--- title: "Affinity Designer Reviews, Pros and Cons - 2026 Software Advice" description: "Reviews of Affinity Designer. Learn how real users rate this software's ease-of-use, functionality, overall quality and customer support. Talk to our advisors to see if Affinity Designer is a good fit for you!" source_url: "https://www.softwareadvice.com/vector-graphics/affinity-designer-profile/reviews/" page_type: "reviews" language: "en" --- [Home](https://www.softwareadvice.com/) / [Graphic Design Software](https://www.softwareadvice.com/graphic-design/) / [Affinity Designer](https://www.softwareadvice.com/vector-graphics/affinity-designer-profile/) / Affinity Designer Reviews Software Advice offers objective insights based on verified user reviews and independent product and market research. When our advisors match you to a software provider, we may earn a referral fee. [Overview](https://www.softwareadvice.com/vector-graphics/affinity-designer-profile/) Reviews [Alternatives](https://www.softwareadvice.com/vector-graphics/affinity-designer-profile/alternatives/) # Affinity Designer User Reviews ## Reviews summary - Overall rating: 4.7/5 - Total reviews: 455 ### Secondary ratings - Ease of use: 4.4/5 - Customer support: 4.5/5 - Value for money: 4.8/5 - Functionality: 4.5/5 ### Rating distribution - 5 stars: 345 reviews (76%) - 4 stars: 99 reviews (22%) - 3 stars: 8 reviews (2%) - 2 stars: 3 reviews (1%) - 1 star: 0 reviews (0%) ### Most mentioned pros - Affinity Designer has been an excellent tool for creating professional graphics, logos, social media content, and print materials. - Regular updates and strong file compatibility make it a reliable choice for both personal and professional design work. - I use is as a freelance graphic designer since v.1 and the compatibility with adobe apps is pretty good, but even if you have trouble you can simple share PDF files that work fine. ### Most mentioned cons - Some features are missing compared to Illustrator, and compatibility with certain files can be tricky - Image sizing loses quality of the image for vectors - What I may like the least is the photo editing tool for correcting imperfections, as it can sometimes hinder the editing process of photos. ## Affinity Designer customer reviews Showing reviews 1-25 of 455 (page 1). ### Great alternative the Adobe Illustrator - Overall rating: 5/5 - Reviewer: Steve K. - Verified reviewer: Yes - Industry: Information Technology and Services - Company size: Self-Employed - Product usage: Used daily for more than 2 years - Reviewed: November 2021 - Review source details: This reviewer was invited by us to submit an honest review and offered a nominal incentive as a thank you. I use a lot, especially when designing stuff for softball t-shirts or for laser engraving. #### Ratings breakdown - Ease of use: 5/5 - Value for money: 5/5 - Customer support: 5/5 - Functionality: 5/5 #### Pros Great set of features and sensible pricing, updated regularly #### Cons Sometimes doesn't export how you'd expect in all formats #### Reasons for choosing Affinity Designer It works and got used to the workflow, works in the same fashion for all Affinity products (Photo, Publisher) #### Reasons for switching to Affinity Designer When they went cloud and subscription based, Affinity products are a one off fee --- ### Affinity Designer is an Excellent Must-Have Design Toolkit for any Designer/Artist/Developer - Overall rating: 5/5 - Reviewer: Kade M. - Verified reviewer: Yes - Industry: Computer Games - Company size: Self-Employed - Product usage: Used weekly for less than 12 months - Reviewed: January 2022 - Review source details: This reviewer was invited by us to submit an honest review and offered a nominal incentive as a thank you. So far I really love it, very easy to use and very fun to play with despite the confusion of trying to understand and learn this new design software which I feel is worth its value. #### Ratings breakdown - Ease of use: 4/5 - Value for money: 5/5 - Customer support: 5/5 - Functionality: 4/5 #### Pros I really love how easy it is to just jump right in and start using it with a lot of useful creation tools, profiles, and more. There is a lot of useful functions, brushes, text, designs, shapes and such crammed into it. #### Cons Not very friendly to 3d Artists and Game Developers in my opinion. The software is somewhat confusing compared to others so I am stuck having to learn something new since it doesn't follow traditional methods which might not be such a bad thing aside from the confusion of trying to use it more due to the different toolset profiles. It also appears to lack filters and affects so that means I would have to use, create, or go get another software to use alongside it and I was really hoping to have an all-in-one tool. This has left me with a design of getting Affinity Photo or going back to Krita. #### Reasons for switching to Affinity Designer Krita is good but I kept running into random crashing/lagging issues which left me with no choice but to use other software at times and I found it to be rather annoying for that reason after dealing with it constantly. --- ### Excellent replacement to Adobe Illustrator - Overall rating: 5/5 - Reviewer: Chris D. - Verified reviewer: Yes - Industry: Design - Company size: Self-Employed - Product usage: Used daily for less than 2 years - Reviewed: October 2019 - Review source details: This reviewer was invited by us to submit an honest review and offered a nominal incentive as a thank you. This app has become an invaluable tool in my workflow. #### Ratings breakdown - Ease of use: 4/5 - Value for money: 5/5 - Customer support: 5/5 - Functionality: 4/5 #### Pros This app is great for creating graphics, logos, icons, and shapes. It has a great type tool that can