--- description: Get detailed information about Scribus usability, features, price, benefits and disadvantages from verified user experiences. Read reviews and discover similar tools on Capterra United Arab Emirates. image: https://gdm-localsites-assets-gfprod.imgix.net/images/capterra/og_logo-e5a8c001ed0bd1bb922639230fcea71a.png?auto=format%2Cenhance%2Ccompress title: Scribus Price, Reviews & Ratings - Capterra United Arab Emirates 2026 --- Breadcrumb: [Home](/) > [Publishing and Subscriptions Software](/directory/20020/publishing-and-subscriptions/software) > [Scribus](/software/1012993/scribus) # Scribus Canonical: https://www.capterra.ae/software/1012993/scribus Page: 1 / 2\ Next: [Next page](https://www.capterra.ae/software/1012993/scribus?page=2) > An open-source desktop publishing solution that allows media firms to design documents for print publications. > > Verdict: Rated **4.4/5** by 19 users. Top-rated for **Likelihood to recommend**. ----- ## Quick Stats & Ratings | Metric | Rating | Detail | | **Overall** | **4.4/5** | 19 Reviews | | Ease of Use | 4.1/5 | Based on overall reviews | | Customer Support Software | 3.4/5 | Based on overall reviews | | Value for Money | 4.6/5 | Based on overall reviews | | Features | 4.2/5 | Based on overall reviews | | Recommendation percentage | 80% | (8/10 Likelihood to recommend) | ## About the vendor - **Company**: Scribus ## Commercial Context - **Pricing model**: (Free version available) - **Pricing Details**: Scribus is available to users for free - **Target Audience**: Self Employed, 2–10, 11–50, 51–200, 201–500 - **Deployment & Platforms**: Mac (Desktop), Windows (Desktop), Linux (Desktop) - **Supported Languages**: English - **Available Countries**: United States ## Features - Subscription Management Software ## Support Options - Email/Help Desk - Phone Support ## Category - [Publishing and Subscriptions Software](https://www.capterra.ae/directory/20020/publishing-and-subscriptions/software) ## Alternatives 1. [Yumpu](https://www.capterra.ae/software/210366/yumpu) — 4.4/5 (25 reviews) 2. [Naviga](https://www.capterra.ae/software/187953/naviga) — 4.0/5 (1 reviews) 3. [Publishers Assistant Software](https://www.capterra.ae/software/65249/publishers-assistant-software) — 5.0/5 (2 reviews) 4. [P2P Publication Management](https://www.capterra.ae/software/123152/p2p-publication-management) — 4.7/5 (9 reviews) 5. [PUB+](https://www.capterra.ae/software/141764/pub) — 5.0/5 (2 reviews) ## Reviews ### "It does not get much better then this" — 5.0/5 > **Joseph** | *25 July 2025* | Accounting Software | Recommendation rating: 8.0/10 > > **Pros**: value for money, customer support, ease of use, web site creation. I have yet to use it every day but I am hoping to make a web page with it. > > **Cons**: It was hard to find on the net and I miss ms publisher. I have yet to use it every day but I am hoping to make a web page with it. > > I h ave experience as a typesetter. So I used to use PageMaker but You can not get page maker any more and Microsoft has finished trying to sell Publisher ----- ### "The best open source alternative of Adobe InDesign" — 5.0/5 > **Md Fateh Ali** | *20 June 2022* | Design | Recommendation rating: 10.0/10 > > **Pros**: Scribus is one of the best desktop publishing software in the publishing and print media and it's totally free to everyone. The user interface of this software is pretty cool and very lightweight. It supports multi-cross platforms like windows, Linux, and macOS. So, you can install this software on multiple computers. It has many professional features, such as CYMK support, image packaging, and a wonderful PDF export feature, highly valued by professional printing services. > > **Cons**: One of the big issues of Scribus is its open-source software. So it didn't get updated regularly. In contrast to Adobe InDesign, Scribus lacks advanced features and functionality. > > It's a great tool to create books and magazine designs. It allows me to import a large number of pages and work on them easily. As open-source software, it works wonderfully, but if you need advanced and professional work, you consider others. I will recommend others to try it before you buy adobe InDesign or Affinity Publisher. I hope you will love this. ----- ### "Too many bugs. Unusable." — 1.0/5 > **Debbie** | *8 February 2024* | Marketing & Advertising | Recommendation rating: 1.0/10 > > **Pros**: None. I used to use Scribus, now it's unusable with text flow bugs. > > **Cons**: Type won't flow properly in a text frame. Words are separated with no logic or properly placed hyphen when a sentence comes to the end of a text frame. I've spent way too much time researching and trying to "fix" this. The work around is to force a return where you want the sentence to break. It's basically unusable. This is NOT the free trial, I have paid for this. I'm finding other people are having this issue. I have since read that it won't work on a Mac M1. That information should have been listed prior to me paying for this. I'll have to go back to paying $$$$ for InDesign. At least I know that'll work\! > > This product used to be decent. Now it's unusable and I paid for this. Terrible. ----- ### "Scribus - Great open-source tool for preparing