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We currently have a 25-seat license for Foxit PDF Editor and pay ~$450 annually for software assurance on those licenses. Our users occasionally edit PDFs sent by our ERP. If they didn’t need to do that, we wouldn’t be licensing a PDF editor at all.

Our SA renewal with Foxit is coming up and they offered to let us change to the subscription model of Foxit PDF Editor for a promotional price equal to our SA for one year and lock in 10% increases in that price for years 2 and 3. The additional features offered in the subscription model include the mobile version of Foxit PDF Editor, Foxit on Cloud with ChatGPT and Foxit E-sign. These are all features we do not want, do not need, and will not use.

I asked the rep why I would make this change when starting year 4, I would go from paying $450 a year for SA (~$20 per seat) to paying $130 a seat per year (6.5x our current cost). The answer I received was, “Foxit will be making the switch to the subscription model. I cannot guarantee the perpetual license model will be available for renewal next year.”

Of course I will switch the subscription model and lock in the lower price for 3 years, but beyond that, why would I (or any other company) pay so much money to use something other than Acrobat? Sure, Acrobat is more expensive, but at least if I’m going to be ripped off, I want to be getting ripped off and get a best-of-breed PDF editor.

I’m just curious if anyone else has any thoughts on this, especially those of you with perpetual licensing through Foxit. It is insane to me that Adobe thinks Acrobat is worth what they try to charge for it. It is more insane to me that Foxit thinks they can play the same game and not lose a lot of business in the process.

Also, any suggestions for alternate PDF editors?

@Adobe

13 Spice ups
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We use PDF Escape (about $36 per user annually). That is technically a subscription already. I haven’t seen any change in the price in the last few years.

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I purchased the subscription from Adobe. ONCE. I also canceled the subscription, it took multiple tries over multiple years to finally get it canceled. I was paying for myself and not getting reimbursed by my company and since I hadn’t used it in over a year when it came time to renew I called and canceled to save me from my credit card getting charged, or so I thought. A year later, I caught it (because I got a warning email about the renewal) 3 years later I happen to check more closely on my card transactions and happened to catch it the day after it posted so it was right up front on the recent transactions. This required ANOTHER call and a demand that I wanted my money refunded, I think they would only refund for the current year and one of the previous years. So my advice is, pay very close attention to the billing and the method of payment. I paid for 3 years of software that I didn’t need, use AND thought was canceled.

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Within 3 years, Edge will be the full-blown PDF editor you want (likely Chrome too), so I wouldn’t stress too much about that far away.

You can already do some basic editing in Edge and Chrome for PDFs, and if your PDFs are not complex, simply open them in word, it will convert them, edit it, and save them as whatever format you like.

For the rare occasions I need to edit PDF, word does the job just fine.

2 Spice ups
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We use / have used PDF Xchange Pro in-house, licenses purchased in 25, 50 and 100 batches, then I upgraded to 250 and have ridden that for years. They are still perpetual, with maintenance least expensive in three year renewals.

For the editor, it looks like 25 seats is $1200 with three years of maintenance, and 3 year maintenance cycles after that is $270.

The advanced features of the “Pro” version are extensive, and it costs a lot more - which still makes it a BARGAIN compared to Adobe products!

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Somehow we got Foxit PDF Editor installed by Dell on new PCs…I’m sure we paid for it. But, you can’t seem to update them reliably, so they are all getting uninstalled (1/2 dozen of them). Turned me off Foxit…

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Have a look at the free trial version of Overview There are options for whether you want to subscribe or purchase.

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I honestly don’t know how we got into the situation where it became normal to rent software for more than the cost of buying it outright. Where’s the outrage?!?

On a less ranty note - what sort of edits do your users do to PDF files? The free Foxit PDF Reader and Adobe Reader both do some common editing tasks that suit most users.

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@rod-it ​ I sure hope so, but I’m doubtful. Microsoft has some sort of deal with Adobe that allows Acrobat to be the default PDF editor within Microsoft 365 if users are subscribed to both. I’m sure Adobe pays Microsoft a pretty penny for that privilege. I’m sure that deal also comes with some sort of assurance that Microsoft won’t enhance Edge’s PDF editing capabilities to the point where they compete with Acrobat’s. I think the PDF editing space is ripe for an FTC anti-trust investigation.

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Edge’s PDF capability is powered by Adobe. So expansion on this is only time, there will be certain features that will either remain Adobe only or subscription based, but this would be no different from Microsoft dealing with Antivirus, being able to read/write zip, rar, 7z, img, tar and other file formats, the native control of RGB for those who use it - having options is always welcome and if most people only do basic editing, do not need combine or split, do not sign documents etc, I’m sure those features will come.

As mentioned earlier, you can open and convert most PDFs in word as well as many other products.

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Is it a perpetual license if you are paying for it each year? Do you have the option to just stay on the current version you are using?

We use Bluebeam since most of the PDF editing one of our groups use are based on construction documents.

This is not a cheap solution, but even the highest tier option is only $400/user each year. Their basic solution is $240/user and provides editing capabilities equal to or exceeding Adobe and Foxit.

We also have Adobe products licensed through the University, but even with that the licensing breaks or randomly stops working for us.

For your use cases, I like Rod-IT’s suggestion of just opening it in Word, making changes, and then saving it as a PDF again.