I probably should be asking Adobe this - but wanted to get your thoughts:
Am a small business consisting of 1 person - should I be using the business subscription or am I all good to keep using the individual subscription?
Individual. Unless youāre feeling generous and want to give Adobe more money.
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You are one person. Canāt get any more individual than that.
The business plan isnāt at all cost effective unless you have more than 10 seats, or really need their premium image plan. Just keep it on the business credit card though. It is a business expense.
BTW, if you actually ask Adobe this question they will try to upsell you. Donāt fall for it.
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PlutoāI got tired of paying Adobeās constantly rising prices and paid a much, much lower dollar amount to download and start using the new (fully Macintosh created) Affinity apps. Saved a ton of money and got some really great apps doing the same thing. The apps are created in England, so there is a steep learning curve to using them, but once you get the hang of them, you can work as fast as with the Adobe products.
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An individual plan is fine.
Cost of a cup of coffee a day - and you get 20+ desktop and mobile apps, plus 100GB of cloud storage, and other things.
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Thereās actually 20% discount now until 18 May.
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Thanks guys! Appreciate it 
Thanks Pops, would be keen to switch to Affinty, however donāt want to run into compatability issues with deliverables.
I was involved heavily in the beta testing of Affinity Publisher. I havenāt used it in a while, since the Beta so not sure of any new advances.
If you do long document work the features are severely lacking. InDesign has far more typographical and long document features.
In terms of Affinity Photo and Affinity Designer - they are good.
However, I found a lot of production issues that I canāt seem to recall the exact issues.
But if youāre dealing with professional printers Adobe software is still the industry standard.
If youāre handing off files (design files) to a printers (which can be the case in some workflows) then handing off anything other than industry standard files could be problmatic and incur extra costs for you - or for your client.
For example, in some scenarios, clients want the files and all assets for their own storage, or they may want to farm out changes and things like that in the future.
If you hand over files in Affinity format - then it may make it more difficult for your clients to hand out those files again to other designers - which means they will incur extra charges for converting to the industry standard - or at least fixing the files.
Either way, unless youāre a hobbyist, or a self-contained unit, then I wouldnāt suggest leaving the Adobe software for cheaper alternatives.
If youāre serving up clients then the fee isnāt that heavy. Itās only ā¬60 a month.
To put in perspective I spend per week:
ā¬100 a week on food (weekly shopping),
ā¬40 diesel (gas)
ā¬50 on lunches
Monthly:
ā¬30 for mobile network
ā¬45 broadband
ā¬150 Sky bill (including sports)
ā¬15 netflix
ā¬8 amazon prime
ā¬8 disney
ā¬60 Creative Cloud.
And to be fair - I donāt even pay for Creative Cloud.
The price is built into the clients fee.
In fact - I make money by having Creative Cloud - it pays for itself.
I hate the argument that Adobe is shaking down customers and increasing feesā¦ itās ludicrous!
Thereās no such thing happening. Itās industry grade software.
And what makes me laugh is that this argument sometimes comes from people who are Apple advocates and pay ā¬3000 for a computer they could have bought for ā¬1000. And buy a new iPhone every year to a the tune of ā¬1000. And any Apple hardware that comes out - at exceptional prices.
Anyway - when you think about it - itās ā¬60 a month, 20+apps, mobile apps, and 100gb online storage - itās not a bad deal.
Itās ā¬2 a day.
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Last summer, I was hired to put together a 96-page childrenās book in Affinity Publisher. Each page layout was largely different from all the others and included multiple photographs and illustrations.
The only issue I remember being a bit frustrated with was its tendency to get bogged down when too many elements were on the page. If I clicked off that page, then back to the page I was working on, the problem would go away for a while before returning. There was also the issue of wraps sometimes deciding not to work correctly and outputting with large blank spaces where those wraps should be.
There were some other functions that werenāt quite as convenient as InDesign, but there were always easy workarounds. Iām having trouble remembering what those issues were. Honestly, I was pretty impressed with Affinity Publisher.
@Smurf2, Can you remember a few of the things in Publisher that you thought were lacking? Mentioning them might bring back some frustrations that Iāve forgotten.
The biggest problem I see with the Affinity apps arenāt the apps themselves, itās that theyāre niche products that, as @pluto put it, can cause deliverables problems. Twenty years ago, I rarely had clients request files to line up the printers themselves ā Iād typically. handle most jobs all the way through printing.
Today, with press-ready PDFs, Iām finding most clients are requesting the PDFs themselves thinking they can save a few dollars by handling that part of the job themselves. Even though most canāt open the InDesign files themselves to work with them, theyāre still requesting those files. Iāve asked a few times if theyād be OK with getting Affinity files and most have turned it down.
This leaves me in a position of not only keeping my CC subscription but also having to keep the Affinity software current.
Everyone is going to have different workflows and niches they are working with. Thatās completely normal. I remember a lot of long document features to be completely lacking. And I would at the time have been involved in long doucments.
I understand a 96 pager is techincally a long document - but as you put it, it was individual pages of illustrations and graphics.
Iām more talking about pages that are connected.
In saying that - I remember anchored objects not being supported.
