty to to work with, and this obviously comes at a price. But there are actually a few options available to you on that front.

You could choose to pay nothing, but you’ll only gain access to some basic tools in what might otherwise be one of the best free PDF editors, and your exported files will be watermarked. Still it’s a great way to get a feel of the software and see if it’s right for you.

Then, you’ve got a couple of subscription options: pay monthly ($20) or yearly ($50). Both unlock all features, including unlimited file conversion, 24/7 technical support, free upgrades (as long as you keep on paying), and no watermark. 

It’s obvious that paying for a year is a lot cheaper, but if you plan on using this PDF editing software regularly for the foreseeable future, then the one-off price of $80 for the ‘Lifetime’ option is incredibly attractive. It’s cheaper than 2 years on subscription (4 months if you pay monthly), and the impressive cherry on top is: you also get free upgrades for life. What’s not to like?

You can check out EaseUS by clicking here.

• Score: 4/5

EaseUS PDF Editor: Getting started

• Simple interface for easily navigating to editing features 

Launch the PDF editor app for the first time and you’ll be graced with a very sparse interface. Most of it is empty, save for a row of icons offering you various options at the top, along with a sidebar on the right. Click on the ‘Tools’ button there to have the currently empty homepage replaced with rows upon rows of icons showcasing the app’s multiple functionalities.

As it stands, the interface does exactly what you expect it to do: offer you what you need, when you need it, while getting out of the way as you work on your document.

Open an existing PDF and you’ll be brought instantly into the ‘Read’ mode, but check the top of the interface to activate any functionality you’re after, from ‘Comment’, ‘Edit’, ‘Protect’, ‘Convert’, and more. Click on any of them for a secondary menu to appear just beneath the first, giving you all the toolset for your selected action.

Take ‘Edit’ mode, for instance: click on any paragraph for it to be entirely selected. This bounding box mechanism works for any object currently on the page. You’re able to resize these boxes, move them around, and even delete them. With an entire paragraph selected by default, it’s incredibly easy to make changes to a PDF’s existing text. When you consider that many of the competition restrict your editing to a line by line basis, EaseUS PDF’s approach is much more flexible and user friendly.

You can insert and modify links into the body of your text, and even include headers and footers (a great place to add page numbers for instance). All in all, we found EaseUS PDF Editor’s interface to be surprisingly competent.

• Score: 4/5

EaseUS PDF Editor: Editing

• Good selection of tools to convert formats or turn images into editable text 

Editing PDFs might be this software’s bread and butter, but you can do so much more with it. For one thing, you’re able to convert PDFs to Excel, PDF to Word, and PDF to PowerPoint. There are even options to convert various image formats.

In the ‘Protect’ section, you’ll find various options to secure your PDF document, such as setting up a password for it, or redacting information you’d rather not divulge, but this is also where you can set up signatures, making it easy to fill in forms and sign documents digitally.

One tool we quite liked is its OCR functionality (we reviewed the best OCR software before), although we were disappointed to see that in order for it to work, you still need to convert an image to a PDF. It’s not a difficult process and EaseUS PDF Editor does allow you to convert images, like JPG or PNG to PDF, but it feels like a totally unnecessary step.

Still, once that’s done, you’ll be offered a long list of languages to choose from (English is selected by default in our version), along with a chosen format to save the output as (Word is your default option, but you can also choose TXT, Excel, Powerpoint, and PDF). Click on ‘Recognise’ and EaseUS PDF will get to work. The process doesn’t take too long - but that would obviously depend on the length of the document and your computer’s processing power.

• Score: 5/5

EaseUS PDF Editor: Tools

• Need to trim a PDF? Expect plenty of the usual tools for that 

You’ll also find the usual features here that you typically see in PDF editing software, such as PDF merger tools to combine multiple documents into one, or split a PDF, turning it into several different ones. Deleting a page is also a handful of clicks away. This is actually pretty standard fare. 

 One of these we enjoyed using was the crop feature, which was very well implemented. Click on the ‘Page’ menu, and select ‘Crop’ from the available list of tools. You then click and drag on the document to create a marquee selection. If you’d rather type in values, you have ‘Top’, ‘Bottom’, ‘Left’ and ‘Right’ fields for that. You also have options to crop only the selected page, a range of pages, or the whole document. Click on the ‘Crop’ button, and you’re done. This is a great way to remove unwanted sidebars for instance, letting you focus on, and keep just the essentials. 

• Score: 5/5

EaseUS PDF Editor: Note-taking

• Various tools for when you need to work with others on a particular document 

Online collaboration is important when working with a team, and EaseUS PDF Editor has you covered on that front, by allowing you to annotate your PDFs. 

