I’ve been looking at different desktop publishing tools for Mac and keep seeing Affinity Publisher 2 mentioned as an alternative to Adobe InDesign.
For those who have used it, how does it compare in terms of performance, ease of use, and compatibility with professional workflows? I’m particularly interested in experiences from Mac users.
Would you recommend it for magazines, brochures, and other print design projects, or are there limitations that become noticeable over time?
The industry standard is Adobe. If you’re standalone not handing off native files back to customers or print houses then Affinity is ok. It doesn’t have all the bells and whistles but can do the job.
Just put yourself in customer shoes and they ask for and advert they commissioned you for the be returned so they can share with say an advertising agency to develop something else. You hand them Affinity they can’t open or use them.
If you’re not in that situation then it’s probably fine. Use ms publisher if you want. Or quark. Or scribus.
There’s always been alternatives but if be wary leaving an ecosystem that the publishing industry is built on.
I’d say Quark and Affinity are in the same ballpark as Indesign is. Scribus or MS Publisher aren’t.
Microsoft announced that Publisher will be discontinued on October 13, 2026.
Affinity Publisher 2 is no longer sold. It is now free and part of Affinity 3.
After Quark I used Indesign for about 18 years professionally. After that I used Affinity (Publisher) since 2018.
The big downside with Affinity is the quite limited collaboration for the reasons stated by @Smurf2
The big upside is tight integration of photo and vector editing. Imagine having (freely configurable) Photoshop and Illustrator toolsets with a click inside InDesign. Affinity Publisher Designer and Photo are now one free app.
I second most of what AI says here: https://grok.com/share/c2hhcmQtMi1jb3B5_69d80ca3-1436-4a96-a193-14fbaf6246ef
Affinity recently got a scripting feature with AI support where non coders build features like support for Arabic languages.
Affinity lacks a decent color separation, overprinting simulation and soft proofing. There are workarounds and a sort of soft proofing feature. Of course overprinting is a feature. It just can’t be simulated inside Affinity as far as I know.
I check every PDF with Adobe Acrobat Pro (alternatively Callas PDF Toolbox or similar) before printing. PDFs tend to produce less warnings with Affinity compared to CS6.
All true. My main point was that if you’re not worried about handover and what happens later in the pipeline then you can use whatevr you want. If there are other stakeholders to consider then sticking within the industry ecosystem is advised.
CS6 is almost 14 years past history. I’m not surprised it is throwing PDF errors if you are using up-to-date Acrobat. 
There are certain print design projects where Affinity, Canva or other options besides Adobe are going to run you into trouble. A lot of the higher end specialty print services would ask you for native files. Most only accept Adobe these days. I haven’t seen a Quark file in almost 15 years now (watch, I’ll get one tomorrow.) Most won’t even take CorelDraw even though it is a semi-standard in the sign industry. I broker a lot of stuff to weird print vendors all over the country and it’s the same thing, send Adobe files. These are things like true glass-on-steel porcelain, custom high-pressure laminate, powder coated process graphics… and most grand format print. Maybe you’ll never do them.
Or maybe you’ll end up on a project where you are part of a team that needs to collaborate and produce an interlocking design package, for instance where 3 or 4 production companies come together to install a single educational exhibit. Sure you could subscribe to Adobe for the duration, but you have to be up to speed to compete.
I’ve used Macs in publishing environments for decades — mostly Adobe products, and before InDesign, I used QuarkXPress. I haven’t used Affinity since it became part of Canva and they began offering it for free, so I’m referring to Affinity 2.0 rather than the current software.
Prior to Canva’s acquisition, I had two clients who specifically asked me to work in the Affinity Suite. I designed books and magazines for them. After a little getting used to it, Affinity worked just fine for me. For a while, when I’d switch back to Adobe CC, I missed some of Affinity’s features and considered switching to Affinity altogether. The purchase by Canva changed things because I saw a future with Canva that diverged from where I wanted to go.
All that considered, one mandatory app missing from the suite was Acrobat, which I view as essential. It could save, and even open PDFs (which was very handy), but the capabilities I grew to rely on just weren’t there in Affinity.
The other important point, as others have already mentioned, is that Affinity isn’t the norm, and printers might not want to deal with it or have much experience with it. If you have a printer that prefers PDFs, you’ll likely not run into problems. However, if you’re working with a printer that requests native files, they might not want your Affinity files.
I thought Affinity had a bright future before Canva bought it. I still think it has a future, but it’s clearly become a loss leader to draw designers into the broader Canva ecosystem, which doesn’t interest me.