Customer Ratings & Reviews

My wife and I do contract work with our state DHR (family services) office. During this work, we use a lot of paper and when traveling around the state with kids and visiting foster and group homes, keeping up with all of this can be quite a task. I had scanned several of our key documents and was using them in PDF format, but I needed them to look cleaner and also have the ability to gather signatures and other written data on our Microsoft Surface tablets, so I started looking for solutions. Given that I was already using these as PDFs, Adobe Acrobat was at the top of my list. The new “Acrobat Classic” seemed like a great option since it does not require an Internet connection for use. That’s important because many places we work in won’t have Wi-Fi or even reliable cell service. I did have a small problem with installation, but the Adobe support staff quickly resolved that. Once I had the software installed and running, I found that it works very well. The interface is intuitive and allows me to work quickly. Not having to rely on Internet service also makes it run more quickly. There are many things I really like about this product, and a few I don’t. It has several tools for organizing and storing documents to make them easier to access. Since we only use about a dozen documents, that feature is not very important, but it does make this a good central tool for document management. The ability to create PDF documents is not quite what I thought it would be, but ultimately it works well. Adobe Acrobat itself does not have a facility to build a document from scratch. Instead, you create it in another tool, such as MS-Word, and then import it. That process is simple and works well, especially since my existing documents were already in Word. An example is a sign-in sheet that’s basically a large sheet of rows and columns where clients fill in their name, relationship, date, time and sign. That came over perfectly, and I was able to edit the cells to designate what type of data is entered. Using the tablet’s handwriting input via its pen, text data is interpreted, and the signature is captured. It works very well. I also like the ability to protect documents and even sections within a document so there are no errant entries or edits. A few things that I think need improvement include the ability to combine and split pages. It can be done, but it’s not easy or intuitive. It’s aggravating, because this sort of thing is very easy in other Adobe products, such as Photoshop. The pen interface works well when filling in forms, but not so much when using Acrobat in design mode. Some of the functions could be more touchscreen or pen friendly. My final complaint is the price. Maybe it’s my age, but I remember when software like this came on a CD or DVD as a perpetual license for less than half this price. Adobe Acrobat Classic is a bit pricey for a license that’s limited to a three-year term. It would be a better value had it been a perpetual license, even without updates. Overall, this is a good product and the ability to install it and then use it offline is a huge benefit. It does what I need and then some. I do recommend Adobe Acrobat Classic for those who need to create, edit and organize PDF documents.

Firstly, do not confuse this product with Adobe’s free Acrobat Reader or other similar products. If you’re looking for an app to read (and sometimes sign) PDF files and forms, you do not need Adobe Acrobat Classic. This particular downloadable version of Adobe Acrobat Classic is targeted for users who need the ability to use Adobe Acrobat Pro features without online access or without the need for an Adobe account. The features are based on an updated version of Adobe Acrobat Standard 2020, which is no longer available as a one-time purchase to individuals. Trying to find software that is not a subscription license is really swimming against the tide. But there are options out there in the world of PDFs. And if that’s your goal, Adobe is still the gold standard in PDF editing. PROs - Create and edit PDFs - Convert PDFs into Word and other formats - Create fillable PDF forms - Add security to PDFs like passwords and print restrictions - Updated UI gives it a cleaner, more logical flow - Compression algorithm is impressive. Reduced one of my scanned 2-page documents from 2.9 MB to 96 KB with no noticeable loss in clarity. - Scan paper docs into PDFs and make them searchable - You can add Javascript to your PDFs, giving you quite a bit of extensibility CONs - Though there is no on-going monthly subscription, it’s a hefty upfront fee that gives you a 3-year license. At full price, you are still paying $15/month for those three years. - It’s unclear what happens after the 3 year license expires. Do you still get to use the software, albeit, it may be unsupported? Or does the software stop working? The Adobe FAQs don’t answer this question. - Form creation is one of the most common use cases for needing a PDF editor. But field validation needs more options. For example, there’s no simple way to check someone entered a valid email address in an email field. You could use Javascript to check, but that’s not very user friendly. - While you get bug fixes and security updates during the 3-year license term, no new features will be added. This one big benefit of subscription licensed software – new features are added continuously. All in all, this software is very niche. The non-subscription price is not clear that it’s one-and-done or you will have to make another purchase after 3 years. While Adobe’s features are well implemented, I don’t think most individuals would be happy with the licensing uncertainty and lack of feature updates. For those reasons, I don’t recommend it.