It’s also easy to add comments, including boxes, arrows and lines to bring attention to a particular section of the document. You’re even able to send a copy of the PDF to other team members using email. 

• Score: 4/5

EaseUS PDF editor scorecard

Should I Buy?

Buy it if...

Don't buy it if...

Also consider...

For more PDF apps, we reviewed the best Adobe Acrobat alternatives you can get right now. 

pdfFiller is designed to help businesses deal with PDFs documents, from the basics such as splitting or merging files, to converting files to and from that format, editing PDFs, signing them, password protecting them, and more.

pdfFiller is made by airSlate Inc, an American software company. airSlate maintains its headquarters in the city of Brookline, Massachusetts. This service is part of the airSlate Business Cloud, a software suite for enterprises to create and manage documents. We put the latest version to the test, to see how it compares to the best PDF editor software out there. 

pdfFiller: Plans and pricing

• Various options are open to you, all dependent on price, and the more you pay, the more features you get. No free plan though, but a free 30-day trial should help mitigate that

Since pdfFiller is an online service, you get to access its wares via a subscription. There are no free tiers available, but any plan you choose comes with a free 30-day trial, which should give you enough time to kick her tires and see how she runs.

For $8 a month (on a yearly contract), or $20 on a month-by-month basis, ‘Basic’ gives you, well, the basics: you can edit documents, such as erasing sections, highlighting others, merging files, and converting PDFs to Word; you’re able to access your documents online, or through a desktop app (for Mac and Windows), and have the support staff get back to you in a day.

‘Plus’ take it up a notch for $12 a month for a year, or $30 each month. Its additional features include being able to create templates, insert fillable fields, password protect documents, get access to an iOS and Android app, and have customer support get back to you within 30 minutes.

And finally there’s ‘Premium’ which adds the ability to sign docs and get others to sign them as well, offers a library of US legal forms, manage users and permissions, collect payments, set up custom branding, and gets you instant support, all for $15 a month for a year, or $40 each month.

As mentioned above you can explore these features without giving the company your payment details, but rest assured no money will be taken for the first 30 days.

You can check out pdfFiller from airSlate by clicking here.

• Score: 4/5

pdfFiller: Interface

• A busy, yet easy to navigate interface that makes it easy for you to upload your documents, templates and contacts, and have access to them wherever you are, whether through a web browser, a desktop app or through your iPhone or Android device (as long as you’ve chosen the plan that includes those, of course)

Having logged in, you’ll be able to access pdfFiller either online, or by downloading an app. The concept is pretty much the same, as whichever option you use, your documents will be uploaded to pdfFiller’s servers, enabling you to work on them wherever you have access to a computer or web browser.

Upload a document and you’ll be able to interact with it within seconds. In that respect it makes for a great and easy interface: no matter where you are, as long as your documents are with pdfFiller, you’ll be able to get access to them, online or via a dedicated app.

The sidebar on the left lets you see your documents, templates, contacts and more, while the rest of the interface is dedicated to whichever menu you’ve selected in the sidebar. It’s all pretty simple and straightforward. 

You’re able to import your contacts from Google or add them manually, and your documents can be uploaded to pdfFiller as mentioned above, or accessed from one of four online storage solutions: Dropbox, Google Drive, Box, or OneDrive. It shouldn’t take you any time at all to understand your way around.

• Score: 4/5

pdfFiller: Tools

• All the tools are available in one place, which is great for efficiency and eases workflow. They’re all easy to use, and do their job as expected. A great interface, with good, powerful tools

What we really appreciated is the fact that once you’ve opened a document, you can do pretty much everything you need to directly from there. When you consider the fact that many of pdfFiller’s competitors require you to access specific tools one at a time, having to close the document first, and reopen it in that new tool to continue working, being able to do it all in one go sure feels like a breath of fresh air. It feels like the interface is working for you, rather than you having to work against it.

All the tools you’re looking for are there: you can re-order pages, and delete others straight from the thumbnail sidebar on the left. Should you need additional options, select ‘more’ from any of these thumbnails to reveal the ‘rearrange pages’ popup window from which you can also add and duplicate pages, along with what you could already do in the sidebar.

The rest of the tools can all be found at the top of the page, in a row. You can add text boxes, images, ticks and crosses, draw on the page, and more. It’s all very simple: select the tool, and apply it wherever you wish.

And as with true premium PDF services, you’re able to alter a PDF’s existing content, one line as a time. It’s not ideal as we’d prefer services that allow you to select entire paragraphs instead, but it works fine to change the odd word, or fix a typo here and there. Problems can occur should your alterations need to be more extensive.

