Adobe InDesign
The most recommended of 6 desktop publishing software
People recommend it as the industry-standard layout tool for print work, with precise page control and output printers accept. Critics most often call it buggy and bloated.
People recommend it as the industry-standard layout tool for print work, with precise page control and output printers accept. Critics most often call it buggy and bloated.
36 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 16
- criticize it
- 20
- approval share
- 44%
Recommended in 8 of 13 months
- November 2025: not recommended
- December 2025: recommended
- January 2026: recommended
- February 2026: recommended
- March 2026: recommended
- April 2026: recommended
- May 2026: recommended
- June 2026: recommended
- July 2026: not recommended
- August 2026: not recommended
- September 2026: not recommended
- October 2026: recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Why it doesn’t carry the badge
- 16 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, met.
- 0.8 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, not met.
- Recommended in 8 of 13 monthsNeeds 4 or more, met.
The same three rules apply to every product, and the badge can’t be bought. How the badge works
What people say about it
The reasons people give, with the number of comments that give each one. Open a reason to read what they said.
Why people recommend it
Each mark is one comment
Industry-standard tool for print work
“If you want to get the best out of your printer during the pre-flight process, then you're absolutely want to be sending them a PDF file that came out of the Adobe toolset.”
Comment from 18 May 2026 in “Where Are the Vibecoded Photoshops?” “the printer's preflight team will be more willing (and able !) to help you if you are using industry-standard tools”
Comment from 8 Dec 2025 in “Microsoft increases Office 365 and Microsoft 365 license prices” “which I believe is an industry standard”
Comment from 25 Feb 2026 in “Justifying Text-Wrap: Pretty” Precise control over page layout
“Indesign was such a satisfying way to layout documents.”
Comment from 12 Dec 2025 in “Laying out the 404 Media zine” “wanted explicit control of the page”
Comment from 8 Mar 2026 in “Aldus PageMaker Founder Paul Brainerd Has Died” Needed for graphics-heavy layouts
“If it's graphics/presentation heavy, you most likely will need something like InDesign.”
Comment from 17 Jan 2026 in “Apple Creator Studio” “you really need InDesign to do that properly”
Comment from 10 Apr 2026 in “Intel 486 CPU announced April 10, 1989” Better than Word for layout
“I should have used Word and InDesign; that combo would have prevented so many headaches and been more stable.”
Comment from 7 May 2026 in “RaTeX: KaTeX-compatible LaTeX rendering engine in pure Rust” “I'd rather use Word (ugh) or InDesign for layout.”
Comment from 27 Jun 2026 in “WordStar: A Writer's Word Processor (1996)”
What people warn about
Each mark is one comment
Flaky, buggy, bloated over time
“InDesign is kind of flaky and will sometimes change layout or make other visual changes in response to apparently nothing at all.”
Comment from 26 May 2026 in “I Bypassed Adobe and Microsoft to Build a Git-Tracked Book Production Pipeline” “Lots of problems in Adobe Creative Cloud on Win 11 (primarily Photoshop, InDesign, Illustrator) in recent months too.”
Comment from 15 Jul 2026 in “Ask HN: Is it just me, or is software buggier across the board?” “InDesign's many, and I mean MANY, annoyances, weirdness, quirkiness, failures to follow other Adobe app standards”
Comment from 27 Aug 2026 in “Nebula Sans” - Comment from 13 Aug 2026 in “What Garbage Collection Costs”
Quirky interface and workflow
“InDesign has some powerful features, but it bogs you down more and the results feel less reusable.”
Comment from 5 Oct 2026 in “Typst 0.15 Contains Multitudes” “I much prefer the interface of Pixelmator and Pages to Photoshop and InDesign”
Comment from 21 Jul 2026 in “Apple has decided to compete for creativity app users” “given how fed up I was with InDesign and its quirks”
Comment from 12 Dec 2025 in “Laying out the 404 Media zine” - Comment from 29 Nov 2025 in “System 7 natively boots on the Mac mini G4”
Expensive subscription, online validation
“try to re-validate my subscription at that moment, without even a one-day workaround to no Internet connection”
Comment from 5 Oct 2026 in “ArtCraft Apps – open-source Adobe compatible suite written in Rust” “it forces them to use Photoshop or InDesign with expensive cloud subscription plans”
Comment from 12 Oct 2026 in “Attack of the Vibe Coded Photoshop Clones” “$264/year each for Illustrator, After Effects, Premiere, InDesign”
Comment from 19 Apr 2026 in “The creative software industry has declared war on Adobe” Error-prone layouts, weak EPUB output
“InDesign's EPUB output is horrifically terrible, especially if you're trying to use custom fonts/graphics for page headings.”
