Back in February 2024, Microsoft announced that its Publisher DTP (Desktop Publishing Solution) will go out of support in October 2026 and no longer be included in Microsoft 365 plans. It's not as if the company has a replacement lined up, but for those of who currently use it, this represents a major disappointment.
Microsoft Publisher was a bit of a lightweight compared to the likes of Quark, Aldus PageMaker or Adobe InDesign, but it was easy to use for non-DTP experts, including tech professionals who just wanted something simple for newsletters and other materials. Microsoft Word can do so much for creating documents, but lacks the page layout and graphical design features of Publisher.
In the announcement, Microsoft mentioned that "we are exploring modern ways to achieve common Publisher scenarios across applications like Microsoft Word, PowerPoint, and Designer." Designer is a web application that made its debut in 2023 and uses a version of Microsoft Copilot's AI to create images, greeting cards, icons and similar—but it has nothing to do with structured text (for that, you could use an older Microsoft product called Sway that lets you create reports, presentations, newsletters etc. and is available online or as a Windows 10 download).
With all that in mind, what are the alternatives to Publisher? Here are four that you might consider. These aren't the professional DTP systems like Adobe InDesign but easier to use systems: two commercial and two open-source.
Alternatives
Canva was first released in 2013 and has grown to over a 135 million users of the web and desktop apps. There's a free version plus Pro, Teams and Enterprise. If you're a Publisher user, then this is probably the replacement you want, thanks to its drag-and-drop functionality. The free version comes with 250,000 free templates and three million stock photos and graphics, making it easy to get started. The Pro version costs $120 a year and adds a lot more free photos, graphics, and other stuff such as premium design tools and AI features.
Scribus is free and also open source, but is much more of a traditional DTP program; you need to spend time to get comfortable with it. It is quite powerful with the usual DTP capabilities you'd expect: guides, layers, text flow and color management, for instance. Scribus supports many bitmap formats (including TIFF, JPEG, and PSD) and can import or directly open and edit vector drawings. It comes with professional type/image-setting features include CMYK colors and ICC color management. There's also a Python programmable scripting engine.
LibreOffice Draw, part of the LibreOffice suite, is also free and open source, and is the closest to Microsoft Publisher in terms of functionality. It also includes a converter to import the Publisher .pub files. I tried it with a 16-page newsletter that I'd previously created and it got about 90 percent of it correct. The main differences were some of the fonts came out the wrong size, but they could be manually adjusted. I tested on both Ubuntu and Windows versions to see if that made a difference, but both had the same flaws.
Affinity Publisher 2: This used to be called Serif and the firm has been around for over thirty years. However, their Affinity Publisher product is only five years old. It's a commercial product that is on sale with a 50 percent discount currently so it’s about $40; this is a one-off price, not an annual subscription like the Pro/Teams versions of Canva. This discount is possibly because they were bought by Canva a few months ago, but they say that all pricing and support will continue under Canva.
The blurb on the Affinity Publisher web site shows some very stylish layouts. AP2 is straightforward to use but has a lot of DTP features such as layers, Pantone support, end-to-end CMYK and ICC color management. You can also flow text along a path for a more stylish look.
What really impressed me was opening a PDF file generated by Microsoft Publisher and working on that. That's fine if it’s mostly text as you can convert imported blocks back to text but might not be as good for embedded graphics.
Conclusion
Having installed and tried each one, I don’t really need the full power of Scribus but AP2 is tempting. The AP2 gives you a free trial for six months and rather than rush into things, I’ll try that and Canva/LibreOffice-Draw and see which I like the most.