be used for artistic text or blocks of text. It offers graphics creation for vectors as well as raster graphics. #### Cons The way that layers are arranged or not arranged can be frustrating. It is merely a learning curve, though. --- ### Best Alternative for Adobe Illustrator - Overall rating: 5/5 - Reviewer: Abraham C. - Verified reviewer: Yes - Industry: Mining & Metals - Company size: 2-10 employees - Product usage: Used weekly for more than 2 years - Reviewed: October 2021 - Review source details: This reviewer was invited by us to submit an honest review and offered a nominal incentive as a thank you. Overall, I am very happy with this app because I can finally work on vectors and graphic designs without worrying about monthly fees. It is so cheap and powerful. This is definitely the best alternative for Adobe Illustrator. #### Ratings breakdown - Ease of use: 5/5 - Value for money: 5/5 - Customer support: 5/5 - Functionality: 5/5 #### Pros I was an avid user of Adobe Illustrator before they changed into a subscription model. When I learned about Affinity Designer, I grabbed it immediately without second thoughts. It works great and has all the features and tools I need for my work and business. You just have to pay once and you get all future updates for life! Also, their mobile app comes free after your purchase. How cool is that? The app can be used on desktops and/or tablets. I have tried it on my iPad Pro and it's really fun to use, though I'd still prefer working on a computer. The price is so cheap and hard to beat. I will never look back after using this software for almost 5 years. I am now a fan and I highly recommend this app. #### Cons There is nothing to dislike with this software. I never had any issues or crashes so far. I love it! #### Reasons for switching to Affinity Designer I made the switch because of pricing. Adobe charges monthly while in Affinity Designer, you just have to pay once and it is yours for life! Also, everything is pretty the same, the functionality and tools. Switching to this app is pretty straightforward. --- ### The best design software ever - Overall rating: 5/5 - Reviewer: Alexandre T. - Verified reviewer: Yes - Industry: Design - Company size: 2-10 employees - Product usage: Used daily for more than 2 years - Reviewed: December 2021 - Review source details: This review was submitted organically. No incentive was offered - Fast development for my customers - For any visit card design or else, it's very immersive #### Ratings breakdown - Ease of use: 5/5 - Value for money: 5/5 - Customer support: 5/5 - Functionality: 4/5 #### Pros I've been using affinity for about 3 years. It's soooo easy so great and mostly, SO QUICK ! I love designing with this software ! User experience is very cool, the customization is amazing. And the price it's like we give it to you ! I can only recommend that software ! #### Cons Sometimes, I need to go to Illustrator for some specific features such as color overall management or width modification. Anyway, there are a lot of innovative feature on Illustrator that i'd love to see on affinity. #### Reasons for choosing Affinity Designer Better UX Less expensive User friendly Immersive Beautiful Ease of use Very quick #### Reasons for switching to Affinity Designer For the features listed above --- ### Great Illustrator Alternative - Overall rating: 5/5 - Reviewer: Melissa S. - Verified reviewer: Yes - Industry: Non-Profit Organization Management - Company size: 11-50 employees - Product usage: Used monthly for less than 2 years - Reviewed: October 2022 - Review source details: This review was submitted organically. No incentive was offered When Adobe switched to subscription service I was very frustrated as I don't use Illustrator often enough to make it worth the cost...but I do occasionally need a full featured design program. I searched through many options, but finally settled on Affinity. It has been a great replacement and the one time purchase is a perfect solution for our company. If they had a replacement for Lightroom, I would be able to leave Adobe behind completely! #### Ratings breakdown - Ease of use: 5/5 - Value for money: 5/5 - Functionality: 5/5 #### Pros Affinity designer has all the priority features I look for in a design program. I hate switching to new software, but I found Affinity to be a fairly easy transition from Illustrator. Occasionally I can't find a tool I wanted in the spot I assumed it should be, but a quick search solves that problem. I love the way the tool bar is laid out and found all the main tools I wanted were easy to access. This is now my go to design program and I love that it is not a subscription based software. #### Cons While some designers fault Affinity for not having certain features I found that all of the vital features I needed are included. #### Reasons for switching to Affinity Designer We primarily switched because of the subscription pricing at Adobe. Illustrator is a great software, but as we don't use it on a daily basis we couldn't afford the service and started looking for an alternative. Honestly I wouldn't go back even if we could afford it. Affinity works great and does everything we need. --- ### A great vector creation tool for iPad users - Overall rating: 5/5 - Reviewer: Alan Gerardo S. - Verified reviewer: Yes - Industry: Marketing and Advertising - Company size: 2-10 employees - Product usage: Used daily for less than 12 months - Reviewed: July 2022 - Review source details: This reviewer was invited by us to submit an honest review and offered a nominal incentive as a thank you. It’s been great overall. One purchase and you jump right in without worrying about renewing payment plans. At first it was a bit of a shock having such a high quality app for a table because