Soda PDF 8 - Review 2022

Just because Adobe created the PDF format doesn't hateful it'south the only source of quality PDF software. Soda PDF 8 offers powerful tools for creating and editing PDF files in a sleek, modern interface with a useful cloud-calculating component. The basic application is gratuitous, but to become all the functionality yous'd need to rival Editors' Selection Adobe Acrobat Pro DC, you lot have to pay. Fortunately, it'south worth the cost it takes to go the full productivity this app can evangelize.

Pricing
Soda PDF viii is a free download for PC. There'south a convenient online browser-based version besides, but information technology's comparatively weak, offers express costless storage, and has yet to add together certain key features such as digital signatures and commenting tools. Only this isn't a review of that service, and Adobe'southward online component, Adobe Certificate Cloud Standard, is similarly thin. Mac users, information technology'south worth noting, must settle for a mere PDF reader if they go with Soda PDF.

The total version of Soda PDF 8 has an odd pricing model that separates tools into bundles called modules. The basic modules for viewing and editing are included in the free download, but the others must exist purchased piecemeal. Information technology'southward a bit similar a gratis-to-play game. Soda sells several versions of PDF eight with bundles included. The Pro + OCR bundle includes everything for a discounted price of $129. It'due south a weird way to obfuscate the true price of the product, but the same could exist said of Acrobat's subscription model. An Adobe Acrobat subscription costs $fifteen per month, or $180 per year, and so Soda actually isn't a bad bargain, even at its most expensive. Plus, you lot tin try out some or all of Soda PDF eight's modules complimentary for 14 days.

Getting Started

When you start actuate Soda PDF, information technology asks you to connect it to any and all deject storage services you use. I synced it to my Dropbox account, but it too supports OneDrive, Google Drive, Box, and Evernote. One time connected, Soda PDF eight pulls files from these locations. You tin then salvage files yous create or edit to the cloud from the program. Not only does this keep documents organized, but it as well makes Soda PDF eight feel like a natural part of your digital workflow.

Other fiddling features add to this feeling, also. Afterwards installing the program, a Soda PDF 8 Creator tab appeared in my Microsoft Give-and-take options. Clicking it allowed me to hands catechumen and transport whatever document I was working on as a PDF. The tab appeared in other programs that bargain with file types that Soda PDF 8 supports, such as Excel and PowerPoint. Even the slick interface helps keep the plan from feeling out of identify. The menus look like something fabricated by the Microsoft team that made Windows 10.

Tool Pick
Soda PDF eight's tools are spread across nine themed modules: View, Create, Convert, Edit, Insert, Review, Forms, Secure & Sign, and OCR. Click on a module on the top row to admission a submenu of its corresponding tools.

The View tool previews documents—and non simply PDFs. Yous can as well view .cbr files for comic books and .ePub files for eBooks. There'south even a gimmicky 3D reading feature that lets you virtually turn pages as if the document were a physical book. The Create and Convert tools are pretty self-explanatory. They allow you to make new PDFs from existing documents, such as Excel or PowerPoint files, or turn PDFs into other types of image, text, or HTML files. I similar yous tin piece of work with batches of PDFs, not but unmarried documents. View and Create are included with the gratuitous version, you'll take to pay for all the other modules.

Edit, Insert, and Review are for modifying PDFs in various ways. Edit lets you change text size and font equally well as page order. It can also split a PDF into several separate documents. The Insert tab includes tools for adding and editing new elements, such equally page numbers, headers and footers, watermarks, and other images. Review includes collaborative tools. You tin comment on a certificate through text, highlighting, or fifty-fifty stickers and drawings.

The terminal 3 modules—Forms, Secure & Sign, and OCR—contain Soda PDF's most advanced, enterprise-friendly features. If you're building a PDF from scratch, you tin take advantage of Soda PDF eight's presets for calculation useful forms to your documents. A form could be something elementary similar a text field in a custom invoice or something more complicated, like a button for printing the document or a box for sending an email to an accost y'all choose. Y'all can import and export data into forms to make the procedure fifty-fifty smoother.

Under the Secure & Sign tab are all the options for your nearly-sensitive documents. You can add together digital signatures, much as you can with SignNow. It'southward very convenient for people without a scanner who nonetheless need to sign a lot of contracts and other legal paperwork (as I did during my freelance days). You can likewise encrypt documents with 256-flake AES passwords and control permission levels that specify who can access your files. And if you're particularly paranoid, you tin can permanently redact sections of a document with black bars.

OCR, or optical character recognition, is one of the trickiest features for PDF software to nail down. With OCR, a program can theoretically scan a not-text file, like an image, and recognize any text therein. When it works, it can feel like magic. But during my testing Soda PDF eight's OCR was more often than not spotty. More oft than non text wasn't recognized, and text that was recognized was misspelled. For example, "Follows You" became "Foilo'LSVou." Simply once more, OCR is complicated. Adobe Acrobat Pro DC does it right, simply simply after a recent, massive overhaul. And our Editors' Selection for OCR software is still ABBYY FineReader 12 Professional. In this case, Soda PDF viii's pricing model comes in handy. You can and should spend $99 to buy the rest of the smashing tools without paying for the then-and then OCR module.

Soda Pops

Once I finally put all the pieces together, I was impressed by Soda PDF 8's numerous capabilities. But our Editors' Choice, Adobe Acrobat Pro DC, offers all of those capabilities and then some, forth with the latest advancements in PDF software straight from the source for $15 per month. Notwithstanding, if you don't experience similar continually paying for that software through a subscription, you lot may instead want pay a $99 lump sum for Soda PDF 8 (without the OCR) for easy handling of your PDF needs.

Source: https://sea.pcmag.com/smb-accounting/10111/soda-pdf-8

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