I went to the PDF website and you have a free trial period, then after that you get charged monthly. However, you can cancel at any time. I asked them and this is how they suggested I do it. Work on all your PDF files and get them just the way that you want them. 30 days should give you plenty of time to get them set up. Then, cancel the monthly, until you need to make a change, then reinstate for another 30 days, then cancel. I know that this may sound bad............but this is what they personally suggested for small businesses.

Good luck...hope the trial is still available to you.

Hi Tsvr,

A couple of thoughts about creating pdf files.

First, for years, we used "CutePDF", a freebie downloadable from CutePDF.com.  VERY convenient.

Once downloaded, it becomes a "printer", and if you then "print" a Word document - or anything else (a map, etc.) - you'll be prompted for a "printer", and instead of selecting your regular physical printer/device, just click on "CutePDF".  You will then get another prompt about naming the new pdf document, and which folder you want to put it in.

However, much to our astonishment, not too long ago, one of our "CutePDF"-created Rental Agreements came back altered:  In this case, the prospective renter had simply typed the name where the signature should go (in both of two places).  Aside from the fact that a typed name is NOT a signature... it was all too obvious that OTHER alterations could be happening, unbeknownst to us.  Not good!

Then we had someone else make an edit on the pdf Rental Agreement.

(Both of these were innocuous, but obviously someone could have made some more serious changes, and we probably would not have noticed.  That was of real concern.)

We did some checking, and found that pretty much anyone with the regular paid Adobe/pdf software could very easily edit a Word document that had been made into a pdf using CutePDF writer.

I contacted Adobe, and much to our surprise, they made the same suggestion mentioned above:  Why didn't we get the 30-day Trial, create whatever pdf files we wanted, and then cancel before the free trial was up.  (I was pretty amazed they would suggest this.  Rarely have we encountered such a helpful rep, and it seems this wasn't just that once, I guess.)

In our case, we frequently need to customize each Rental Agreement, so we couldn't use the "create it and then just keep using it for free".

So we bought the software.  At least it is a one-time purchase, not an annual license.

However, if you do this, keep in mind that there are OTHER programs out there that can be used to alter even "regular" pdf documents, although I'd expect it would be used for things with more financial value than altering a Rental Agreement, unless one happened across a hacker who also wanted a nice place to relax and hack ;-)

It also turned out that using the regular Adobe software creates a pdf file that is much smaller (in bytes, not physical size ;-) than what is created with CutePDF.  This mattered, as the filesize previously was very large, because we have photos in our Rental Agreement.  Occasionally someone had an email server that delayed or even blocked emails with attachments that were very large.  So that problem ended up solved.

If you've got a single Rental Agreement that can be used and reused, then doing the 30-day trial with the full Adobe software should be great.  And Adobe obviously doesn't mind!  Maybe they figure enough people will find it useful enough for other things once they try it, that they'll sell more software than if they didn't have this sort of promo.

CabinLady