it does things that you might not expect it to to do while at the same time not behaving exactly how you would expect. However it’s more because it must compromise in some aspects due to the fact that it MUST take into account both touch only controls as well as mouse and keyboad. #### Ratings breakdown - Ease of use: 4/5 - Value for money: 5/5 - Functionality: 4/5 #### Pros -Purchase once and use forever. You don’t need a monthly subscription fee to access every feature -Accesible price, you don’t need to break the bank to purchase this app -Rich interface and tools #### Cons -Interface and interactions may be hit or miss since it’s software built for tablets and may not always play nice when using mouse and keyboard - Slight learning curve when coming from other options #### Reasons for switching to Affinity Designer I switched my main work station from an older macbook pro the a new 12.9” iPad pro and Adobe’s options are not very well optimized plus have sometime outrageously high prices for the quality they offer. --- ### How not love it? - Overall rating: 5/5 - Reviewer: Rogelio A. - Verified reviewer: Yes - Industry: Media Production - Company size: Self-Employed - Product usage: Used weekly for more than 2 years - Reviewed: March 2022 - Review source details: This review was submitted organically. No incentive was offered I have the whole suite working together: Designer, Photo, Publisher and it helps me stay on a competitive level against other businesses offering the same services. #### Ratings breakdown - Ease of use: 5/5 - Value for money: 5/5 - Customer support: 5/5 - Functionality: 5/5 #### Pros Affinity Designer is the best Adobe Illustrator alternative that will let you edit SVG, AI, EPS, PDF files with ease. The controls are very intuitive and easy to use, the results are way too good and so far, after all these years there's nothing I regret from using Affinity Designer If you buy a set of tools on the Serif store, you do not have to download them and install them on a certain folder, you just go into the panel, click, that's it. You have it ready to use and installed properly. #### Cons The only thing I cannot do in Affinity Designer so far is to get a PNG and trace it into a vector. For that, I have to use Inkspace but everything else: Affnity Designer. Another thing that you may feel limited is that you see templates for Illustrator everywhere but not for Designer. You can still open them but all the layers groups will be merged into a single giant group making you spend some time rearranging things. #### Reasons for switching to Affinity Designer Adobe is way too expensive for small businesses like mine --- ### Breath of fresh air for design products - Overall rating: 5/5 - Reviewer: Marcus S. - Verified reviewer: Yes - Industry: Marketing and Advertising - Company size: 2-10 employees - Product usage: Used daily for less than 2 years - Reviewed: June 2024 - Review source details: This review was submitted organically. No incentive was offered #### Ratings breakdown - Ease of use: 5/5 - Value for money: 5/5 - Customer support: 5/5 - Functionality: 5/5 #### Pros Full-featured suite that reminds me of the way Adobe products used to work prior to subscriptions and feature bloat. #### Cons Some features are still missing, but I’m hopeful they will arrive with the Canva merger. #### Reasons for switching to Affinity Designer Cost, ongoing frustration, feature requirements. --- ### A game changer - Overall rating: 5/5 - Reviewer: Ronald L. - Verified reviewer: Yes - Industry: Entertainment - Company size: 1001-5000 employees - Product usage: Used weekly for less than 6 months - Reviewed: January 2021 - Review source details: This reviewer was invited by us to submit an honest review and offered a nominal incentive as a thank you. I used to have a very specific workflow that involved the 2 most common image software on the market. These are expensive for the kind of tasks we were doing and a recurrent payment. Affinity Designer (and it's brother, Affinity Photo) replaced these with a one-time payment so we were able to get exactly the same results, same quality and same effiency. #### Ratings breakdown - Ease of use: 5/5 - Value for money: 5/5 - Functionality: 4/5 #### Pros It allows you to do all the advanced stuff you need to do. Of course, there are some industry-standards out there this software will be compared to. Affinity Designer will for sure save you money after you spend some time in the initial adaptation translating all your knowledge from other tools to it. It sounds scary but it isn't. Things are just called differently and some others just have a different shortcut, but all what you know should still apply. A very cool thing I saw is that the developers are always interacting with users and they do listen to the requests! It's very, very lightweight (v. 1.8.5 is less than 500mb). Updates happen frequently but it's up to you to install them. Also it's equally lightweight in terms of resources used when running. The industry standards require everytime more and more ram and cpu while Affinity Designer runs very smoothly on all low-mid range pcs. #### Cons The documentation isn't always super super clear. As it's an evolving sofware and features are being added or changed, this is really important. A couple of times i had to rely on youtubers to find how to do certain things. #### Reasons for switching to Affinity Designer Illustrator was too expensive for us and too heavy to run. We also had to run Photoshop at the same time which was a problem in terms of resources since we're now working from home so not everybody has specialized hardware at home to run these. --- ### The best alternative to illustrator - Overall rating: 5/5 - Reviewer: Nikolas K. - Verified reviewer: Yes - Industry: