PDF editing software follow-up to my original post. I emailed the Foxit sales team to see if they offer volume licensing for nonprofits. If you can prove your library qualifies for the TechSoup discount on individual licenses, they can do volume subscription licensing via their management portal "Foxit Admin Console" for $50 / license / year. My inquiry was for 10 licenses, so the per-license pricing could be based on that quantity. Note: Foxit subscription vs perpetual licensing<https://www.foxit.com/resource-hub/data-sheets/perpetual-and-subscription-licenses/>, since one of the respondents mentioned perpetual licensing of Foxit. I received multiple requests from other libraries on michlib-l to give a summary of replies. My Original Post: What software is your library staff using to create and edit PDF documents? Adobe Acrobat Pro 2020 will cease to function 12/1/2026. Adobe is pushing for a subscription model, instead of selling us a version we can install and just use for a few years. We purchased our Adobe 2020 Pro licenses from TechSoup. To get discounted Acrobat Pro, you now must go through a company called Goodstack and buy individual licenses, a max of 10, that are each individually assigned to an end-user email address. These renew each year, you must pay for each license individually, and as far as I can tell there is no way to transfer a license to another user when there is turnover. TechSoup now sells Foxit PDF Editor+ instead of Acrobat Pro, and it seems to also have some extra hurdles for licensing that are off-putting. Reply 1 We do not use any. If we have a need to save as a pdf file so that others can't edit docs sent out, it is generally chosen in Canva or as the Microsoft print to pdf option. We do not do any pdf editing. Reply 2 I updated us to Acrobat Pro @ $90 per license (7 licenses). (Bruce's follow-up: they purchased this yearly subscription from CDWG.com.) I have no expectation of maintaining it for long. Acrobat is TERRIBLE at editing PDFs and I'll probably switch us to ABBY Fine Reader long term, which has a much better UI and is actually useful for making PDFs ADA Accessible... Reply 3 We use Qoppa's PDF Studio<https://www.qoppa.com/pdfstudio/>. Reasonably priced, not a subscription, can do secure redaction and create forms, works on Windows, Mac, and Linux. Good luck! Reply 4 Foxit also sells a perpetual license, but Tech Soup doesn't offer discount pricing for it. Reply 5 Hello! I am relatively new to my position, but I wanted to share what my organization uses. We use Foxit PDF Editor. I have found it easy to use, not sure how the licensing works at my IT department handled it before I was hired. I am happy to put him in touch if you would be interested. ---- [cid:image001.png@01DCE129.25C098C0] Bruce MacDonald Head of Technology / Assistant Director Peter White Public Library<https://www.pwpl.info/> 217 N. Front St. Marquette, MI 49855 906-226-4307 Direct Dial 906-228-9510 Library Main Number 906-226-1783 Library Fax bmac@pwpl.info<mailto:bmac@pwpl.info> From: Bruce MacDonald via Michlib-l <michlib-l@liblists.org> Sent: Wednesday, May 6, 2026 2:40 PM To: michlib-l@liblists.org Subject: [Michlib-l] PDF Editing Software What software is your library staff using to create and edit PDF documents? Adobe Acrobat Pro 2020 will cease to function 12/1/2026. Adobe is pushing for a subscription model, instead of selling us a version we can install and just use for a few years. We purchased our Adobe 2020 Pro licenses from TechSoup. To get discounted Acrobat Pro, you now must go through a company called Goodstack and buy individual licenses, a max of 10, that are each individually assigned to an end-user email address. These renew each year, you must pay for each license individually, and as far as I can tell there is no way to transfer a license to another user when there is turnover. TechSoup now sells Foxit PDF Editor+ instead of Acrobat Pro, and it seems to also have some extra hurdles for licensing that are off-putting. ---- [cid:image001.png@01DCE129.25C098C0] Bruce MacDonald Head of Technology / Assistant Director Peter White Public Library<https://www.pwpl.info/> 217 N. Front St. Marquette, MI 49855 906-226-4307 Direct Dial 906-228-9510 Library Main Number 906-226-1783 Library Fax bmac@pwpl.info<mailto:bmac@pwpl.info>
