Microsoft is pulling the plug on Publisher this October, making now the ideal time to explore a new graphic design and stay ahead of any potential workflow disruptions. The upside? There are plenty of user-friendly alternatives that can handle all your creative projects with ease.
Before diving into those options, it helps to understand what Publisher offers. The Windows-only app, which has long been part of the Microsoft 365 office suite, is a lightweight desktop publishing platform for non-designer office workers who need to create high-quality (but not professional-level) communication materials, such as flyers, internal documents, newsletters, and simple ads. It is popular for its familiarity, offline support, and simplicity. Publisher uses frames (boxes) as placeholders for text and images, making it much easier to move text and image blocks around than in Word.
Microsoft Publisher (Credit: Microsoft/PCMag)
That simplicity, however, comes with trade-offs. Publisher lacks advanced features such as document preflight and print packaging, robust typographic controls (including support for variable fonts), master and parent page management, and other professional publishing tools. It can also be challenging to find print providers willing to work with its native .pub files.
Still, much of Publisher’s appeal lies in its versatility. With that in mind, here are the best alternatives tailored to different types of users.
If You Want the Easiest Transition Possible
If you don’t want to learn how to use a new app or platform, the following recommendations will suffice. They should already be familiar if you do any sort of typical office or productivity work.
Microsoft PowerPoint
Microsoft PowerPoint (Credit: Microsoft/PCMag)
Hiding in plain sight is a decent, basic layout app. It’s true—I’ve set up publication templates in PowerPoint for clients’ staff members who were unhappy using anything other than Publisher or Word for layout, neither of which is a good fit for that task. You just need to change your vantage point a bit.
Consider setting up a document with 8.5-by-11-inch pages, rather than 16:9 ones. If you know how to use PowerPoint’s Master Slides and Master Layouts, then you have a powerful master and parent page system at hand. The app also offers better-than-basic typography controls, such as custom bullet settings, line and word spacing, and more. It’s easy to create templates for others to use and to collaborate with your team. And don’t forget the handy access to Microsoft Copilot, which can help spark your creativity. PowerPoint is a part of Microsoft 365.
Google Docs
Dictation in Google Docs (Credit: Google/PCMag)
I surprised myself while writing this article in Google Docs. It’s a great free alternative to Publisher, since it has most of the same capabilities and limitations. Additionally, you can create tables, dictate content, enjoy easy collaboration, export docs as PDFs, make custom bullet points, translate text, and even check your spelling and grammar. Its version history capability is also robust.
Beginner-Friendly Design Platforms
If Publisher’s simplicity was the primary reason you stuck with it over the years, don’t fret. For most community organizations, non-designers, and social media creators, the following apps are perfectly suitable and just as easy to use:
Adobe Express
Adobe Express (Credit: Adobe/PCMag)
Adobe Express offers a robust free version with high-quality fonts, professional photography tools, and sophisticated assets. Meanwhile, a paid subscription unlocks many goodies, such as 30 days’ worth of version history, 100GB of cloud storage, a larger allocation of monthly AI credits, and significantly more fonts, stock content, and templates. It isn’t quite as intuitive as Canva, but it strikes a nice balance between ease of use and polish for brand-keepers, freelancers, or small businesses that want better output quality without springing for a pro-level app.
Get Our Best Stories!
Your Daily Dose of Our Top Tech News
By clicking Sign Me Up, you confirm you are 16+ and agree to our Terms of Use and Privacy
Policy.
Thanks for signing up!
Your subscription has been confirmed. Keep an eye on your inbox!
Canva
Canva (Credit: Canva/PCMag)
Canva is more template-driven than Microsoft Designer. It offers a decent free version with lots of assets, while a paid subscription gets you additional tools, elements, features (such as a branding toolkit), and images. Think of Canva as a kitchen-sink-like app in which you can use customizable, predesigned templates to produce just about anything—flyers, presentations, websites, signs, social posts, and more. It makes it easy to get started, collaborate with others, organize your creations, and share your work.