Graphic Design - Company size: Self-Employed - Product usage: Used daily for more than 2 years - Reviewed: November 2024 - Review source details: This reviewer was invited by us to submit an honest review and offered a nominal incentive as a thank you. Affinity designer is a very feature complete alternative to adobe illustrator, I feel that some tools are even better, and it is also much faster than illustrator. Unlike illustrator, designer is made from scratch and as for that utilize modern hardware much better and everything works much faster. I use is as a freelance graphic designer since v.1 and the compatibility with adobe apps is pretty good, but even if you have trouble you can simple share PDF files that work fine. For example if I need to outsource some printing I send a PDF that can be saved in a PDF standard (like PDF X-1a:2003) and nobody have ever complained about incompatibilities or anything. Devs are improving the app all the time adding new tools and features. Personally I do miss from illustrator the image trace tool and the newer AI tools, although since affinity is bought by Canva maybe the AI gap in tools will soon be eliminated. Also you buy once in a very reasonable price and you can have it for ever. The newer universal license is pure gold value as you can have all 3 affinity apps for all available platforms for the cost of few months of adobe subscription (although yeah adobe suite give you a wider arrange of apps, me as a graphic designer simple need the 3 basics illustrator/photoshop/indesign, why to pay every year for apps that I don't use?). All in all it have a 60 days trial, so you can try for yourself for free. Just arrange the workspace the same way you had it in illustrator and the transition will be very smooth. The only thing that works completely differently is the clipping mask, but it is not a big deal. #### Ratings breakdown - Ease of use: 5/5 - Value for money: 5/5 - Customer support: 5/5 - Functionality: 4/5 #### Pros Simple put, it is a very good and fast alternative to adobe illustrator with very competitive pricing and one off buy. #### Cons Technically speaking it is still on it's infancy, while it covers a lot of functions for a program that new, there are still things that are not yet implemented that I would love to have (although I have faith on the dev team that eventually will add everything that you may ever need). #### Reasons for switching to Affinity Designer Illustrator is slow, doesn't use my hardware and it cost a lot of money with the subscription, not to mention that I have to pay all the time or I lose access to the app. --- ### Capable "Owned" Replacements for Adobe Creative Cloud "Leased" Software - Overall rating: 5/5 - Reviewer: John G. - Verified reviewer: Yes - Industry: Consumer Services - Company size: 2-10 employees - Product usage: Used weekly for less than 2 years - Reviewed: January 2020 - Review source details: This reviewer was invited by us to submit an honest review and offered a nominal incentive as a thank you. I'm very pleased with my Affinity products. I have used Affinity Designer (Illustrator replacement) since shortly after it was released and was also an early adopter of Affinity Photo (Photoshop replacement). As of about four weeks ago, I relegated the Adobe CS6 apps to a legacy machine and in that time, I have found no reason to go back to them. (Note: I have never used Adobe CC, since it is leased. The apps that I moved to a legacy Mac was CS6.) The only feature that I wish Affinity would add is "background texture" in "effects". It would speed up my uses of effects. The only feature that I wish Affinity would improve is their "live" view of effects changes. There is a learning curve. Some things are more difficult that with comparable Adobe apps, but others are much easier. I'm a Photoshop guru and have not found anything I can do in Photoshop that I can't do in Affinity Photo. The same applies to Affinity Designer, but I'm not an Illustrator guru. All in all, I'm "extremely pleased" with the Affinity apps. They are respectable "owned" replacements for the comparable Adobe "leased" apps. I have bid adieu to Adobe and after more than a month, I've found no reason to look back. #### Ratings breakdown - Ease of use: 5/5 - Value for money: 5/5 - Customer support: 5/5 - Functionality: 4/5 #### Pros Both Affinity Photo & Affinity Designer are excellent and capable replacements for the Adobe CC packages they replace. But most of all, unlike the Adobe apps they replace, I "OWN" the Affinity apps. Although I don't use Affinity software every day, when I need it, I need it immediately. I cannot afford to be denied access to leased software, simply because some black hat hacked a license server that I have no control over. As a former white hat hacker and IT Director, I know the risks all too well. That's why I only use software that I "own". Big companies spend tons of money on security. But despite all the high-end security software and procedures, we've all heard about numerous Fortune 500 companies and even the US government getting hacked. Not only is there no guarantee that a license server won't be hacked, but such servers are major targets. By contrast, my computer is a minor target. Sure, I can still be hacked. But if that happens, I can restore everything from an on-site backup in an hour. OTOH, if a hacker gets into a license server and sets all licenses to "expired", it could take days or even weeks for a company with 100K+ licenses to correct the problem, during which time, the license holders are down. I "OWN" my Affinity software. It cannot be turned off. Also, Affinity does not force you to update to the latest version, as do certain leased apps. I typically delay updating any app till I've had a chance to