Signatures are a simple matter of selecting the ‘sign’ tool, and placing it wherever it needs to be on the page. You can even resize it at will.

When it comes to redaction, you have an ‘Erase’ and a ‘Blackout’ tool. They both do the same thing: block out a portion of the text, either in white or black, preventing a reader from seeing those sections, and more importantly, preventing them from selecting the text that is now redacted.

Even better, your modifications are saved automatically which means that you can make changes on one device, and when you check on the other, those alterations are already reflected there. It makes for a seamless experience.

• Score: 4.5/5

Should I buy pdfFiller?

For more PDF recommendations, we tested the best Adobe Acrobat alternatives.

The popularity of the PDF format has resulted in lots of different applications for PDF documents, and as a result, a wide variety of tools to work on them. Some of the best PDF editors are very simple, offering little more than basic conversion features and perhaps some highlighting and other minor edits. Others are much more powerful, rivaling office suites in their editing capabilities. Finding a good PDF editor starts with identifying your own needs.

PDFelement lies somewhere in the middle between the two ends of the spectrum. While it’s not as powerful as some of the leading applications on this market, it’s not just a simple PDF editor either. It comes with various features that can be useful to a wide range of users, and can allow you to do some interesting things with your documents. However, it does suffer from having a higher price than most other tools in its class.

We reviewed the latest version of the software to see how it compares in a competitive field.

PDFElement: Pricing & plans

Wondershare PDFElement offers a 7-day free trial that provides access to the application’s features for a limited time, or for a limited number of uses (depending on the tool being selected). Beyond that, there are premium subscription plans which can be paid either for one or two years, as well as a perpetual licence option.

The cost of these subscriptions or licences depends on whether you need to invest in a cross-platform version, just require its use on a single one (namely, Windows, Macs, iOS or Android), and whether you’re an individual, a business, or in education. To give you a rough idea, a cross platform individual plan would cost you $90 for a year, $120 for two, or $140 for a perpetual licence. For alternatives, we tested the best free PDF editors.

PDFElement: Features

PDFelement offers a variety of features for editing documents. Standard markup features are available – users can change the font family and size of text, make it bold/underlined, highlight parts of the document, and even make various structural changes. The tool can also create PDFs from other file formats. Combined with its advanced batch operation support, this makes it a good choice for those who regularly need to convert large volumes of files and want a convenient and quick solution for that.

Documents can also be split into separate ones, protected with a password, and the application can automatically extract data from documents that have been scanned and run through its OCR engine. On that note, PDFelement does stand out with a reliable and robust OCR system that tends to work better than most of the competing solutions on the market. 

PDFElement: Interface & experience

The application resembles most modern office suites in its interface, and everything is exactly where you would expect to find it. Tools are sorted in several main tabs, with individual buttons providing access to specific features. Users who are familiar with document editing on a computer should have no problem navigating the menus of PDFelement, including those who want to do more advanced edits.

The only complaint we have in this regard is that the interface can occasionally seem a bit big, especially on smaller screens. There aren’t many options for configuring the application’s appearance, and if you don’t enjoy its style of using large buttons for everything, you might be a bit displeased. Other than that, there aren’t any major issues that stand out with the interface and presentation of PDFelement.

PDFElement: AI tools

A new addition to PDFElement is, you’ve guessed it, AI. AI is everywhere - we’ve even been testing out the best AI tools - so why not here, right? And there’s a lot you can do with AI within PDFElement. You can use it to discuss the content of your document with it, translate it, check the grammar, or summarise it, among others. Most of these features have been available elsewhere, such as Google’s services for instance, but here you can do it all without having to leave the interface, which can and is a great time saver.

There is a major drawback: these AI features aren’t included in the fee you pay Wondershare to use the application: every time you use an AI feature, you’ll spend a certain number of tokens to do so - the more complex the function, the more tokens you’ll need.

The free trial gives you 25 for ‘Content Processing’. All the other paid options give you 100. After that, you’ll need yet another subscription to get more: $4 a month (ie, $48 a year) for a million additional ones each month. If these features felt truly unique and revolutionary, it might be worth it for some, but as it stands, this almost feels like price gouging, seriously jacking up the cost of the app to $138 or $216 for the one or two-year subscription respectively. Thankfully you can keep using PDFElement without touching AI, no matter how much Wondershare tries to entice you through their promotional ads, and with prominent sections in the interface.