Microsoft Designer
Microsoft Designer (Credit: Microsoft/PCMag)
Microsoft Designer is available for free or with extra AI allowances and storage via a Microsoft 365 subscription. It’s similar to Adobe Express and Canva in many ways, but it stands out for its prompt-first, AI-assisted design capabilities. As you begin typing your requirements and vision, Designer generates visuals and layout suggestions (much like templates)—it’s a good choice for quick creative iterations. However, it’s not ideal if you have requirements for specific branding color formulations and Pantone-matching, or if you need to produce print-ready files.
When You Need More Power and Precision
Professional design applications have a steeper learning curve because they are orders of magnitude more capable than standard desktop publishing apps. For complex layouts, elegant long-format publications, high-level photo editing, packaging design, and ultra-precise typesetting using professional OpenType and variable typefaces, you need a pro-level app.
Recommended by Our Editors
Affinity
Affinity (Credit: Affinity/PCMag)
Affinity is mid-to-high-tier, pro-level graphic design, layout, illustration, and vector editing software that’s easier to learn than Adobe InDesign. It’s entirely free, too.
Adobe InDesign
Adobe InDesign (Credit: Adobe)
Adobe InDesign is the industry-standard professional page layout and print design app for creating everything from brochures and posters to magazines, newspapers, and interactive ebooks. InDesign incorporates features, such as advanced typography capabilities, basic editing and importing of scalable vector graphics (SVG), and enhanced digital publishing and file export. Subscribers benefit from frequent updates that keep the software on the cutting edge of ever-evolving professional, social, and technical design trends. What’s more, individuals and teams can take advantage of Creative Cloud’s tight ecosystem of apps, which enables unsurpassed connectivity and collaboration among designers, authors, bosses, clients, and other creators.
Powerful Free and Open-Source Alternatives
Open-source apps are free for anyone to download and use. But, more importantly, they allow you to legally change or improve their underlying code and redistribute them. Behind most open-source projects are collaborative stewards within a community or organization—think non-profits, universities, and volunteers.
Scribus
Scribus (Credit: Scribus/PCMag)
Scribus is a desktop publishing and layout app that you can use to produce print-ready publications, such as booklets, brochures, magazines, and newsletters. It’s frame-based like Publisher, meaning it provides reasonable control over layouts. But it also includes color management features, export support for PDF and print formats, and typographic control.
Goodbye, Publisher—Hello, Better Options
Whatever app you choose, know that you’re not stuck with it forever. Any of the replacement solutions above is a great starting point if you eventually intend to learn pro-level apps, like those in Adobe’s Creative Cloud suite. You still have some time before Publisher is officially gone, but I think it’s wise to get ahead of the change and figure out which app makes the most sense for you and your team of designers. You might not even miss Publisher once you make the switch.
About Our Expert
Shelby Putnam Tupper
Contributor
Experience
Shelby Putnam Tupper is founder and creative director of Shelby Designs Inc., a small-but-mighty, full-service, customer-obsessed design consultancy. She graduated from Trinity College in Connecticut with a BS in biology and a minor in French. She did post-graduate work at the School of the Art Institute in Chicago, where she received honors in the field of Medical & Scientific Illustration. She grew her entrepreneurial and design legs during her tenure at Harrison Design Group in San Francisco.
Since its founding, Shelby Designs has received more than 100 local, national and international awards, has had their work published in books and top trade journals and exhibited in shows at The Palace of Fine Arts, The Masonic Auditorium and The SF Center for the Book. Outside the office, Shelby is a faceted artisan intoxicated by pre-1900s scientific illustration, engraving and typography. She also enjoys fiddling with her golden mean calipers and the number 1.618, and tinkers with computational graphics and Voronoi diagrams. She makes dimensional art from the pressroom’s recycled trimmings and fires up her torches to create jewelry from glass and steel. Shelby was born and raised in Oakland, where she lives with her husband, son and daughter, four cats, a gecko—and a tortoise named Darwin.
Latest By Shelby Putnam Tupper
Read Full Bio
