I'm managing a Remote Desktop Services setup and we used to rely on a licensed version of Adobe PDF Reader. However, after migrating to Windows Server 2022, that version is no longer supported, and I'm not thrilled with Adobe's new licensing model for Acrobat/Reader. We have about 60 users who work directly within the RDS environment, and I'm on the hunt for a reliable alternative that can open, merge, and handle some light PDF editing. Any recommendations would be appreciated!
6 Answers
You should also consider PDF24. It's free and installs locally without any subscription fuss. I've been using it privately and would be curious to see how it performs in a server environment.
You should definitely check out PDF-XChange. It's way cheaper than Adobe and pretty full-featured. Some users have mentioned timeout issues with PDFs from network drives using PDF-XChange Standard, so I suggest switching to PDF-XChange Editor. It’s worked well for us without any issues.
Yeah, I've heard nothing but great things about PDF-XChange Editor. It's really value for money!
I can highly recommend Master PDF Editor. It works on Windows, Linux, and Mac, and it’s pretty affordable too.
PDFGear is another option worth considering. It has a good set of features and is user-friendly.
If you're interested in hosting yourself, you might want to try BentoPDF or StirlingPDF. I have a small team using BentoPDF and they love it, plus it’s fully offline with no subscription needed.
BentoPDF sounds promising! I’ll definitely give it a test run.
Don’t forget, most modern web browsers handle lots of PDF tasks now. It might be worth exploring that option before investing in new software.
That's good to know! I'll look into the Editor version instead.