Adobe Illustrator Review, Pricing & Features

What is Adobe Illustrator?

Adobe Illustrator is a design software used by experienced graphic designers to create scalable and high-quality graphics. Its standout points are its tool kit and exporting options.

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Table of Contents

• What is Adobe Illustrator?
• Adobe Illustrator Review Summary
• Adobe Illustrator Pricing & Cost
• Adobe Illustrator Features
  • Designs
  • Tool Kit
  • Collaboration
  • Cloud Storage
  • Exporting
• Adobe Illustrator Integrations
• Adobe Illustrator Customer Service
• Adobe Illustrator Alternatives & Competitors
• Is Adobe Illustrator Right For You?

Adobe Illustrator Review Summary

Adobe XD was founded in 1987 by Adobe Inc. It is part of Adobe’s Creative Cloud suite of software, which has served over 12,000,000 users. Adobe is headquartered in San Jose, California.

Adobe Illustrator’s features are tailored for users with intermediate to advanced graphic design experience. Its strongest features are its flexible tool kit and high-quality exporting options.

Adobe Illustrator’s pricing starts at $20.99 per user per month. Its pricing is generally more expensive than alternatives. Adobe Illustrator does not offer a free plan.

Overall, Adobe Illustrator is an advanced design software built for intermediate and advanced graphic designers in need of the most flexible scalable graphic design tool. Although its tool kit allows for various use cases, Illustrator is not the ideal tool for newer designers in need of more guided and beginner-friendly design software.

Adobe Illustrator Pricing & Cost

Adobe Illustrator pricing starts at $20.99 per user per month. The business plan costs $33.99 per user per month and offers additional features such as an admin console and advanced technical support.

Note that Adobe Illustrator is included with Adobe Creative Cloud. This plan is $52.99 per user per month and features other Adobe products such as Adobe XD and Photoshop.

Adobe Illustrator Features

Let’s discuss the major features that Adobe Illustrator offers and how they can help your design needs. Product screenshots are included to add context and demonstrate the user interface.

Designs

Adobe Illustrator specializes in scalable and printable graphic designs. This can include logos, web graphics, and posters. Illustrator is very powerful and flexible for these use cases. However, the trade-off for this flexibility is a lack of premade and highly shareable designs. If these are important for you, consider Canva or Visme.

Design Types and Templates

Adobe Illustrator is not built primarily for ready-made content creation like Canva. Although Illustrator offers a number of downloadable templates online, it is built primarily for users looking to execute their graphic design ideas with as much flexibility as possible.

We highly recommend Canva and Visme over Illustrator if you’re in need of easy to make social media and graphic design content.

Here is a list of the types of designs you can create in Adobe Illustrator, as well as the featured templates of each design type:

Tool Kit

Adobe Illustrator’s tool kit is very advanced compared to alternative tools. However, newer designers will find its learning curve much steeper than beginner-friendly tools like Canva and Visme. This means that Illustrator is best for intermediate and advanced graphic designers.

User Interface

Illustrator’s user interface is sleek and highly customizable. An example of an uncustomized user interface is seen below.

Illustrator comes with far more additional tweaks to modify your interface than Visme and Canva combined. In fact, there is such a variety of customization that Adobe offers premade user interface templates depending on your use case. This makes Illustrator’s variety of options more accessible for beginners.

Here are the premade workspaces you can select in Adobe Illustrator:

Tool Types

Adobe Illustrator offers a comprehensive number of tool types to choose from. Although this variety of tools offers a plethora of design options, their learning curve is substantially steeper than tools in Canva and Visme.

You can access the following tools when editing content in Adobe Illustrator:

Illustrator’s set of tools are designed to be used for far more use cases than Canva and Visme’s. A direct trade off of this flexibility is Illustrator’s limited number of elements, such as graphics, photos, videos, and audio.

Elements can be downloaded from Adobe’s "Libraries" page. Although these elements are helpful, they are ultimately not worthy substitutions for the vast amount of elements Visme and Canva offer.

Photo Editing

Photo editing in Adobe Illustrator is limited when compared to Adobe Photoshop. However, it is more comprehensive than alternatives like Canva and Visme.

You can make very basic adjustments to your images. This includes:

Illustrator also supports a number of filters and effects directly pulled from its native integration with Photoshop. Ultimately, we feel that graphic designers in need of relatively advanced photo editing features will find Illustrator useful.

Collaboration

Adobe Illustrator’s collaboration is its weakest feature. Illustrator does not feature real time editing like Canva and Visme.

Projects cannot be edited by team members at any time. Furthermore, commenting must be done on Adobe Creative Cloud’s website. This breaks your workflow apart and might cause potential miscommunication.

Cloud Storage

Adobe Illustrator can be fully cloud-based like Canva. You have the option to keep files fully in the cloud or save local files for personal use. This means that you do not need to save your own projects before uploading them to the cloud which takes up space on your hard drive.

Version control is strong in Illustrator. You can access and restore versions up to 30 days old. Illustrator also allows you to name various versions. This makes restoring larger files easier.

Exporting

Adobe Illustrator’s exporting options are not built for marketers and content creators. You can, however, export images at much higher resolutions than alternatives.

You can export your file as the following in Adobe Illustrator:

Illustrator cannot directly post to social media platforms like Canva and Visme. If you primarily leverage design software for social media content, this will be an extra step in your workflow to consider.

Adobe Illustrator Integrations

Adobe Illustrator offers far fewer integrations when compared to Canva and Visme. Here are some popular integrations Adobe Illustrator supports:

Adobe Illustrator Customer Service

Adobe Illustrator’s customer support team is quick to respond. They are available through live chat and phone. We’ve found that responses take, at most, only up to ten minutes.

Adobe Illustrator’s primary resource is its blog. This site includes tutorials of the software itself, as well as career advice, case studies, and general design principles.

Adobe Illustrator Alternatives & Competitors

Adobe Illustrator has a number of competitors. Here’s a full list of Illustrator’s competitors:

Is Adobe Illustrator Right For You?

Overall, Adobe Illustrator is an advanced design software built for intermediate and advanced graphic designers in need of the most flexible scalable graphic design tool. Although its tool kit allows for various use cases, Illustrator is not the ideal tool for newer designers in need of more guided and beginner-friendly design software.

If you're interested, you can try Adobe Illustrator today.