Back to the basics. Adobe Acrobat Classic is designed to be used offline. There are no subscription based features or fees. It has all the "latest" features and capabilities at release, but will not be receiving feature updates moving forward and does not offer web-based features like e-signing, sharing for review, and AI capabilities. If these lacking items are important to you, then you will have to go with the subscription based version. However, if you are looking for more of that "classic" feel of being able to install a program on your laptop and use it anywhere you take it, regardless of internet access or not, then this is the right app for you. Adobe Acrobat Classic can be installed on as many devices as you want, BUT you can only have it active on two computers with an individual plan. This also limits you to only being able to use it on just one device at a time. You can activate or deactivate other versions of your app as needed through the app itself or your online account, but you can only have 2 devices " active" and only one of those in use at any time. Adobe Acrobat Classic is based off of the Acrobat Standard 2020 version but with some new enhancements. They have updated the UI to make it easier to find and use the PDF tools. They have improved "tagging" for better accessibility for people with disabilities, and added a way to star documents as favorites or tag them for future follow ups. Plus, you can now create a form from a blank page. They have also updated the crop and editing tools, and even made it simpler to protect and redact items, as well as remove or extract specific pages from your PDF, and they improved the handling of objects in Word and PowerPoint. All of the original features are still there for editing PDFs as well as exporting, converting to different formats and compressing files. There are features to scan and extract or recognize text in any PDF. You can combine several individual PDFs to make one larger file, fill and sign PDFs as well as set permissions and protect your files. I happen to use the conversion feature a lot as I am constantly needing to take data from our PDFs and insert that into my excel forms. It's pretty easy to convert the files to a new excel sheet, and then copy the items needed out of the new converted sheet and paste them over to my other workbooks. Overall this works great as all Adobe products do , I just love not having to pay a fee every month for the next 3 years!

I have used Adobe Acrobat for many years through my job and I’ve always liked how useful and powerful the software is. If you are a business owner or someone who creates a lot of documents, this is the best software on the market in my opinion. My wife and I own several rental properties and have a couple of Airbnb’s as well. With the rentals, we have created our own version of leases that we have used over the years. We have made updates to those documents as well and with this software, changes are very easy to do. I really appreciate the ability to create fillable PDFs from Word documents and have the ability to track the changes, as well as electronically sign them. You can also convert a PDF into several other document types. I’ve used this feature to edit a PDF in Word format which was easier due to margin settings, fonts, and formats. In this day and age where cybersecurity is essential, the protection I feel when creating and sending documents is an added benefit. When I create a pdf and sign it, I can lock the document to prevent any changes from being made. When you’re talking about leases with specific information pertaining to the care and consideration of a property, the last thing I want to do is allow someone to make changes that I may not notice. Acrobat Classic allows me to password protect documents which prevents unauthorized editing and printing as well if you prefer that feature. If you are used to Acrobat DC or similar, there are some things that are important to note. First, Acrobat Classic is a one-time, three-year purchase. You cannot renew it. This could be good or bad depending on your preference. It is hard enough for me to keep track of all the subscriptions I have. From streaming services to software that I prefer to pay once and be done. Second, this software is for offline use only. You are not able to use the online features, and you don’t cloud access to store documents. Finally, and probably most importantly, you only get security updates and not feature updates. I have used Adobe Acrobat DC enough at work to understand what I need from the software and that isn’t a huge deal for me. I will also add that this software works well with Apple Mac’s. At work, I use PC’s primarily, but for home and business use, I am pretty much a Mac guy. Overall, I am more than happy with this software and extremely happy that I have it to use at home versus my work version.

Having access to an advanced PDF manipulation toolset is typically out of reach for the home or small business owner. You either have to buy third-party software, which is of dubious quality, or subscribe to the full Adobe Acrobat suite, which comes with a monthly subscription fee that doesn’t make a lot of sense for someone who only needs to work with PDF files (beyond viewing) once in a while. Adobe has finally developed a solution for this class of users – Adobe Acrobat Classic. It offers 90 percent of the functionality of the monthly subscription version in a one-time purchase for a 3-year license. This is a welcome step that does a complete 180 on today’s software market of everything being a monthly subscription that is subject to price fluctuations. With a one-time purchase, you have the software at your disposal for three years and the option to install it on multiple computers. I have access to Adobe Acrobat on my work computer, but it’s nice to be able to do PDF tasks on my home machine. When I first installed the app, it looked as if there was virtually zero difference in what I saw between the full Adobe Acrobat and the Adobe Acrobat Classic. It is a bit of a large install, on my Mac it consumes around 1.62GB, and has a 1.5GB download size. The functionality I need to manipulate documents at home is here – I can create a PDF from multiple document formats, including Word and Excel. I can perform optical character recognition on documents I scan, I can sign documents electronically, and, most importantly, I can edit, combine, and remove pages from existing PDF documents. One big thing the Classic version does not offer is electronic document signing via e-mail or the functionality to create a signature on your phone, as you may be accustomed to with Adobe E-Sign. You can either use an imported version of your signature, sign with your mouse, or have Adobe use a “signature-like” font on signature lines. Overall, though, this is a great and welcome product for most home and small business users. The core functionality that most users are looking for from Adobe Acrobat is a fixed-cost solution.

