Affinity Publisher Reviews

A good alternative to indesign

Pros:

Affinity publisher is an easy-to-use page-layout program. The interface is simple and intuitive, and the functionalities on offer are designed to meet all page layout production needs.

Cons:

Affinity publisher has two main drawbacks similar to those of other Affinity software. Its limited performance on a Windows environment and, of course, its dependence on other Affinity software.Publisher has been developed so that its full potential can be unlocked with the use of Designer and Photo.

Excellent Alternative to Adobe for Professional Publishing

Comments: Overall, Affinity Publisher has been an invaluable tool in my business, allowing me to create and sell customizable templates for my clients on Etsy. Highly recommended for anyone looking for a professional-grade publishing software without the hefty price tag.

Pros:

I’ve been using Affinity Publisher for my genealogy and family history business, and it has been a game-changer. It’s a highly affordable alternative to Adobe InDesign with powerful layout and design tools that are perfect for creating professional-quality publications. The interface feels familiar, especially if you’re coming from Adobe, but it's streamlined and much easier to navigate. One standout feature is the ability to switch seamlessly between Affinity's suite of products (Designer and Photo), making it a breeze to handle complex projects without exporting files back and forth. I also appreciate the one-time payment model, which saves a lot compared to monthly subscription fees.

Cons:

A couple of areas for improvement: it could use a few more advanced typographic features, and exporting options aren’t as extensive as Adobe's. However, it’s constantly updated, and Serif (the developer) listens closely to customer feedback.

Alternative to other publiishing softwares

Pros:

Used it as an alternative to adobe products. worked fine, especially if you know what you are doing.

Cons:

Photo editing needs some expertise for sure. After the trial we decided the price point is not worth it as we could also use the original for around the same price.

Best Adobe InDesign Alternative!

Comments: While not the industry standard, if you're an indie publisher, Affinity Publisher is the way to go. It has all the basic tools you need and will run smoother than InDesign. I value speed over niche advanced tools, so the ability to switch between Affinity programs and the less taxing processing requirements has led to me to switch over from InDesign. And Affinity's price tag is a great bonus too.

Pros:

Affinity Publisher is easily the best alternative to InDesign out there. It has just about all the features for an affordable one time payment. The program runs smoothly with good UI and has all the features I need on a regular basis. It also has the ability to switch between Affinity programs quickly and easily which is a huge plus.

Cons:

It's only missing one or two very niche tools like form fillable PDFs. That being said, Publisher beats our InDesign for making mockups.

An easy to use and intuitive publishing tool.

Comments: Picking up Affinity Publisher has been relatively easy if you have used any publishing program previously. There are a few quirks to work around, but that is normal with any new program. But I found plenty of advice and workarounds on the net to help me achieve what I was looking for.

Pros:

After many years of using QuarkXPress, Publisher and Indesign, this was a natural fit into my workflow and easy to learn.

Cons:

It doesnt have all the featires of the big names, but I am assuming that this will come with time. After all, neither did QuarkXPress, Publisher or Indesign in the early days. It would be nice to have auto updates on images and graphics that you import rather than having to re import them again if you do changes outside the program.

Perfect choice for books and magazines design

Comments: I use this to design books and, as I am also the artist, I can switch easily and draw something related to the story and then jump back to my book and keep working.
This allows me to offer more services to my clients who are always consuming services on-demand, and also allows me to create a product on record time.

Pros:

Affinity Publisher allows you to create a whole set of text styles you can switch from master to master. So, on a single file you can have all different sections of a Magazine and all the different styles and you don't need to work them separately. If you have a one-man-army designer who does it all, this is the best tool as you can switch easily between Photo editing, to vector editing and back to document editing on a mouse-click. You also have the flexibility of a text processor like Word where you can create the table of contents, for example, but you can now add different styles to this so you can have an attractive table of contents. If you buy a set of brushes for Photo or Designer, you have them available also here.

Cons:

Basically nothing. But this isn't a software meant to be used alone without it's companions Photo and Designer.

Proffesional DTP solution on the market, with the best Price-Value ratio

Comments: After a many years of Adobe Indesign QuarkXpress using, we switch to Affinity Suite. Our main products are magazines and catalogues, and other predominantly graphical creations. And we are absolutely happy with our Affinity solution for now. Excellent merge of DTP, photo and vector is came to you with full Affinity suite: Affinit Publisher + Affinity Photo + Affinity Designer. One must have trio.

Pros:

It is fast - build on game engine in core. You can work with one page document or hundreds of pages with a lot of images and different text styles, but speed will never drop down. It is stabile software and with excellent colour reproduction.

Cons:

Affinity Publisher lack of some usefull but not mandatory features. There are no classical character and paragraph styles, but there are no combined styles like QuarkXpress have. The are no good indexing and footnote/endnote manipulation.

