PDF is the most popular portable document format nowadays and also not very easy to deal with. For viewing, it requires PDF reader app installed on your system or your browser should have built-in PDF reader. You can manage reading PDF documents either way. Finding a free PDF viewer on the internet is not a problem. But in case of editing PDFs you might find some difficulties finding free alternatives of expensive editors like Acrobat Reader and trust me they are not good at all. The web app PDFescape allows you to view and edit PDFs right from your browser and do many more things without spending a penny.

Supported extensions are .TIFF and .PDF and to view it you have to upload files to PDFescape. Files should be within 10 MB or 100 pages per file is allowed. Like other readers, you can use functions like rotate or zoom for comfortable viewing and use PDF thumbnail, bookmark, links for easy reading. Also you can search for particular keywords, select texts and copy PDF content to clipboards, download and print documents using this tool.

Using its free online PDF editor you can create a new PDF document from scratch or edit your existing PDF files. The toolbox consists of three tabs – Insert, Annotate and Page. You can add text to PDF, highlight some portion or use whiteout, arrows, lines, circle, box etc. to mark up the document. Inserting images, adding links or creating form fields can also be done using PDFescape. To create fillable forms, in the PDF editor you need to click on form field in the insert toolbox and then select the type of the form field. The online tool provides various options of field types like checkbox, text, radio, dropdown and list.

You can also publish PDF files using PDFescape. Users can see your PDF files using a link which will be provided once you buy publishing credits. You can set the tools using which your targeted customers can modify PDF files, useful in case of online survey. Registration is not necessary to use this tool and it’s free. But you will need it in case you need to access your files in future. Premium account costs $10 per year and it offers more storage and ad free version.

It does not need any additional tools or add-ons to run and doesn’t leave any watermark to the document after editing. However, there are a few things that I didn’t like. It should not have a page restriction of 100 pages per file. How come anybody know how much pages any file may contain before opening it? Size restriction is ok but page restriction is not acceptable. Another most important thing missing is the UNDO option in editor, which is a must have for all types of editor. Also, buying publishing credits seem too costly to me. See the chart and you will understand. If I have to pass a verdict, I feel the idea is good but this tool is not perfect yet, lot of improvements have to be done to make it useful in all sense.