I wrote about how InDesign can handle anchored objects on their forum
https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/64805-implemented-inline-graphics-anchors-to-objects/page/2/&tab=comments#comment-345018
I see by the forum post is that it has now been implemented.
Even as such in the 3 years since - I have moved on and my criteria for working is now different - I no longer work with very long documents, for now - and Iām talking up to 3,200 pages.
Maybe it was the lack of Book panel that had me frustrated too? I donāt know if that is implemented in Publisher now.
On the surface Affinity Publisher is solid. And itās fine - no issues with it whatsoever in terms of suitability. Itās just that I didnāt feel it was on par with InDesign at the time.
Yes, this is what I was saying too - thereās plenty of workflows/scenarios where you need to deliver files to clients.
Think branding - and Iāve done a lot over the years.
Typically - a design agency develops the brand, brand books and all that. And then adverts/signs/products/leaflets/booklets all need to be localised - resized - specialised branding for specific markets.
Typically, the design agency hands off files to the client, the Branding is done. The job is done. Files are delivered. Now itās up to the companys marketing and branding teams to get the products to market.
So assets for FSDUs, packaging etc. all have to be sent to (farmed out) to various print/design agency for localisation.
Some signage companies require files
Global corporations with locations worldwide require files for staff on DALs and things like that
Iām not having a pop at Affinity - their software is solid.
Itās cheap(er) than Adobe.
But I donāt feel like itās there yet to jump ship.
As you seem to have found out - you have bought the Affinity but require to keep the CC subscription anyway.
Is the world ready for another Quark to InDesign changeover?
I donāt know. It was a huge deal back in 2000-2005.
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I donāt know why text went large in the middle like that ā¦
All of those are valid points, guys. I was just trying to be helpful. But I do see what you mean. And if I were still āgainfully employedā rather than as I amāretired and doing mostly pro-bono projects that are tiny by comparison to my earlier yearsāthen I would continue to bite the bullet and pay up for Adobe as well (Adobe products are simpler to use.)
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I could see moving to Affinity for personal projects when I retire, but I need to be in the Adobe world right now for file compatibility.
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Once I finally bite the bullet and retire, I suspect Iāll eventually give up my Adobe CC subscription in favor of the Affinity applications. I really am impressed with them, and hope enough working professionals switch over to make them a bit more mainstream.
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100% ā¦ I did say that, unless itās hobbyist or self contained.
Thereās litteraly no need to be scared of moving to Affinty or any other software.
I remember years ago I started learning Xara because I thought it was going to blow Adobe out of the water.
It never happened.
What really has Adobe at the forefront is that they are the creators of PDF anything else made outside of Adobe is in fact a 3rd party PDF, and these may not comply with all the modules for PDF parsing through RIPs and other things.
How often do we see 3rd party PDF readers fail with a PDF. Even Mac preview is pretty dense when it comes to reading complex PDFs.
Only Acrobat is the true reader of PDFs.
Now, Photoshop PDF vs Illustrator PDF vs InDesign PDFs, they are all different.
How often have I seen people opening PDFs in Illustratorā¦ far too often. Illustrator is not a PDF editor.
All I am saying is that even Adobe software has different standards/types of PDF that are compliant from their own software.
The print world is very much PDF centric, and if itās not an Adobe PDF then itās likely to be problematic. And of course that is not always the case.
But look at Canva, we had to reject any PDF sent to us made by Canva for the life of us it wouldnāt go through the RIP and we deal with a host of Printers worldwide, so it wasnāt just one RIP it was any RIP that was tried.
As such any file sent with Canva creation is now rejected as policy, whether we lose the job or not. The solution is to have it created correctly in Adobe software, or they can take it elsewhere. We found more often than not that they come back to us for a redesign.
I am not saying Affinity or any other software have no PDF compliance, but it is a huge concern for me personally and professionally.
And it is something that I donāt feel comfortable with, as print deadlines are as tight as a ducks arse.
If we donāt have time to do it right, how can we have time to do it twice?
Canva has solved that little PDF problem.
They will print your canva-crap for you now. A self-contained little universe.
Suits me just fine. Keep all that mess behind one nice neat fence. 
Didnāt know that - interesting.
Reminds me - I went to a friends dojo to drop off some leaflets and pull up banners and I noticed he had crappy ones there, and had some signage put up around the place.
Turns out he had a local guy drop in looking for work so he asked him to do a few bits.
Everything was off centre - the logo was cut off the bottom on one piece - it was a disaster.
I just looked at him - he said āI know - but not getting it redone it can stay like thatā
I mean the joints were visible. It was stupid looking.
Anyway - you get what you pay for. Thatās the point.
Way too many clients/employers are under the impression that Canva offers mainstream, professional-level quality and services. Lately, Iāve been seeing job announcements and RFPs mentioning Canva expertise as being necessary. Over the past six months, Iāve had two inquires from prospective clients requesting work in Canva (I turned down both).
I suppose this isnāt surprising given that Canva falsely markets itself as supplying professional-quality design services. This bit of untruthfulness and the promise of clients being able to make their own modifications and āimprovementsā to the work down the road make it awfully attractive to them.