Nitro Pro 11 review: A worthy Acrobat alternative

One of the best-known PDF editors not named Acrobat, Nitro Pro continues to give that popular tool a run for its money.

In Nitro Pro 11, you’ll find everything you need in a business-ready PDF editor: a full slate of content editing tools, review and markup features to maintain version control when collaborating, form fill and signing capability, and security options including permissions, password protection, and data redaction. Nitro Pro 11 doesn’t support as many files formats as Acrobat Pro DC, but it can handle the most important ones, creating PDFs directly from Microsoft Office via toolbar integration and exporting PDFs into Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. It can also convert email messages, attachments, and folders to PDF with its Microsoft Outlook plugin.

In fact, Nitro Pro’s easy-to-use interface takes its cues from Microsoft Office’s ribbon design. Everything you need is just a tab away, whether you want to convert, review, edit, protect, or share your PDFs. Creating and editing PDFs is a breeze, and the extensive collaboration and annotation tools allow you to mark up documents with sticky notes, call outs, freehand drawings, and just about every other imaginable way. Nitro Pro is particularly adept at converting PDFs and scanned documents into searchable text while preserving the original formatting.

This review is part of our best PDF editors roundup. Go there to learn about our testing and how all the competitors performed. 

Michael Ansaldo/IDG

Online purchases of Nitro Pro include access to Nitro Cloud, which facilitates sharing of documents with collaborators for review and e-signatures and provides tools for tracking workflows. Nitro Pro also integrates with Dropbox, OneDrive, Box, and Google Drive, giving you anywhere access to your PDFs and other documents.

Currently, Nitro Pro does not have an official mobile app, but it is optimized to work on Windows tablets. Nitro Cloud also provides access to certain productivity and collaboration features, such as e-Signing, via a mobile browser.

Nitro Pro 11 is available for Windows and can be purchased online for up to 10 users for $160 per license. A Business version for 11 or more users adds several enterprise features but you have to contact Nitro’s sales team for pricing. Nitro offers a free 14-day trial.

Michael Ansaldo/IDG

Bottom line

For most uses, Nitro Pro 11 is as feature-rich and capable a PDF editor as Adobe Acrobat Pro DC. And the integration with popular cloud services is a nice bonus. For personal or professional use, Nitro Pro is a complete solution.