PDF File/Form Management and Digital Signature Options
- Craig DeMallie
We get a lot of questions about Adobe Acrobat. Those questions are often motivated by a need to edit PDFs and create fillable PDF forms. In many cases, the full (paid) version of Acrobat is not required. It is important to know if your workflows require it or not. We’ll try to answer your questions here.
We would prefer to have Adobe Acrobat installed on every machine we manage and we used to do this a number of years ago. Unfortunately, Adobe drastically changed their licensing structure making it cost prohibitive to have it installed on every machine and now have changed their licensing model to per user rather than per machine.
As of Spring 2024, below are JHU’s negotiated pricing on a few options for PDF processing.
As of July 2024, a perpetual license option for Acrobat is no longer available. A perpetual license is something you buy once and can use it indefinitely (until no longer supported). Those who have any older perpetual type license versions like Acrobat 2020 installed on their machines will have to have this removed by the August 2025 timeframe.
There is a subscription option for Acrobat for about $125/year/user.
You will also find in the MyJH Software Catalog an annual subscriptions to Adobe Creative Cloud. This is currently about $270/year/user, but includes Acrobat, Photoshop, Illustrator, as well as many other Adobe tools and cloud services. It also includes Adobe Sign for digital signatures for those who need this functionality.
Finally, if Adobe’s pricing irks you, there is a very similar product available in the Software Catalog called FoxIt PhantomPDF which is about $40 initially and about $8 annually after that. FoxIt is available for both Mac and Windows. FoxIt can electronically sign PDF documents and create documents for signature, but our license doesn’t cover the workflow (sending out and recording signed documents) that Adobe Sign and DocuSign have.
If Adobe Sign is not sufficient for your digital signature needs JHU also has a contract with DocuSign which is more widely accepted when an official certified signature workflow is required (for NIH submissions at JHU for example). We in SON IT don’t know that much about this, but you can request a JHU DocuSign account here JHU DocuSign Account Request.
Which PDF File/Form Management Tool Should I Choose?
Many users will not actually need Acrobat. If you are simply creating or editing PDFs and aren’t doing sophisticated document management or forms creation, then you should definitely investigate the tools you already have. On the Mac, these include Preview to edit / sign PDFs, and any application can create (print to PDF) through the print dialog. On Windows, the Microsoft Office suite can both create and often edit PDF documents. Editing a PDF with Word might be limited in some cases. If your job requires more advanced capabilities, here’s some comparison information to help decide what to pick.
Feature | Acrobat Pro Subscription | Creative Cloud with Acrobat (annual subscription) | FoxIt PhantomPDF |
|---|---|---|---|
License Terms | Renews every July 1 (price is pro-rated, around $125 per year) | Renews every July 1 (price is pro-rated, around $270 per year) | $40 purchase for first year; $8 per year after |
Read, Edit, Merge PDFs | Yes | Yes | Yes |
Create and edit fillable PDF forms | Yes | Yes | Yes |
Other included applications | None | Photoshop, Illustrator, and MANY (about 47) other PC / Windows / mobile applications | None |
Additional Cloud Storage | None | 100GB on the Adobe Cloud | None |
Create Adobe Sign workflows (similar to Docusign) | No | Yes | No |
PCWorld provides some additional comparisons between Acrobat Pro and FoxIt at the link below. Their ultimate recommendation is Acrobat Pro, but that assumes users would be making full use of many of Acrobat’s advanced features. Frankly, for most of the work done at the SON involving PDF files, FoxIt is probably a more than adequate alternative if you are looking to keep costs down. | |||
How Do I Get Acrobat or FoxIt Installed?
Once you’ve decided what kind of license you require for your job, you should buy the license with your procurement info in the Hopkins Software Catalog. You will get installation information when the procurement is complete (it can take a bit for the licenses to get processed — they need to be activated with Adobe). If, once you’ve gotten your license, you have trouble installing the software (like, you are given a notice about requiring administrative privileges on your computer) please let us know at SON-HelpDesk@jhu.edu or 410-614-8800 and we will be happy to assist.