It's ridiculously easy to find a range of good quality, free, or inexpensive software for just about every business task you can imagine—with one possible exception—. If you want to publish a small business newsletter or magazine, your options initially appear limited, pricey, and complicated. Digging a bit deeper, however, you'll find options better suited for small business publishing. We've collected five newsletter publishing tools that range in price, operating system compatibility, and feature sets. Better yet, one of them is certainly bound to fit your budget. Small Business Publishing Software 1. Microsoft Publisher has been around for years but for Windows only.

You won’t find it in Microsoft Office on the Mac, and it isn't available online either. This latest version of Publisher runs on Windows 7, 8, and 8.1, but not Vista or XP. Publisher is a competent tool for creating newsletters and other multipage publications. You can save your publications as PDF files, which makes it easy to distribute them via email and on the Web, and it includes options for commercial printing, too. Figure 1: Microsoft Publisher includes lots of templates and advanced features, and it's a good all-round choice if you use Windows. The software provides plenty of templates that you can use to quick start your publication. You can also merge publications with an email mailing list, and Publisher supports master pages.

If you're familiar with other Microsoft products, then a lot of the Publisher interface and features will be already familiar to you. Pricing for Microsoft Publisher 2013: $109.99. InDesign is the big daddy of publication software, and it's available for both Mac and PC. It's a powerful publishing tool with the capability to produce large documents ranging from newsletters to ebooks and magazines, but it doesn't include templates—you'll need to find them elsewhere or build your own. InDesign comes with loads of features, and you can expect a correspondingly steep learning curve. You can professionally print the publications you create with InDesign, save them as PDF files, or export them in a range of ebook formats. Figure 2: Adobe's InDesign is a fully featured publishing tool for newsletter design.

If you're familiar with other Adobe products, such as Photoshop and Illustrator, then some of the InDesign interface will be familiar. If you need to produce a lot of high-quality content, InDesign is the program of choice. But if you need to create only a small number of in-house publications, then it's more software than you need. Pricing for Adobe InDesign CC2014: from $19.99 per month Single Application or included with a. Serif PagePlus is available for Windows only as both a free and for-fee version. The free version lacks the range of features and templates that you get with the paid version, and it can't save the publications you create with it as PDF files.

However, PagePlus is an easy program to learn and to use, and even the free version supports advanced features such as master pages and styles. Figure 3: Available in both free and premium versions, PagePlus is a sound newsletter publication tool for Windows users.

PagePlus makes a great all-round choice for creating good-looking newsletters and publications. One plus for people with older versions of Windows: it's compatible with Windows XP and Vista, unlike Microsoft Publisher and InDesign. Pricing for Serif PagePlus: free starter edition; PagePlus X8: $119.99. Scribus, a free open source desktop publishing application, runs on Mac OS X as well as on Windows and Linux. It includes templates to quick-start your publications and advanced features such as master pages, styles and scripts. Figure 4: Open source Scribus is a solid desktop publication tool well-suited for use in a cross-platform environment. You can export your Scribus publications as PDFs, as well as in files ready for professional printing.

If you're working in a cross-platform environment or on a Mac, then Scribus is well worth considering as an alternative to the more costly InDesign. Pricing for Scribus: Free. Lucidpress is unusual compared to the other publishing tools in this line up, because it runs online inside a browser—which makes it accessible to just about anyone. If you value aesthetics, then you'll like the stylish interface, and people new to publishing software will like that a panel of appropriate options appears whenever you click on an object. Lucidpress is free for personal use; the for-fee versions provide additional features for individuals; a team version accommodates up to 500 users and includes collaborative tools, shared templates and images, plus integration with Google Apps. Each version offers a 14-day free trial with no credit card required for signup. Lucidpress is a smart tool; it includes good help and tutorials and supports graphics, headers and footers, breakout boxes, and full-bleed text.

If you're looking for a good, easy, and free publishing tool, then Lucidpress is well worth considering. Figure 5: Lucidpress works inside a browser and is easy to use with lots of added features in its premium versions.

While it may look at first glance that the pickings are slim in the newsletter software market the reality is that there are good applications available and enough variety that you should be able to find something that will suit your skill level and pocket. Pricing for Lucidpress: free version; for-fee versions from $7.95 per month. Helen Bradley is a respected international journalist writing regularly for small business and computer publications in the USA, Canada, South Africa, UK and Australia. You can learn more about her at her Web site, Do you have a comment or question about this article or other small business topics in general? Speak out in the. Join the discussion today!

UNSURPASSED TYPOGRAPHY First-Class OpenType Controls We all know that OpenType fonts offer the best typography options such as proper small caps, real fractions, ligatures, tabular figures, stylistic sets suggested by font designers and much more. However, most applications hide typographic functionality offered by OpenType or make it almost impossible to apply. QuarkXPress 2018 is different: For the first time OpenType is treated as a first-class citizen.

Rather than hide the options in multiple submenus we make OpenType easier to use. With QuarkXPress 2018 you can now control your OpenType fonts the way you expect to. Colour Fonts Support For many years the changes in typography have been incremental rather than radicalthat is until colour fonts emerged. (Emoji icons on your phone are examples of colour fonts.) While browsers have supported colour fonts for years, print publications have ignored them until now: QuarkXPress 2018 is the first layout application that fully supports Colour Fonts. QuarkXPress supports Colour Fonts in SVG, SBIX and COLR formats. And you can use them in print, PDF and digital outputs.