PDFElement: Support

Wondershare is a well-known name in the field of small tools and utilities, and one of the features the company stands out with is the quality of their customer support. You can expect issues to get resolved quickly and with a knowledgeable attitude, and that’s if you even need to contact their support in the first place. Many of your questions will likely already be answered in the knowledge base, so take a look around to see if your issue is addressed.

PDFElement: Final verdict

This is a well-designed PDF editor with various features that should keep most people happy, including some advanced users. While the application does lack certain features that are standard in other editors, it doesn’t leave anything critical to be desired. For the most part, it’s a more than adequate application with enough to satisfy the average user. If you’re looking for a long-term subscription though, you might want to explore other options, particularly editors that are offered for a one-time purchase as opposed to a recurring annual subscription. For a long enough period of time, PDFelement can actually get quite expensive, especially if you’re using the Pro version.

Should I buy Wondershare PDFElement?

For more top PDF tools, we reviewed the best Adobe Acrobat alternatives.

There’s a good variety of PDF creator and editor tools out there, making it important to compare the market carefully before choosing something for the long run. Some premium tools come with lots of bells and whistles that can help you get the most out of your editing work, streamline and even automate common processes, and more. On the other hand, some tools are very simple and do just one or two jobs, but they do them well.

PDF24 Creator falls somewhere in the middle. While it doesn’t have all the fancy features of some of the best PDF editors out there, it’s also surprisingly feature-rich for a program, making it one of the best Adobe Acrobat alternatives out there. 

The developers have obviously put a lot of effort into making their product as accessible as possible, as PDF24 Creator is one of the lightest editors on the market right now. It can easily run on weak computers, which, combined with its free price, makes it great for a wide range of Windows users. Mac and Linux owners will have to look elsewhere, like online: you can forgo the ‘Creator’ software, as all tools are available online. The drawback here is having to upload your files, relying on a third party server, and always needing an Internet connection to do your work.

We took a look at the latest version of the software to see how it compares against the best free PDF editors you can download right now.

PDF24 Creator: Pricing & plans

PDF24 is completely free. The company doesn’t offer any premium options at all, and there is just one single download option for the main application, no different versions. It also doesn’t install any additional software on your computer, as is common with other free applications on the market right now. The program can be used for all purposes without having to explicitly get a license from the developers, which is great for those who want to try it out in a commercial production environment.

PDF24 Creator: Features

PDF24 Creator comes with a good number of features, and it allows users to do all sorts of basic and even more advanced editing with ease. You can create a new PDF, merge existing ones, compress a PDF, convert a PDF to other formats, extract specific pages into a separate document (or otherwise split the document in different parts), optimize a PDF for different environments like the web, and extract different media from a document.

You can also apply OCR to a PDF, allowing you to convert scanned images to text that can be freely copied and edited further. This is a useful feature when working in an office setting, where you might frequently have to scan incoming documents and make slight adjustments to them as part of the processing pipeline.

Some nice additional features include the ability to spice up your documents with an overlay and page numbers, compare the contexts of different PDFs, and protect your documents against further editing.

PDF24 Creator: Interface & experience

The interface of PDF24 is clean and intuitive, and a bit minimalistic in places. The application is designed around speed of use, and all important features are right where you would expect to find them. There are lots of different features packed in this package, so it can take some time to explore them all and figure out which ones you actually need in your work.

Something that might annoy some users is that the application offers most of its features in a modular manner, with completely separate interfaces isolated from one another. When you first start PDF24, you’ll be presented with a grid of editing options. Clicking on one will take you to the appropriate interface. This can make it a bit clumsy to go through lots of PDFs in sequence, but once you get used to the interface, it should be very easy to find your way around it.

As PDF24 Creator is designed to be as compatible as possible, you’ll find two versions available, depending on which Windows OS you’re running: as of this writing, it’s version 9.9 for Windows 7 and 8, and version 11.19 for 10 and 11.

Support

The one downside of being a free application is that you shouldn’t expect much in the way of customer support. The developers have gone through a lot of effort compiling a help database in both English and German, that covers a large variety of topics, but if you get stuck and need actual human assistance, it can take a while to get a response. They do have contact options and encourage their users to make use of them, but you shouldn’t expect a speedy reply or any kind of priority treatment.

PDF24 Creator: Final verdict

PDF24 Creator gets the job done, and it does so with minimal hassle. The application works fast, and is reliable enough to be your main PDF editor if you need to do this kind of work on a daily basis. It’s also perfect for making small occasional edits here and there. If you want a professional PDF editor with lots of advanced features, there are better options out there. But in this corner of the market, PDF24 is uncontested, and easily your best bet.

Need to convert more files? Check out the best PDF to Excel converters, best Excel to PDF converters and the best PDF to Word converters