Questions about editing and converting PDFs
Do my files get uploaded anywhere?
Mostly, no. 14 of the 21 tools run entirely inside your own browser — merging, splitting, compressing, page numbers, images, reading a scan, passwords, watermarking and redaction all happen on your machine, and the file never travels. The exceptions are the 6 office conversions (Word, PowerPoint, Excel and HTML to PDF, and PDF to Word or PDF/A). No browser contains an office suite, so those genuinely have to run on a server. Each tool says which kind it is on its own page, before you choose a file.
What happens to a file that does get sent to the server?
It is converted and deleted as soon as the answer has been sent back. It is not kept, not indexed, and not used for anything else. If that is still more than you want, every other tool on the site works without sending anything.
Do I need an account?
Almost never. 13 of the tools never ask who you are. An account is wanted twice: by the editor, because a free account gets one document taken all the way through and that has to be counted against somebody, and by Unlock, because removing the protection from a document is worth having a name against.
What does it cost?
14 tools are free and stay free — there is no trial on them and no watermark. Plus is $12 for three months or $43.99 for a year, and it unlocks the full editor and the 6 office conversions. There is no monthly plan, because the conversion service is rented by the month and a plan somebody takes for four weeks around a single conversion does not pay for it.
Can I really edit the text in a PDF?
Yes — the actual words on the page, in the document’s own typeface, rather than a text box laid over the top. A PDF has no paragraphs in it, only instructions to place glyphs, so the editor rebuilds the lines, lets you change them, and writes the page back out using the fonts already embedded in the file. A free account gets one document all the way through, export included.
Does it work on a phone?
Yes. The tools and the editor both work on a phone or tablet, in the browser, with nothing to install. Very large documents are the one thing to be careful of: the work happens on your own device, so a two-hundred-page scan will be slower on a phone than on a laptop.
Is there anything to install?
No. It is a website. There is no extension, no desktop app and no sign-up wall in front of the free tools — open the page, drop a file on it.
Is it complicated to use?
It is three steps: open the page for the thing you want, drop your file anywhere on it, press the button. There is no project to create first, no dialog to get through before you can choose a file, and no account for 13 of the tools. Each tool has a page of its own with one job on it, so nothing is buried in a menu — and the file can be dropped anywhere on the page rather than onto a small target.
Do I need to know anything about PDFs to use it?
No. Each tool does one thing and its page says what that thing is in a sentence. Where a choice genuinely changes the result — which pages to take out, what quality to compress to — you are asked in plain words, and the finished file is shown to you before you download it. Your original is never written over: what you get back is a new file, so there is nothing you can do here that cannot be undone by ignoring the result.
What happens to my documents when my plan ends?
Nothing is taken away or deleted. Projects live in your own browser’s storage, so they stay where they are. The 6 office conversions and the editor’s "any number of documents" stop; the free tools carry on as they always did.