Affinity Publisher for the win!

Comments: The overall experience is amazing as it gave me all of the necessary tools for success as well as the right tutorials to transition from the Creative Cloud accordingly.

Pros:

I love the usability and the inexpensive nature of the product as it gives me all the right things for cheaper than adobe.

Cons:

I kinda wish for a deeper integration with pixabay and pexels with it staying up to date to the latest materials to gather more materials from inside of the application without having to venture out for it.

Affinity Publisher for the win! 🏆

Comments: Awesome software! The Affinity series wins!

Pros:

Affinity Publisher gives us a platform that will cross connect between iPad and MacOS + easy connectivity to windows based users. Extremely powerful, yet easy to learn.

Cons:

Affinity Publisher could use some functions that allow import of a larger format from other platforms.

I learned Affinity to better understand my graphic designer

Pros:

Once you become familiar with the tools provided, Affinity Publisher offers an abundance of options for editing text in any document. As someone who isn't a designer and doesn't create content from scratch, this cost-effective tool has been incredibly useful for me. It enables me to open documents from my graphic designer without the need to subscribe to Adobe or other expensive software. This is particularly advantageous for small entrepreneurs like myself who work closely with freelancers. I can easily make minor adjustments to the documents directly, saving valuable time that would otherwise be spent explaining these changes to the designer.

Cons:

Affinity Publisher is indeed a professional software that requires some effort and understanding to become familiar with its features. I can relate to the experience of accidentally clicking on certain elements and then spending a considerable amount of time figuring out how to undo those actions. It can be particularly challenging when certain tools or options are hidden, leading to a search for solutions online.

An indispensable all-in-one design shop

Comments: Streamlined and pleasant to use even for communication professionals (as opposed to a creative designers)

Pros:

It allows my team to quickly produce both digital and print creative, including company magazine, has a clear no-nonsense interface, is tightly integrated with Affinity Designer and Photo, allowing to use both programs without having to switch to another app window, and is much more affordable than alternatives

Cons:

My positive review is based on Affinity Publisher v1. We have already purchased a business version of v2 suite but have not been able to activate it so far due to a software glitch.

An Affordable Publishing Software

Comments: Affinity Publisher makes creating publications easy! I enjoy how user-friendly and easy to use Affinity Publisher is in comparison to other publishing software on the market.

Pros:

Affinity Publisher is an excellent and affordable publishing software with a one-time payment of $69.99. This software does not require you to have a subscription to use it. It is also very user-friendly with lots of design support, pantone support, and other familiar creative tools. You can preview your whole project in the toolbar on the left hand side, viewing every page at once. It makes publishing your projects a breeze.

Cons:

There is a bit of a learning curve with setting up each project. Even if you are familiar with other publishing software, watching a tutorial or two online is necessary to get the most out of this product.

A amazing alternative to its very expensive counterpart

Pros:

I like how intuitive to use AP is. Contrary to Adobe Indesign it's easy to get around without a proper background in graphic design. It offers almost as many tools for a fraction of the price. I also greatly appreciate the opportunity to buy it once and be done, contrary to the ongoing trend of subscribe-only softwares forcing you to pay them for eternity.

Cons:

I like it very much and I've never been displeased with it.

Yet another amazing product from Affinity

Pros:

The integration of Affinity Designer and Affinity Photo is just superb. It provides a 3-in-1-functionality for the whole program and makes the suite just perfect.

Cons:

Export for inDesign-Files, which is the industry standard is sadly still missing. Other than that, i am not missing any Features for my use

Great and inexpensive solution to design my photography books

Comments: Great overall experience! I found it easy to get started and design my own books!

Pros:

I cannot afford Adobe anymore so switched to Affinity Photo, Designer and Publisher. I make my own photography books with it and find it very easy to use. It works really well with Affinity Photo so designing a simple book seems easy! For more complicated projects loads of tutorials are available.

Cons:

Haven't found any problems yet. I might found some as I work on more complicated book designs.

Gotta Get Them All, Part Three

Comments: As a self-published writer, I need a tool that will help me create the best editions of paperback or hardcover books that I can, and I refuse to pay an expensive monthly subscription for that privilege, especially if I’m designing these interiors only when I’m ready to print, which can be as infrequent as two or three times a year. Do I want to spend $600 a year to design the interiors of two books (and maybe the odd pamphlet) a year, or do I want to spend $50 once for the same ability? (Actually, I bought it during the 50% off sale, so I paid only $25 for it.) Maybe Adobe InDesign is better. Maybe I don’t care. Maybe Affinity Publisher does exactly what I need it to do without it throwing a bunch of stuff at me that will ultimately confuse me. That professional-looking paperback novel sitting on my bookshelf three feet to my left tells me that Affinity Publisher is just right. Those fancy PDFs I’d like to give as subscriber bonuses to my new and future readers also benefit from Publisher being cheaper than Adobe InDesign and better at formatting than Microsoft Word. I think anyone who cares about the quality of printed material needs to add this one to his or her toolbox, especially if they’re ready to toss out the subscription model from their budgets.