Unless you are using PDF’s at work all day, and even then, you just looking at them, most of the time you just want to make a simple edit. Most of the time if you got the Adobe version of a PDF viewer, you are already using something. When you click there to edit, it starts to want to charge you. This would be OK, if all Adobe Classic did was enable some features in an already existing software. Instead, when you get the key and register it to your account, you get an error that there is better software already installed, and the installation fails. So, you must uninstall it and install adobe classic. Then after you get this installed the browser extensions all want you to use they other adobe version. On top of that, using Adobe classic looks identical to Adobe you get for the windows store, so it’s not like there is something different about it. Beyond this whole version annoyance and frustration to install the same software with a different name, it does work very well. You can dot pdfs with all the features you see when you use the stand alone reader without a subscription. It has been nice being able to simply open a PDF and make changes without having to find another software to do it. The software runs smooth for what it does so on that side it is nice and is surprisingly good. Hopefully with some software updates Adobe can let you use this license with what is always there or make the stand alone install easier.

I had a subscription to Adobe Acrobat Pro, but this new product got my attention. It seems to have all the features that I use in Pro, but it can be obtained for a three-year term, and if you compare the total price of the Pro Subscription over three years, Classic is a better deal IF it has all the features you need. Here is a list of the features of Classic from the BestBuy product page: • Work securely offline, without connecting to the cloud, with desktop-only PDF tools. • Edit text and images and reorder and delete pages in a PDF. • Convert PDFs to Microsoft Word, Excel, or PowerPoint files while preserving fonts, formatting, and layouts. • Easily create, fill, and sign forms. • Password-protect documents or redact sections of a PDF to keep sensitive information secure. • Star a document to favorite or flag your PDF for easy future access. • Extract discontinuous pages from a PDF to focus on the information you need. • Create and validate PDFs to meet accessibility standards for people with disabilities. • Acrobat Classic is a 3-year term license. It is non-renewing. No subscription required. • Note that Acrobat Classic cannot be used with AI Assistant (add-on). • Paid features are not available on web browsers and mobile devices. This is a desktop only product. You make the changes on your computer. The paid features are not available through browser add-ons and mobile devices. If those features are important to you, this is not your product. I do not generally want to connect to the cloud when I am working on a pdf document. This product seems to work swimmingly for the things I use Acrobat for, and, once installed, I am not constantly badgered to login to my account to use it. This is a much-welcomed change from Acrobat Pro, and makes it a winner in my book.

I am not new to Adobe apps and especially working at an office setting, I probably view documents in Adobe PDF every single day. However, in my personal life, I am an Apple user and Macs have an integrated app that just is no match for Adobe Acrobat PDF. Personally, I dislike how nowadays every single product is going to a subscriber model, and although this is only a 3-year license, the fact that I won’t see a monthly charge is positive news for me. In addition, probably in 3 years, there are significant updates and new features that it would make sense to upgrade anyway, so I do like the fact that this Classic Version provides a non-monthly subscription fee. THANK YOU ADOBE! Now to the things I like about the software Document Creation, Editing, Exporting, Etc - Outside of my everyday job, I am a landlord and previously was just using the free app that comes with my Mac to edit and export PDFs, and having all the features from Adobe Classic just makes my life way easier. I can edit, combine, require signatures. Basically, it covers all my news and I can then export it or even send it via email electronically. I highly recommend this to someone who is using the free apps you get with your computers. It’s worth the investment because it’s simply the best tool to manage, edit and create PDFs. In my personal and professional life, PDFs are the standard for document viewing so this just make it easy to handle any document that gets sent to me. Further, now I don’t have to ask for favors at work to the one person who had the license to convert a PDF to a Word document. It’s empowering in a way! Very happy.

So I'm sure everyone's aware of this software but figured I'd highlight some aspects as it's a good comparative investment versus the cloud offering and I'm appreciative that it's still available. That said, the licensing is still login based so that's a caveat if you're wanting to install this prior to an internet connection or such. Overall, greatest software to handle PDFs. I've tested several software platforms and the ease of use and how quickly you can just jump into a file and edit is A+. The updated version builds upon that great use-case and your use of the desktop app allows you functionality such as conversion to/from pdfs, digital signatures, etc... The one major item of note and probably where this provides a value discount against the online version, is that this version doesn't provide you the web-based access you encounter with the cloud version. It's focused entirely on installing and using on your system which if you're consistently on said system, this is worth the discount versus paying for cloud.

Conclusion: Adobe Acrobat for reading and mostly editing PDFs without any cloud and mobile services. You get all the editing features that you've become accustomed to, so Adobe didn't sacrifice on any features. The 3 year prepaid is a bit lower cost than the monthly subscription plans, but as mentioned you lose the cloud and mobile portion of the subscription portion. If you're only looking to be able to to edit PDF files, this might be fore you. More Details: If you've used Adobe Acrobat Pro in the past, this should be nothing new to you. Just a different way to purchase your Adobe Acrobat access. Instead of a monthly subscription plan, you're paying upfront for a 3 year term and non-renewing plan. There aren't many differences that you would be getting with the Creative Cloud version. Adobe did add some of their latest features found on their subscription plan version, features like: newer interface, "staring" your documents for easy access, and a few of the other editing tools. As with the CC version, you get to install and use this on 2 devices at a time. As mentioned in my conclusion section, you lose the cloud file saving ability and there's no mobile services, but it does show in the slightly lower cost for the 3 year plan.