Comment from 26 May 2026 in “I Bypassed Adobe and Microsoft to Build a Git-Tracked Book Production Pipeline” “Traditional catalog design in InDesign is extremely prone to errors and inconsistencies”
Comment from 18 Apr 2026 in “Claude Design” “changing the page size will probably break the layout”
Comment from 11 Jun 2026 in “CSS: Unavoidable Bad Parts”
Other desktop publishing software people recommend
The four most recommended other desktop publishing software, with the same counts for each, so you can compare like for like. The tick on each bar marks the 2 to 1 line the badge needs.
| Product | Recommend | Criticize | Approval | Months | Owned | Badge |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Adobe InDesignThis page | 16 | 20 | 44% | 8 | — | — |
| Microsoft Publisher | 14 | 14 | 50% | 5 | — | — |
| Scribus | 8 | 5 | 62% | 6 | — | — |
| Affinity Publisher | 7 | 0 | 100% | 4 | — | — |
| Vellum | 6 | 1 | 86% | 4 | — | — |
What people said
36 of the 37 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“shifted the entire project to InDesign”
“not to mention Flash, InDesign etc”
“it forces them to use Photoshop or InDesign with expensive cloud subscription plans”
“theres just nothing as good as either”
“try to re-validate my subscription at that moment, without even a one-day workaround to no Internet connection”
“InDesign has some powerful features, but it bogs you down more and the results feel less reusable.”
“InDesign's many, and I mean MANY, annoyances, weirdness, quirkiness, failures to follow other Adobe app standards”
“InDesign itself gradually leaks memory and becomes more bloated the longer you use it in a single session”
“I much prefer the interface of Pixelmator and Pages to Photoshop and InDesign”
“Lots of problems in Adobe Creative Cloud on Win 11 (primarily Photoshop, InDesign, Illustrator) in recent months too.”
“I'd rather use Word (ugh) or InDesign for layout.”
“changing the page size will probably break the layout”
“Adobe Illustrator and InDesign were major pain points on the Windows side”
“I've found the auto-generated output not up to the standard I was after.”
“InDesign is kind of flaky and will sometimes change layout or make other visual changes in response to apparently nothing at all.”
“InDesign's EPUB output is horrifically terrible, especially if you're trying to use custom fonts/graphics for page headings.”
“magazine or newspaper or leaflets or brochures layout that can be profesionally made with Affinity or InDesign”
“the appropriate way to use an external document as master in InDesign is to use the Place command”
“If you want to get the best out of your printer during the pre-flight process, then you're absolutely want to be sending them a PDF file that came out of the Adobe toolset.”
“I should have used Word and InDesign; that combo would have prevented so many headaches and been more stable.”
“$264/year each for Illustrator, After Effects, Premiere, InDesign”
“Still, After Effect, Illustrator, Indesign are very good.”
“Traditional catalog design in InDesign is extremely prone to errors and inconsistencies”
“you really need InDesign to do that properly”
“wanted explicit control of the page”
“It couldn't do it. It would crash every time.”
“InDesign would expose only a subset.”
“which I believe is an industry standard”
“I might still have an InDesign Subscription if Adobe had just rolled all of Freehand's capabilities into it”
“If it's graphics/presentation heavy, you most likely will need something like InDesign.”
“The fact that the company behind the most powerful and popular creative software did this is unforgivable”
“Indesign was such a satisfying way to layout documents.”
“given how fed up I was with InDesign and its quirks”
“InDesign also includes Pantone and is the logical go to for anyone who truly cares about modern DTP”
“the printer's preflight team will be more willing (and able !) to help you if you are using industry-standard tools”
“like in early versions of InDesign, for instance”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.