Pros:

The master pages feature is the highlight of this app, in my opinion, as it creates templates based on ODD pages, EVEN pages, FIRST pages, various conditions, and considers not just text layouts but also image layouts. Need a bottom right page number on “recto” pages? Done. Bottom left on “verso” pages? Got it. Need that first page of the chapter to have no headers or footers? No problem. Every odd page to have a bleed graphic behind the text, or wrapping around it? Sure. Whatever the layout need, Affinity Publisher can do it (probably) easily and repetitively with the master page feature. The fact that Publisher accounts for several dozen page sizes and layouts makes it even more versatile. Who needs MS Word for “design”? Of course, it doesn’t benefit just novelists or book designers. The layout features work well for magazine designers, too. Heck, Affinity posted a video a year ago of its product specialist designing a branded restaurant menu. It can do just about anything you need a print designer to do. And that’s not even getting into the weeds about its “Studio Link” feature. Thanks to that feature, users can update book or magazine photos directly in Photo or Designer without having to import or export out of Publisher. Not even Adobe does that with its tools (so I hear)!

Cons:

Barring the fact that I can never remember all the hotkeys (I’d have to remove the cut-out hotkey sheet from the back of my Affinity Publisher Workbook to remember them all, and I’m not going to deface my book that way!—even if it’s designed for that purpose), the biggest “con” I have with Publisher is with the limitations it has with font design. Specifically, drop cap layout with margins can be improved, as well as the ability to combine bold and italics to form special case typographical designs. That said, this probably isn’t a fair con, since Affinity Publisher (and all three Affinity apps, for that matter) respects each fonts’ native design, and most of them aren’t designed with bold italic versions. But it would be nice to have the option to force a design style that merges bold and italics together, just in case. It’s fine, though. I’m really only annoyed with my margin limitations. The page design features more than make up for any con.

Exception Replacement for similar Adobe software.

Comments: The devs are great about helping with anything at all! They also promote addons (created by other users/contributors) at reasonable prices. So, if we need to add new brushes (for example) there are a lot to choose from. I've primarily used Adobe and GIMP before finding Affinity. I still use GIMP for quick or online graphics. But for Print I always use Affinity.

Pros:

Being a small office (Just myself) it was increasingly a concern that I was paying a monthly subscription fee and some months it wasn't worth the time at all. With Affinity I can work daily or skip a month and I've already paid for the software.

Cons:

The only inconvenience, is that Affinity software is separated. Publisher (is great for anything, especially Hard Print Quality, Pre-Flight tests, and even online publishing). But, because they are separate products most of us will need to buy all three (Photo, Publisher, and Designer). That said, it is still worth the value compared to the alternatives available.

One-Time Payment for Professional Publishing Capabilities

Comments: My overall experience with Affinity Publisher is excellent. I'm very happy with the software and with the video tutorials which ensure that I continue improving my abilities as I explore the various program features. If you're looking for sophisticated publishing and layout software without a monthly subscription, I highly recommend taking a look at Affinity Publisher. It's good for simple projects but also has the power behind it to allow you to work on complex projects with heavy image loads and cutting-edge designs.

Pros:

There's much to like about Affinity Publisher. For one thing, it's a one-time payment, and an inexpensive purchase at that. During the COVID lockdowns they even halved the price which was a classy thing to do and helpful for many people. The price is now back up at around $55 at the time of writing which, when compared to the cost of an ongoing subscription for InDesign, is a complete steal. But the pricing wouldn't be enough, on its own, to make me love this product. What I really love is that it's professional-level publishing software with excellent accompanying tutorials and enormously flexibility. I can create everything from simple flyers to complex magazines and brochures and I don't feel that I'm compromising on style or formatting in the least. It's not complicated to figure out, and the ability to use master pages makes everything much faster and easier. It's more complex than Word in terms of output, but definitely not harder to learn. There are two other programs in the Affinity stable - Affinity Photo and Affinity Designer. Both work seamlessly with Affinity Publisher which is just a joy and a huge stress reducer - especially when I'm working to a deadline and I need everything to go without a hitch.

Cons:

There aren't too many cons to Affinity Publisher. I do have a minor gripe about the Affinity Publisher book which looks really interesting but which costs almost as much as the software itself. I would have appreciated a PDF manual instead of an expensive, glossy coffee-book.

Said goodbye to expensive monthly fees

Comments: Absolutely love the entire Affinity product suite. Was a bit intidimated at first but quickly ordered their workbooks from their website which are a great way to get up to speed with practical experience.