read the blogs about the update. #### Cons The way effects handles background textures is quite different from Photoshop and Illustrator and there is a resultant learning curve. That said, you can, with just a little more effort, achieve an output that is almost identical to what came from the comparable Adobe app. In fact, once you learn how to manipulate the effects, you can some times create a better looking output than what can be produced with an Adobe app. There are some shortcut keys that are in Adobe apps, for which I have not yet found a comparable shortcut in the Affinity apps. OTOH, there are some shortcuts in the Affinity apps that are no available at all in the comparable Adobe products. The negatives with Affinity apps are very minor, compared to the positives of being an "owned" product. #### Reasons for choosing Affinity Designer Affinity Photo is easier to use than GIMP and has better support. Pixelmator Pro is not as capable as Affinity Photo. Corel has finally re-released Corel Draw on Mac, but it is far more expensive than Affinity Designer and offers nothing that Designer does not offer. #### Reasons for switching to Affinity Designer Replaced Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Illustrator - For some time, I have been using the no longer supported Adobe CS6 suite, in order to avoid being held hostage by the Adobe CC leasing scheme. Since Adobe CC was released, I was actively looking for a respectable replacement for Photoshop and Illustrator. When I found Affinity Designer, I was very excited. But Illustrator was a secondary tool for me. My primary tool was Photoshop and at that time, Affinity Photo was not available. But when Affinity Photo was released, I was elated. It was far more than I would have expected of a first release of a Photoshop competitor. In fact, it should not be called a Photoshop competitor. It's a Photoshop replacement, plain and simple. Moreover, with a few minor changes, it could soon be a Photoshop "Upgrade". --- ### Best Vector Design software in a Cheaper price - Overall rating: 4/5 - Reviewer: Asfak A. - Verified reviewer: Yes - Industry: Design - Company size: 11-50 employees - Product usage: Used weekly for more than 2 years - Reviewed: December 2021 - Review source details: This review was submitted organically. No incentive was offered Overall, I am happy with this product. It comes with a perceptual purchase plan. I can do my 80% of design in affinity designer. I wish they add features like shape builder tool, Image tracer soon. Then, It will be the best Adobe Illustrator Competitor. #### Ratings breakdown - Ease of use: 4/5 - Value for money: 5/5 - Customer support: 5/5 - Functionality: 3/5 #### Pros The interface is less complicated. Layer management is awesome. It supports non-destructive editing for both vector & pixel editing. It supports live preview while changing any properties like colour, font & effects of the design. #### Cons There is no image tracing option. Lacking of Shape builder tool, pattern tool, real vector brush tool made this software hard to recommend to others. #### Reasons for choosing Affinity Designer These alternatives were nearly prefect for me. But they weren't a prefect fit for my purpose. Although, affinity designer is not fully feature packed but is ticks all the boxes I want. #### Reasons for switching to Affinity Designer The affordability was the main reason to switch. Moreover, I never need the extra options provided by Adobe Illustrator. Inkscape was not capable of CMYK colour print. On the other hand, Affinity was the prefect match for me considering these issues. --- ### Affinity Designer - a great, cost-efficient alternative to Adobe Illustrator - Overall rating: 5/5 - Reviewer: Martin H. - Verified reviewer: Yes - Industry: Electrical/ Electronic Manufacturing - Company size: Self-Employed - Product usage: Used daily for less than 2 years - Reviewed: October 2022 - Review source details: This reviewer was invited by us to submit an honest review and offered a nominal incentive as a thank you. Everyday I use Affinity Designer to create social media artwork for my charity project. I used Affinity Designer each day to import clip-art from my Alibre Design Expert CAD software to create engineering and sales presentations. I have used Affinity Designer to import, edit PDF's and then output new PDFs. This software is a fantastic, low-cost, high-value tool that everyone should have in their toolbox. #### Ratings breakdown - Ease of use: 5/5 - Value for money: 5/5 - Customer support: 5/5 - Functionality: 5/5 #### Pros For many years I worked with the Adobe Suite tools, including Illustrator. Each year I had paid over $600 to rent these tools in a subscription. One day I discovered Affinity Designer. I put it through all the tests of art design functions I normally used Illustrator for. I was absolutely blown away that I could literally do everything I once did in Illustrator. The best part is, not only the price of Affinity Designer 1/12 that of Adobe Illustrator subscription, but I actually own Affinity Designer. I love this software. In fact, I went back and purchased all of their art tool lines: Affinity Photo, Publisher, and art-tool add-ons. I own all of these Affinity art tools at a fraction of the cost of one Adobe Suite subscription. #### Cons I have no negative comments about Affinity Designer. #### Reasons for choosing Affinity Designer Once I discovered Affinity Designer could do all my required tasks that I once performed in a much, more expensive Adobe Illustrator, I was immediately sold and purchased the software. #### Reasons for switching to Affinity Designer Once I discovered I could perform all the tasks I used to do in Adobe Illustrator, the price to own this softare was a no-brainer. Anyone