Publisher alternative in 2026

I recently bought Affinity Publisher 2.

It can NOT open Microsoft Publisher files. If you have saved any of your Publisher files to PDF, Affinity Publisher 2 can open those. For the relatively simple files I've tried, the conversion does very well.

If you have a lot of Microsoft Publisher files, you can convert them to the Affinity Publisher format online at https://markzportal.markzware.com/dashboard/home/ -- but this is NOT free ($39/month for 10 documents or 100 pages per month; $79/month for 50/500; $119/month for 100/1000; $159/mo for 250/2500). See https://youtu.be/w_gew8LWemA?feature=shared

Affinity Publisher 2 has more of a learning curve than I expected, but once you become familiar with it, I expect that you can do essentially everything that you could do with Publisher.

I have an older version of Office that included Publisher, but now that I have installed Office 2025 (which doesn't include Publisher), there are issues with installing older versions. I believe that these issues can be overcome, but I haven't looked into that in much depth yet.

Hi, I've been trying the trial version of Affinity Publisher right now. My initial impression is it's way more sophisticated then what I am wanting to replace MS Publisher. If you are into doing a lot of media integration it would be good, you can get it with their photo & designer programs as a package for $170.

I can tell you that Publisher DOES NOT move to Word (text only) and for some simple things Word is, well not user friendly, which is why I use Publisher so much. Inserting graphics on Word does not work unless I first put on Publisher AND THEN cut and paste into Word. I am very unhappy to see Publisher disappear. I have hundreds of files that will now be worthless.

I read that LibreOfficeSuite doesn't work well with Windows 11???

Agree, it will devalue it, I would have no reason to pay for it. I would however, pay for Publisher stand alone.