Pros:

Affinity Publisher is packed with all the editing features we need and use in daily workflows and operations, and their studiolink technology really sets it apart as you can quickly switch to leverage the editing power of Affinity Designer or Affinity Photos directly within the app. It's also extremely fast and has a light load on your device, and best of all, you get to buy your license once and use it as long as you wish. No more monthly charges that bundle features we don't use.

Cons:

Out of the 3 Affinity software this is the one that took the less getting used to, but there definitely is a small learning curve when switching to this suite. Once you get the hang of it though it gets pretty intuitive with all applications mostly using the same layout and design philosophy.

An Excellent Alternative to Adobe Illustrator

Comments: Positive - used regularly.

Pros:

Affinity Publisher is a great alternative to Adobe Illustrator.There is no monthly subscription needed, just pay once and the software is to be used for life!

Cons:

There is no cloud functionality like Creative Cloud.

Professional, Creative, Impressive

Comments: Our overall experience has been very positive, the software has allowed us to create a lot of our marketing material in house which has saved a lot of money in the long term.

Pros:

Affinity publisher is a very intuitive software package that allows the user to create professional, creative and visually impressive documents. The software is really inexpensive which makes it even more attractive.

Cons:

The tools and capabilities of the software take a long time to learn and understand if the user isn't using it on a regular basis.

Another great Serif product

Comments: Great desktop publishing solution that fits in well with Affinity Designer and Photo.

Pros:

The workflow is very similar to that of Affinity Designer and Photo and has many common features, easy to layout pages and design documents and the associated file formats needed to import from external sources and then manipulate within the program

Cons:

Nothing really, mostly it just works, there are a few quirks when it comes to layout where you need to be careful.

Affinity Publisher - a real alternative to Adobe InDesign

Comments: Affinity Publisher (and the other Affinity Apps) have replaced all the Adobe products for me. I am incredibly impressed that a team from Nottingham UK have come up with something that can proudly stand toe to toe with Adobe. In many ways they are better than the Adobe alternatives.

Pros:

PRICE. Like most users of Affinity products I was initially attracted by the price. Now that Adobe 'rent' you their software I was looking for an alternative. You can't fault the price of any of the Affinity products. They could double the price and they would still be incredibly good value for money. FEATURES. But that doesn't mean that Publisher is a budget product. Far from it. Once you get your head around the slightly different way of working, I have found that Publisher will do everything I ever asked InDesign to do. Yes InDesign has more 'features', but Publisher does everything I need. I designed market-leading magazines for more than 20 years, so I know what I am talking about.

Cons:

LEARNING CURVE. As expected with any new software there is a bit of a learning curve. Affinity do things differently to Adobe. But stick with it, because once the penny drops and you 'get it' it all makes sense. I really like the way the Affinity Apps (Publisher, Designer and Photo) all work seamlessly together.

One of the best!

Comments: This is probably the best software that I've used where it's advanced but not overly difficult. It's difficult at first, but there really wasn't a huge learning curve for me compared to Photoshop. I like everything streamlined and right where I need it. The menus in Affinity are well organized where other programs I ask myself why they put something here or there and it doesn't make sense.

Pros:

I like how easy it is to select what you'd like to do with photos. With drone photography (especially at night), you most likely will be taking photos with the auto exposure bracketing (AEB) setting which takes several photos really fast to allow the most light into the sensor to help the photos appear brighter at night. You'd simply take all of the photos and combine them. With a drone, you have to account for any type of movement like wind and the drone itself adjusting to the gps position where you have it hovering so each photo may be slightly off. Affinity has a photo combining/stacking option. When you combine the photos... it does a great job at stacking without it looking blurry. You can choose 3 settings that will show the difference in any effects used. You have a before/after (side by side is best), the before and after split photo then the regular photo itself that will show you the difference once applied.

Cons:

I haven't figured this out yet, but when working with stacked photos I have a hard time seeing the difference in the before and after photo when doing side by sides. Maybe it's just me but I don't really see the difference unless I do a large effect like making the contrast really dark.

Fantastic bang for the buck...

Comments: I've used Affinity Publisher to redesign my company's marketing flyers, envelopes and other branded documents with great success. Having worked with many other Desktop Publishing packages over the years I had no trouble adapting to Affinity's interface and processes.

Pros:

Affinity Publisher is a clean, fast, feature-rich Desktop Publishing application which makes content creation and manipulation reasonably simple, but also has enough advanced tools that power-users will be satisfied with it as well. It integrates very well with the other Affinity applications (Designer and Photo) and works with files from many other applications as well. For the VERY reasonable price they charge this is a fantastic choice for Desktop Publishing Software.

Cons:

The biggest criticism I have is that there aren't any document templates included out-of-the-box such as there are with other products like Microsoft Publisher. That being said, there are many options online which can be purchased to make up for this.