who uses Adobe Illustrator should look closely at Affinity Designer. --- ### Best value for price in the industry - Overall rating: 5/5 - Reviewer: Sebastian J. - Verified reviewer: Yes - Industry: Design - Company size: Self-Employed - Product usage: Used daily for more than 2 years - Reviewed: January 2023 - Review source details: This reviewer was invited by us to submit an honest review and offered a nominal incentive as a thank you. Overall a very good experience and after using it for a while i cannot go back to Adobe Illustrator. #### Ratings breakdown - Ease of use: 5/5 - Value for money: 5/5 - Customer support: 5/5 - Functionality: 4/5 #### Pros It has a very competetive pricing for what it can do. It does not have a subscription model, which is very incommon nowadays. While it is still lacking behind on some features compared to others like Adobe Illustrator, it is catching up fast. #### Cons Some features that one is used to from Adobe Illustrator are missing. Hoping for the addition in a future update. #### Reasons for choosing Affinity Designer The overall suite and functionality. The concept of "personas" is very unique and potent. #### Reasons for switching to Affinity Designer Pricing, Compability with modern systems (MacOS, M1) --- ### Versatility and Easy to Learn - Overall rating: 5/5 - Reviewer: Deborah B. - Verified reviewer: Yes - Industry: Graphic Design - Company size: Self-Employed - Product usage: Used daily for less than 12 months - Reviewed: July 2022 - Review source details: This reviewer was invited by us to submit an honest review and offered a nominal incentive as a thank you. Time saving: - Repetitive tasks: There are some intuitive features I'm learning about, while I was creating a template for printable stickers, I discovered after one 'duplicate' was dragged under the last, the next one would go to the space under that one (with just using the duplicate again). Saving time as I learn more and more. #### Ratings breakdown - Ease of use: 5/5 - Value for money: 5/5 - Functionality: 5/5 #### Pros This is the easiest to learn in graphic design software. I like that I can edit parts of a design and link or embed the update. I have created book covers (for print), e-book templates, and recently a sticker series (convention logo sticker items for event items). It has helped me save time (revising templates instead of building from scratch with each one), and I was able to create exactly what the client wanted. I've also created marketing graphics for social and launches of books and media (for clients). I can create custom templates to save time with each project (and there are a lot of built in custom templates already). #### Cons The main thing I like the least is that the Affinity software is not 'one' integration. It is three different programs. This is not my favorite thing for a few reasons, but, mostly I wish they were one, because I have started at least three projects in the wrong one (of the three I have). #### Reasons for choosing Affinity Designer I chose Affinity over Adobe because of price, and over Krita because it seems to work best when I would drop a finished design into it and then adjust the CMYK (so I basically used GIMP and Krita together). It is easier to just use Affinity Designer (for designing and CMYK). #### Reasons for switching to Affinity Designer GIMP does not have true CMYK option (for printing services who still use CMYK Printers), and Adobe is expensive in comparison (Affinity has NO monthly fee ). --- ### Absolutely amazing product with mind-blowing price! - Overall rating: 5/5 - Reviewer: Tyler M. - Verified reviewer: Yes - Industry: Veterinary - Company size: 10000+ employees - Product usage: Used daily for more than 2 years - Reviewed: March 2022 - Review source details: This reviewer was invited by us to submit an honest review and offered a nominal incentive as a thank you. Wonderful. The quality is absolutely on par with Illustrator and works without a hitch on my Macbook Pro M1. No stutters or jitters. #### Ratings breakdown - Ease of use: 5/5 - Value for money: 5/5 - Functionality: 5/5 #### Pros I love Affinity Designer so much! I been using it on a daily basis for 5+ years now. The price of $50 is absolutely mind blowing for what this is able to do. It's comparable to other products in its category for 1/10th of the price. I have not had any instance of something that could be done in Illustrator that can't be done with Affinity. #### Cons The only thing about the product that I don't like is that the art board is not transparent. This becomes an issue because I am not able to view anything outside of the work area and unless I find it in the layers tab, I won't be able to locate anything I put on it. #### Reasons for switching to Affinity Designer The cost. I could not afford to purchase Illustrator and a monthly subscription wasn't feasible for me. One month of adobe for the same price as owning this amazing software. --- ### My essential UX, Vector Creating tool - Overall rating: 5/5 - Reviewer: Srdan P. - Verified reviewer: Yes - Industry: Apparel & Fashion - Company size: 2-10 employees - Product usage: Used daily for more than 2 years - Reviewed: June 2022 - Review source details: This reviewer was invited by us to submit an honest review and offered a nominal incentive as a thank you. I am very satisfied with the performance the look, style and usability of Affinity Designer I am also using the Affinity Photo and Publisher. #### Ratings breakdown - Ease of use: 5/5 - Value for money: 5/5 - Customer support: 5/5 - Functionality: 5/5 #### Pros It's built for Mac OS, an it works flawlessly with my M1 MacBook and my Dell 27" external screen. It has all the features and tools as Adobe Illustrator and then some more. I absolutely