Are you a (Webflow) Designer thinking about switching from Adobe to another, more cost effective solution? In this blog post I show some of the alternatives currently available. I focus specifically on tools that can compete with Adobe's professional offerings.
So you're considering to switch from Adobe Creative Cloud to another tool? Maybe you want to cut costs and/or don't really need all the different software packages Adobe offers in their Adobe Creative Cloud (Adobe CC) subscription? Let me outline some options for you here...
For any of these tools there are great alternatives called Affinity Photo (Photoshop alternative), Affinity Designer (Illustrator alternative), Affinity Publisher (InDesign alternative). All of them are professional tools that offer many if not most of the features included in their Adobe equivalents. Each of these tools are accessed via a one-off purchase, so there is no ongoing subscription to pay for as is the case with Adobe. You can check out all three applications (and download a free trial) on Affinity's website.
Premiere Pro is a great tool for editing video content and for a long time there was no cost effective alternative available. Nowadays there are different options including DaVinci Resolve, a free, full-featured editing tool which offers lots of the same as its Adobe counterpart does. Blackmagic - the creators of DaVinci Resolve - also offer a software package called Fusion for motion graphics and animation. If you are after a new video editing tool and use a Macintosh computer, also take a look at Apple's Final Cut Pro. While this application isn't free (and has a pretty steep price tag), it doesn't require you to pay for a monthly subscription either. Of course there are other tools such as Apple iMovie, Filmora and more, which sometimes are low cost or even free solutions. However keep in mind that these tools are made for beginners and/or non-designers, so you might outgrow these quite quickly as their feature set is more limited. It might pay off to start with one of the pro tools immediately so you don't have to switch again at a later point in time.
If you are a web, UI or UX designer you might be familiar with Adobe XD which lets you create wireframes, mockups and prototypes for websites, apps and other digital products. If you want to move away from Adobe altogether, there are a couple of excellent alternatives available. The most popular software used by Web and Digital Designers currently is Figma, a tool that is great for collaborating with your team or clients. The basic version is free and only if you require additional features such as shareable team libraries or unlimited projects you'll have to pay for a subscription. Alternatively there is Figma's competitor Sketch, which offers a similar feature set, but isn't as good when it comes to collaboration.
Of course Adobe Creative Cloud offers a variety of other tools such as Lightroom, Acrobat DC, Animate and more. In a future post I might outline a few options available to replace these tools as well. However, next week I'll publish a post asking the question "Is it worth switching from Adobe to another tool?". Stay tuned!
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