small to medium sized publications." — 4.0/5 > **James** | *18 October 2023* | Libraries | Recommendation rating: 7.0/10 > > **Pros**: The open source licensing allows us to use this on each of our staff computers for free, plus it can be installed on laptops or home computers for the staff to use outside of the office. It is powerful and flexible enough to do the simple brochures and booklets that we need here at the library. It also gives me a higher confidence that years down the road the files will still be useable and the software still available. I can't say the same for some older archive files we have that were created in proprietary software that either no longer exists or is prohibitively expensive. > > **Cons**: The features we need are present, but the user interface can still be a little bit rough compared to low to mid-range commercial Desktop Publishing software. Some of the staff are still most comfortable using Microsoft Publisher for their tasks. > > I actually use Inkscape for graphics layout work for posters and flyers. When the project requires multi page layouts and more complex text handling Scribus has fit our needs well. I spent 12 years as a part-time technology teacher in a small private school. We used scribus each year to design and then publish the school's yearbook, so it can handle quite complex tasks. In my current position I handle most of the graphics design and publishing tasks for our small public library. I work from both home and onsite so the flexible licensing is very important to me. Our budget can't match those of larger libraries so the cost savings of using open-source helps us direct finances to more important needs at the library. ----- ### "Have been happy using the 1.5 branch for years" — 5.0/5 > **Nick** | *5 October 2023* | Publishing | Recommendation rating: 10.0/10 > > **Pros**: Currently using Scribus 1.5.8 (in Ubuntu), it supports everything I need to create high quality Begriddled puzzle books, as PDFs suitable for KDP and Ingramspark, etc, and publishing quality PNG and JPEG puzzle images (that include text) that can be included as-is in magazines,etc, or used on products.Although currently 1.5 is considered the development branch, and 1.4 the stable one, the reality is that 1.5 is better than 1.4, is very stable, and suitable for production use (as I have been using it) for years.More recently I have started to use the python API to create documents (including books) programmatically rather than do it manually via the Scribus GUI. Although I found this not so easy at first, once I found decent 1.5 documentation (I use impagina.org/scribus-scripter-api) and got up to speed with it, it opened up a whole new dimension of automation possibilities. It is not perfect, but scripting in Python 3, I have so far always been able to work around limitations. > > **Cons**: The Python API is not well documented and there are not many good script examples. Most examples you can find are outdated and simply don't work now because they use Python 2 instead of 3, or were created for Scribus 1.4.Some things that are straightforward in the GUI require some trickery to automate. Eg I found rotating an object around its centre, easy to do in the GUI, quite a challenge. But having got that working with the help of ChatGPT to develop an algorithm to do it using only the features provided by the API, I won't have to write that function again.Some issues have to be worked around. The only way I found to make some changes "stick" and be properly visible in the GUI was to save and re-open the document. This is straightforward in the API, but it took me some time to discover this worked as a workaround.But the good thing is that once you've solved an issue and incorporated that in your scripting, you can re-use that without having to solve the problem again.Another example was wanting individual pages in a document to have different dimensions. It's an unusual thing to want to do, but it was useful for me to be able to generate differently sized images for a puzzle and its solution. You can do it in the GUI. The way I found to do it programmatically was to create a new document with the new size, and import that back in to the main document. It works well, but you shouldn't have to work around limitations in this way. > > Scribus, and especially using the Python API, is enabling me to create publishing-quality puzzle images and puzzle books (though I still have some work to do on that) very efficiently and consistently.There are definitely hurdles to overcome using the API, but in the end it is that API that is enabling me to scale my puzzle creation business in a way that would not be viable using any interactive desktop publishing GUI simply because of the time it takes doing stuff with mouse clicks and manual fiddling. ----- Page: 1 / 2\ Next: [Next page](https://www.capterra.ae/software/1012993/scribus?page=2) ## Links - [View on Capterra](https://www.capterra.ae/software/1012993/scribus) ## This page is available in the following languages | Locale | URL | | de | | | de-AT | | | de-CH | | | en | | | en-AE | | | en-AU | | | en-CA | | | en-GB | | | en-IE | | | en-IL | | | en-IN | | | en-NZ | | | en-SG | | | en-ZA | | ----- ## Structured Data