love it! #### Cons Nothing that I can think of at the moment, all is rainbows and smiles after few years of using it. #### Reasons for choosing Affinity Designer Pricing and plus I know the product for several years. #### Reasons for switching to Affinity Designer Seamless and without any regrets, wouldn't go back to Adobe in a million years. --- ### No need for Adobe Products - Overall rating: 5/5 - Reviewer: Tyler B. - Verified reviewer: Yes - Industry: Automotive - Company size: 11-50 employees - Product usage: Used daily for less than 2 years - Reviewed: November 2023 - Review source details: This review was submitted organically. No incentive was offered Never had any problems with the software of the company at all #### Ratings breakdown - Ease of use: 5/5 - Value for money: 5/5 - Customer support: 5/5 - Functionality: 5/5 #### Pros Get 99.9% of what you pay a gazillion dollars for Adobe products with AD. It is way more user-friendly, has all the same features for the most part and total cross-use with other affinity programs... and it's a one-time fee for the amazing software. #### Cons Every now and then you look for a feature you are used to with other platforms and its another key command or you have to dig for it a bit to get it done. a few features take a couple of extra steps that arent always necessary. #### Reasons for switching to Affinity Designer Pretty much the same program for 1/1000th of the costs --- ### Great tool - Overall rating: 5/5 - Reviewer: Tossoukpe J. - Verified reviewer: Yes - Industry: Events Services - Company size: 2-10 employees - Product usage: Used monthly for more than 2 years - Reviewed: June 2025 - Review source details: This reviewer was invited by us to submit an honest review and offered a nominal incentive as a thank you. Great tool, price is excellent and very competitive regarding the market and everything the software can do #### Ratings breakdown - Ease of use: 4/5 - Value for money: 5/5 - Customer support: 5/5 - Functionality: 5/5 #### Pros This is a powerful tool. I wa sinterested abut it because there was an offer for the entire Affinity Suite, and i really like this tool. I don't create that much design with edit but i edit a lot of them with it and it'es an excelelnt tool #### Cons Pretty hard to assimilate but as it shares a lot in common with Affinity Photo which is great when learning. --- ### A good Illustrator alternative, but far from perfect - Overall rating: 4/5 - Reviewer: Verified Reviewer - Verified reviewer: Yes - Industry: Design - Company size: Self-Employed - Product usage: Used monthly for more than 2 years - Reviewed: January 2021 - Review source details: This reviewer was invited by us to submit an honest review and offered a nominal incentive as a thank you. Overall, I recommend Designer, along with the other Affinity apps, but I have something of a love-hate relationship with them. I love that we have real alternative to Adobe's products. The tools are powerful, and in many areas they shine brighter than Adobe's tired old offerings. On the other hand, some basic usability issues seem to hang about forever. #### Ratings breakdown - Ease of use: 3/5 - Value for money: 5/5 - Functionality: 4/5 #### Pros It's almost impossible to judge any vector illustration software without drawing comparisons (excuse the pun) to Adobe Illustrator, and in many ways Affinity Designer compares very well. It certainly feels fast, as a modern, native Mac app should. And unlike Illustrator, you can buy the app for a very affordable one-time purchase—no monthly subscriptions. Affinity has done a great job of unifying (mostly) all their apps, and this has to be mentioned too—Designer exists as part of an ecosystem, which for many designers, makes it the first genuine alternative to Adobe's Creative Cloud. #### Cons I have not found the transition from Adobe apps to be an altogether easy one. In some part, that is just the nature of switching from tools that one has grown very familiar with over many years. But some of it goes beyond that. The Affinity apps (and Designer is no exception) exhibit some *interesting* UI behaviours. Some of the more frustrating ones: - poor windows management, making Separated Mode almost unusable - strange intermittent bugs like a background window somehow having focus (and receiving commands) - working with colour swatches (especially Pantone swatches and spot colours) is cumbersome - some non-destructive actions, like deselecting an object, are added to the undo/redo stack (making it impossible to redo other commands) - no option to globally turn off antialiasing of exported artwork - no info panel - no ability to save your workspaces - lots of other 'little' interface oddities, which aren't big in and of themselves, but which can contribute to a somewhat frustrating experience overall. Some of these issues have been raised over and over again on the user forums, but Affinity seems very slow to address them. --- ### Affinity Designer for the win!!!!!! - Overall rating: 5/5 - Reviewer: Ronald P. - Verified reviewer: Yes - Industry: Religious Institutions - Company size: 11-50 employees - Product usage: Used daily for more than 2 years - Reviewed: September 2022 - Review source details: This review was submitted organically. No incentive was offered Affinity Designer has been great for vector graphics designing for print and digital. With the seamless integration between Designer, Photo, & Publisher our materials look much cleaner. #### Ratings breakdown - Ease of use: 4/5 - Value for money: 5/5 - Customer support: 3/5 - Functionality: 5/5 #### Pros What do I like most about Affinity Designer? EVERYTHING!!! This software replaced an older version of Adobe Suite Desktop. No subscription plan and excellent updates were among the