pdfFiller Review, Pricing & Features

What is pdfFiller?

pdfFiller is a feature-rich PDF editor with over 55 million customers. It offers features for creating and converting PDFs, editing its content, and reviewing and annotating PDFs. Overall, we recommend it to those with a larger budget, who prefer a more robust PDF editor and need a wide range of review and annotation tools. We also recommend it to those who use signNow.

Table of Contents

pdfFiller Review Summary

pdfFiller was founded in 2008 by Vadim Yasinovsky. Its mission is to change the way businesses, nonprofits, and individuals handle paperwork. Today, pdfFiller has over 55 million customers and is based in Brookline, Massachusetts.

pdfFiller is a PDF editor that helps its users edit, create, and manage PDF documents and forms online. It offers tools for creating and converting PDFs, editing your PDFs content, and reviewing and annotating your PDFs. Overall, pdfFiller is one of the more feature-rich platforms available.

In terms of pricing, pdfFiller is one of the more expensive platforms available. It’s cheapest plan costs $20 per month, while its most expensive plan costs $50 per user per month. Overall, pdfFiller is a robust PDF editor solution that is worth its pricing. We recommend it to those who have a larger budget and prefer to edit their PDFs on the web.

Overall, pdfFiller is a robust PDF editor with a wide range of tools, especially for reviewing and annotation. We also recommend pdfFiller to those with a larger budget, who also use signNow.

  • If you prefer an advanced, all-in-one PDF editor and also use other Adobe products like Adobe Sign and Adobe Scan, then we recommend Adobe Acrobat
  • If you need a semi-robust platform that is priced reasonably for those who want to long-term invest, then we recommend PDFelement
  • If you need a beginner platform and have a smaller budget, then we recommend Smallpdf
  • If you prefer an intermediate solution with high-quality customer support tools, then we recommend PDF Expert

pdfFiller Pricing & Cost

pdfFiller’s pricing ranges from $20 to $50 per month. You can also save 67% if you purchase an annual plan. pdfFiller also offers a free trial for each paid plan.

PlanPricing
Basic (1 user)$20 per month
Premium (Up to 5 users)$40 per month ($8 per user)
airSlate Business Cloud (Minimum 5 users)$50 per user per month
pdfFiller Pricing

pdfFiller Features

In our review, we will walk through the features offered by pdfFiller. We’ll discuss pdfFiller’s usability, customer support, and describe the major benefits and drawbacks of the software. We’ll also show real images of the software to give you an idea of what it’s like to use the tool.

Creating & Converting PDFs

Creating, and converting your PDFs all within one platform is crucial if you handle a large number of PDFs at once. Overall, pdfFiller offers a wide range of PDF creation and conversion tools.

pdffiller-create-convert

pdfFiller lets you upload multiple file types to create a PDF – including word documents, text files, JPEGs, and PNGs. You can also split PDFs and merge multiple documents into one PDF.

pdffiller-templates

An advantage of pdfFiller is that you can create templates of your most used documents like forms and contracts. Using templates saves you time, ensures accuracy of data, and keeps your content consistent.

pdfFiller also lets you convert your PDFs into multiple document types. This includes:

  • Word documents
  • Excel spreadsheets
  • JPEGs
  • PowerPoints
  • Text files

Content Editing

After you’ve created your PDF, the next step is to edit its content. Overall, pdfFiller’s content editing features are semi-robust and intuitive to use. A disadvantage though is that pdfFiller does not offer the ability to add or edit headers and footers.

Text Editing

Text is the backbone of your PDF, so it’s important that your PDF editor accommodates your text needs. Overall, text and text boxes in pdfFiller are decently customizable.

pdfFiller text

You can adjust the font, color, size, and typographical emphasis of your text. Unlike other solutions, pdfFiller also lets you change the background and outline color of your text boxes and link the text within your boxes.

Text boxes are also easily resizable and movable. You can move them without them interfering with your existing content or other text boxes.

Images

Images enhance the readability of your PDF by providing visual breaks and supporting textual information. pdfFiller lets you easily include images and resize them within your document. However, you cannot rotate your images within your PDF.

pdfFiller images

Electronic Signatures

Many PDF editors let you include your electronic signature on your PDFs. pdfFiller integrates with signNow, a popular electronic signature software tool. With pdfFiller, you can upload or draw your signature and initials – this functions similarly in signNow. Overall, pdfFiller is a good choice if you choose not to use a separate electronic signature software tool.

pdffiller electronic signature

pdfFiller lets you add a variety of fields including those for legally binding signatures, date, email, and phone number. You can also track the progress of your esignatures being completed. A disadvantage though is you cannot send reminders to sign your PDFs.

Page Organization

The way you organize your PDF pages can have a big impact on how people interpret your PDF and its content. Overall, pdfFiller offers easy-to-use and effective page organization tools, but they are less robust than those found in other solutions like Adobe Acrobat.

pdfFiller page organization

pdfFiller lets you drag & drop your pages if you need to reorder them. You can also add, rotate, and duplicate pages, and insert pages anywhere within your PDF. A disadvantage of pdfFiller’s page organization tools is you cannot insert page numbers.