To get a sense of how Colour Fonts work and how they will open up a broad new space for your creativity, check out this website. Upgraded Font Listing A good typeface can increase the reading pleasure of the viewer but even the best typefaces are not appropriate for every situation. Font listing has been overhauled in QuarkXPress 2018 to help you make the best typographic choices.

Font Family and available Font Styles (Roman, Bold, etc.) are now listed in two separate combinations. Additionally, font styles are mapped to the type styles buttons P/B/I in the palettes and dialog. Of course you can still turn off the WYSIWYG font listing for font family listing plus font styles are always listed in the default system font. Hyphenation Strictness Levels QuarkXPress has delivered quality hyphenation technology since version 6.5. It’s based on technology licensed from UB Dieckmann, considered by many to be the best hyphenation available on the market. But it gets better. In QuarkXPress 2018 you can choose between five hyphenation strictness levels.

You can hyphenate everywhere that is grammatically correct or e.g. Chose to only hyphenate compound words. You pick which strictness level is best for your publication. And of course, you can decide that for each individual paragraph if you choose. Hyphenation strictness levels are available for all languages supported by the QuarkXPress hyphenation engine, including English, French, German, Italian, Spanish and many more. PROFESSIONAL PRINT PUBLISHING Direct InDesign® IDML Import With more and more InDesign users switching to QuarkXPress, it was time to make it even easier to migrate. Of course, you can use existing QuarkXPress features to convert PDF files created in any application or even copy and paste InDesign objects into native QuarkXPress objects.

However, this only migrates the design elements and not style sheets and master pages, for example. The new native InDesign IDML Import in QuarkXPress 2018 converts InDesign IDML documents directly into the QuarkXPress format. Features, which InDesign offers and QuarkXPress does not, will not be converted.

Not all InDesign features are currently supported. Features where QuarkXPress offers superior functionality over InDesign may need rework to make use of the full capabilities of QuarkXPress. New PDF Print Engine Requirements for PDF workflows increase permanently. To keep up the pace, we implemented the best PDF technology available on the market – callas® pdfToolbox – which even contains the Adobe® PDF libraries. That means QuarkXPress 2018 users benefit from the highest quality PDF, PDF/X and PDF/A, driven by two of the best PDF technology providers. Now with leading PDF technology, QuarkXPress 2018 is the first layout application with the ability to create one single PDF/X-A file that complies with both the PDF/X-4 and PDF/A-2b standards. Combined with the new built-in JavaScript capabilities, the new PDF Print Engine opens up a broad new way for print production automation.

Open Source Desktop Publishing Software

Tagged/Accessible PDF Accessibility compliant PDFs are not just important but often mandatory. Many large corporates, governments suppliers are required by law to supply information published online in an accessible format. HTML5 is an obvious choice; often workflows require accessible PDFs.

The new PDF engine in QuarkXPress 2018 combined with new tools for accessibility make this possible. Even if you don’t need tagged PDFs for accessibility reasons, there are many benefits to understanding the text flow embedded within your PDFs.

Built-in JavaScript ES6+ based on V8 Scriptability and extensibility have always been core values of QuarkXPress. With QuarkXPress 2018 you can now write cross platform JavaScripts to automate repetitive tasks by accessing capabilities beyond the user interface. For example, you - or anyone with basic Java Scripting and HTML programming skills (HTML DOM manipulation) - can create unique features by accessing application and file system level commands, you can modify layout objects using document object model (DOM API). Unlike the competition, QuarkXPress 2018 uses an up-to-date version of JavaScript (ECMAScript ES6+). HTML5 Export Optimizations HTML5 Publications and ePub now export even more items as native HTML5 elements. This includes support for type styles (Outline, Shadow), Tables as HTML tables, Anchored text boxes, grouped boxes and Tables, non-solid rules, footnote separators and Index entries as Hyperlinks.

Desktop Publishing Apps For Mac Free

Digital Preview Improvements The following new HTML5 Preview options are available when authoring in QuarkXPress 2018: Page Preview, Layout Preview, Project Preview. Grouped Items Interactivity Add interactivity to groups e.g. Buttons, Animations, Audio & Video. STREAMLINED USER INTERFACE VERTICAL MEASUREMENT PALETTE QuarkXPress 2018 provides new clarity with a vertical measurement palette especially for use on wide and high-resolution monitors.

This powerful new floating palette provides access to all controls and attributes, is keyboard addressable and includes all previous shortcut keys (remember old modal CMD+M dialog?). It’s also scrollable with easy-to-read labels so you always know which measurements you are changing without guessing or having to mouse over the icon. Work even faster now in QuarkXPress 2018! (macOS only). MORE WISH LIST FEATURES Digital-to-Print Conversion (Digital First Workflow) QuarkXPress 2018 now allows duplication of Digital layouts to Print layouts.

This is powerful: Start with your digital design/publication first and then - in a second step - create a printable subset of it. Span Footnotes over Columns Footnotes can now be formatted to span across all columns of a text box. Spanning all columns is the default setting but you can turn it off in the Footnote Separator Style dialog. Different Border for each side Select a different border style on each side for all square or rectangular shaped boxes.

The new frame options are added to the main measurement palette. 10 to 1000% Print Scaling Print to device scaling is now allowed between 10% and 1000%. In previous versions, scaling was limited from 25% to 400%.

Note: The output device should be supported for larger paper size to verify. Flip Groups Flip grouped objects in one go retaining their relative position within the group.