winning reason to switch. #### Cons If I had to pick something to not like, it would be that some of my presets and LUT functions could not be imported into Affinity. I do run into some minor issues with layers when importing AI files. #### Reasons for switching to Affinity Designer Cost and no subscription --- ### Best software for creating graphics and illustration for those who are new in this field - Overall rating: 5/5 - Reviewer: pranav s. - Verified reviewer: Yes - Industry: Animation - Company size: 2-10 employees - Product usage: Used daily for less than 12 months - Reviewed: April 2020 - Review source details: This review was submitted organically. No incentive was offered but my experience with affinity is very very positive and it's my first designer software and it really worked well for me. many many thanks to them. #### Ratings breakdown - Ease of use: 5/5 - Value for money: 5/5 - Customer support: 4/5 - Functionality: 4/5 #### Pros when i was starting my career as an animator, so i need a program in which i work to create vector designs and illustration to animate. so i have 2 options in front of me adobe illustrator which is very popular and affinity designer. i have seen the interface of both, and i find affinity designer very easy and simple to create these illustration. it is less confusing for beginners. affinity has a better interface than adobe illustrator. i like it's features and they provided 2 different sections like design persona and pixel persona. it is very helpful for me. yes using affinity i have started my career and now i am successfully running my firm. #### Cons there is nothing to dislike about but as the area which they need to focus is exporting and file compatibility with other software's. this is the only one thing which i find little hard to deal with using affinity as i am using adobe after effects for animations and only eps and png files are supported so it's increases the work while exporting and also there is one problem with export. when exporting and submitting to websites like shutterstock it is unapproved because of rasterization problem and if i select nothing will be rasterized then it will remove all the effects like if i have choosen the transparency effect so it will remove the effect and give me solid color. so that's something i can't figure out till now. --- ### A wonderful substitute for Adobe Illustrator - Overall rating: 5/5 - Reviewer: Heidi S. - Verified reviewer: Yes - Industry: Design - Company size: Self-Employed - Product usage: Used daily for less than 2 years - Reviewed: July 2018 - Review source details: This reviewer was invited by us to submit an honest review and offered a nominal incentive as a thank you. Awesome alternative to Adobe products, clean interface and makes my project flow much more efficient. #### Ratings breakdown - Ease of use: 4/5 - Value for money: 5/5 - Customer support: 5/5 - Functionality: 5/5 #### Pros I really like how intuitive the software is for designers who are familiar with any standard design platform. I've been using Serif products for 9 years now and have always been impressed with how affordable and functional their design software has always been. They made design accessible to anyone in a market where design software pricing made it out of reach for many struggling graphic artists and designers. This newest offering is, in my opinion, superior to the industry standard vector offering, Adobe Illustrator. At a base level Affinity Designer offers all of the functionality of it's competition, with more ease of use and a much more affordable rate. #### Cons As Affinity Designer is still fairly new there are some small bugs, however, the Affinity support team works hard to address those and update the software often. Also, while most of the features are super intuitive the more advanced offerings can be harder to figure out. More tutorials offered by the company and the design community would be beneficial to allow people to really get all of the value that they can. The software is capable of so much but learning about those advanced features can be frustrating. --- ### Excellent alternative to Adobe Illustrator - Overall rating: 5/5 - Reviewer: Leighton F. - Verified reviewer: Yes - Industry: Graphic Design - Company size: 2-10 employees - Product usage: Used weekly for more than 2 years - Reviewed: July 2021 - Review source details: This reviewer was invited by us to submit an honest review and offered a nominal incentive as a thank you. With the exception of a few missing features and performance issues that would be nice to have, the experience has been excellent. #### Ratings breakdown - Ease of use: 4/5 - Value for money: 5/5 - Customer support: 4/5 - Functionality: 4/5 #### Pros Affinity Designer is very affordable alternative that does most things as well as Adobe Illustrator (and a few things it does even better!) The UI is actually more intuitive than Illustrator in most ways, and those who come from Photoshop or Illustrator will have absolutely no problems adjusting to it. Affinity Designer is perfect for UI design, and illustration. #### Cons Unfortunately Affinity Designer is missing some of the more advanced features available in Illustrator, though none of these will be a deal-breaker for most users. The Affinity suite of apps also seems to have some (mostly non-critical) issues with memory management. Complex files can cause the software to become rather sluggish even on high-end computers. Adobe Illustrator is not immune to this, but this seems to happen with less complex files with Affinity Designer. ## More reviews [Next reviews](https://www.softwareadvice.com/vector-graphics/affinity-designer-profile/reviews/?page=2) --- Affinity Designer Reviews, Pros and Cons - 2026 Software Advice