Reviewing & Annotating

After you’ve edited your PDFs, it’s likely that they would need to be reviewed and annotated by others in or out of your organization. pdfFiller offers a diverse range of review and annotation tools – including commenting, highlighting, freehand drawing and callout boxes. Overall, they are all intuitive, but can be tedious to use at times.

Commenting

pdfFiller lets you drop comments anywhere within your document. Comments are one of the easiest ways for you and those in your organization to collaborate on a PDF. Overall, pdfFiller’s commenting feature is simple, and best if you need to note simple changes in your PDF.

pdffiller-comment

pdfFiller’s commenting feature lets you and those in your organization reply to any other comment. However, you cannot @mention within comments, making it harder to direct members to comments that are specifically geared towards them.

Highlighting

You can use highlighting to easily indicate which information is the most important to note. Overall, pdfFiller’s highlighting feature is effective, but can be tedious to use.

pdffiller-highlighting

As shown above, to highlight in pdfFiller, you need to click and drag a highlighted box over the desired text. This feature is useful for highlighting text that is already embedded into your PDF because you can move and resize the actual highlight to accommodate your PDF.

However, you have to use this same process of highlighting when you insert text using pdfFiller. This process wastes time because you have to make sure every time that your highlight is of the right proportion.

Callout Boxes

Callout boxes help make important pieces of information visually stand out, more so than highlighting. pdfFiller offers callout boxes in the form of post-it sticky notes. Overall, this feature is easy-to-use and the post-it notes are visually very noticeable.

pdfFiller callout boxes

Freehand Drawing Tools

pdfFiller offers a drawing tool that lets you write handwritten notes and markings on your PDF. Overall, this feature is easy to use.

pdfFiller freehand drawing

An advantage of pdfFiller’s freehand drawing tool is that after you’ve written your notes and markings you can resize them. This is useful if you are unable to accommodate the margin sizes of the text within your PDF.

pdfFiller Integrations

pdfFiller lets you integrate with certain applications that expand the functionality of your PDF editor. This often means integrating with a third-party application that currently stores your documents and PDFs. The key integrations that pdfFiller offers includes:

  • Microsoft 365
  • Google Drive
  • Dropbox
  • Zapier

Legal & Security

Proper security and data protection for your PDFs is a critical feature needed in your PDF editor. Data and compliance breaches harshly affect you and your business’s reputation, and can be costly to remedy.

Here are some of the security features and compliances that pdfFiller offers:

FeatureOffered by pdfFiller
StampsNo
WatermarkingYes
Redacting Sensitive InformationYes
Password ProtectionYes
Encryption Through CertificateNo
Secure StorageYes (SOC 2 Type II)
International CompliancesYes (GDPR)
HIPAA ComplianceYes

Mobile PDF Editor

pdfFiller offers a mobile PDF editor for both Apple and Android. Depending on the application, you can use a mobile PDF editor to create, edit, review, and annotate your PDFs anywhere.

pdfFiller mobile

pdfFiller’s mobile application is best for making smaller edits to your PDF. This is because you can only include text, signatures, and images, and highlight and redact information using blackout. You cannot for example, include comments, or search within your PDF.

Customer Support

Overall, we found pdfFiller’s customer support to be slightly above average. This is because the platform’s live chat service is 24/7, and responds swiftly.

We found pdfFiller’s help articles to have good readability, but are overall best for questions and concerns that only need short, quick answers. pdfFiller uses a wide range of tools to improve the readability of their articles. This includes bolding, using images with arrows that indicate the feature being referenced, and not using large paragraphs of text.

Customer Support Channelslive chat, support tickets
Customer Support Availability24/7
Other Support ResourcesFAQs, Community Forum
Platform Update NotificationsNo
Application Status PageYes

pdfFiller vs. Competitors

The competitor pdfFiller is most similar to in terms of platform advancedness is Adobe Acrobat. However, pdfFiller is slightly less feature-rich than Adobe Acrobat. Overall, pdfFiller is more advanced than solutions like Smallpdf, PDFelement, and PDF Expert.

The top pdfFiller competitors are:

Is It Right For You?

Overall, pdfFiller is a robust PDF editor with a wide range of tools, especially for reviewing and annotation. We also recommend pdfFiller to those with a larger budget, who also use signNow.

  • If you prefer an advanced, all-in-one PDF editor and also use other Adobe products like Adobe Sign and Adobe Scan, then we recommend Adobe Acrobat
  • If you need a semi-robust platform that is priced reasonably for those who want to long-term invest, then we recommend PDFelement
  • If you need a beginner platform and have a smaller budget, then we recommend Smallpdf
  • If you prefer an intermediate solution with high-quality customer support tools, then we recommend PDF Expert
Amy Yang

Amy Yang is a Junior Research Analyst at SoftwarePundit, where she conducts in-depth analyses on software markets and products. Amy has expertise in content production and managing digital and social platforms. She has a Bachelor of Science in Communication & Media, and a Minor in Web Programming and Applications from NYU. You can connect with Amy on LinkedIn.

Amy is an expert in several software categories including:

  • Course creation software
  • Electronic signature software
  • Social media software
  • Website builder software