Magento 2 PDF Customizers Comparison (Magestore vs Fooman)

In the following article, we compare the most popular Magento 2 extensions designed to help merchants create custom PDF documents: Magestore PDF Invoice Plus and Fooman PDF Customiser. The importance of these tools is obvious: they enable you to improve customer experience and provide the impression of a reliable company with the help of properly designed PDFs. We don’t think that default Magento 2 documents look bad, but there is room for improvement, and the Firebear team is here to help you decide what extension to choose. Note that both Magento 2 PDF extensions are designed to help you cope with local legal requirements related to invoices and other documents. So, is you are looking for creating a Magento 2 custom invoice and other sales-related documents, you’ve come to the right place.

 Download / Buy Magestore PDF Invoice Plus Magento 2 Extension (no longer available)

Download / Buy Fooman PDF Customiser Magento 2 Extension

Document Types

The first and the most important question that appears when it comes to the comparison of the core PDF customizers is what types of documents each one can modify?

Magestore PDF Invoice Plus allows you to customize the appearance of order, invoice, credit memo, shipment, and quote PDFs. With this Magento 2 PDF extension, you can specify general information and change the design of each document type.

As for Fooman PDF Customiser, it offers a similar approach: you adjust standard settings and then perform individual customizations. Document types available with this Magento 2 PDF module include invoice, shipment, credit memo, and order confirmation PDFs.

As you can see, both Magento 2 PDF modules offer core sales-related documents.

Layout Options

Another critical aspect of a good tool for customizing Magento 2 PDFs is a variety of layout and design options. So, which elements can be customized with the help of each extension?

The Magestore PDF Invoice Plus Magento 2 module lets you choose one of three paper sizes (letter, A4, or A5), portrait or landscape orientation, and select one of the two pre-made design templates.

 Choose Page Size:

Select a Design Template:

Select Orientation:

In its turn, the Fooman PDF Customiser Magento 2 extension allows customizing page margins (top, bottom, and side), choosing between two page sizes (A4 or letter) and portrait or landscape orientation, and setting any font size and style.

Select Page Size, Orientation, and Margins:

Choose a Font and Its Size:

As for the ready-made template designs, Fooman provides 4 different options:

While Magestore offers an additional document size, Fooman provides a broader set of customizations. But let’s see other differences.

Custom Elements

Most likely, you’d like to upgrade your Magento 2 custom invoice with new elements, such as barcodes, company logo, background images, etc. It becomes possible after installing one of our participants, but what options does each one provide?

Magestore PDF Invoice Plus provides the ability to add various data via the following three sections in the Configuration section: Business Information, Business Contact, and Additional Information. In the first one, you specify the company name, address, VAT number, VAT office, and business ID, as well as upload the company logo. Next, there is a section with business contacts that includes three fields: Email, Phone, and Fax. In Additional Information, you can add notes, terms & conditions, and footer (its height can be adjusted). Besides, with this Magento 2 PDF module, it is possible to show/hide barcode and select its type (on an Edit PDF Template screen).

Business Information, Contacts, & Additional Information:

 Barcode Configuration:

As for Fooman PDF Customiser, it enables you to add up to 4 footer blocks, a background image, store address, order comments, total weight, barcode (or display tracking number instead of it), logo (you can choose its placement), customer address, custom text, additional columns with any information, and integrated shipping/billing labels.

Footer Blocks:

Background Image, Store Address, Order Comments, and Total Weight:

Barcode Configuration:

Logo Settings:

Custom Text, Columns, & Integrated Labels:

Although it seems that Magestore offers more options, Fooman provides much wider opportunities when it comes to including elements in Magento 2 custom invoices. You can add all necessary information from new columns with product data and order comments to background images and footer blocks. Note that some missing fields can be covered with the help of footer blocks provided by the Magento 2 PDF extension.

Additional Features

Of course, each Magento 2 extension offers some unique additional features that we are listing below.

Magestore offers an advanced design editor that lets you customize PDF templates via the drag&drop interface. Unfortunately, the feature is not available in the demo version of the Magento 2 module, so we can’t describe it.

Another important aspect is related to the multilingual functionality of the Magestore PDF Invoice Plus Magento 2 extension. It supports 6 languages by default (English, French, Dutch, German, Italian, and Spanish), and you can easily add more.

Also, note that the Magestore Magento 2 PDF module heavily relies on variables for customizing each document type, which opens additional opportunities and makes your PDF document management more flexible.

In its turn, the Fooman PDF Customiser Magento 2 module provides the ability to change page titles of each document, automatically reduces PDF file size up to 90%, and enables opening PDFs in a new browser window.

As for advanced template design customization, it is possible via .phtml files. The process requires technical skills, but it is developer-friendly.

As you can see, both tools offer lots of useful additional features, and each one provides great opportunities when it comes to Magento 2 custom invoices.

Customized Documents

Magestore provides the following two examples of custom PDFs:

Documents customized with the Fooman’s solution might have the following appearance:

Price

Now, we should compare price tags of Magestore PDF Invoice Plus and Fooman PDF Customiser. While the first Magento 2 PDF extension costs $199, its competitor can be purchased for $149. Is the difference in $50 worth choosing Fooman?

Magestore PDF Invoice Plus vs. Fooman PDF Customiser

Final Words

Although the difference in prices can become a decisive factor when choosing a new Magento 2 extension, it’s not the only point that influences the final decision. While both Magento 2 PDF modules offer the same basic set of features and intuitive backend experience, Fooman Customiser provides deeper customizations out-of-the-box. However, if you want to get more colorful PDFs and fully leverage variables and WYSIWYG functionality, pay 50 extra bucks for the Magestore’s solution (unfortunately, it is only available as a part of an e-commerce suite now). As you can see, it’s not a problem to create a custom Magento 2 invoice by installing one of the described custom PDF solutions.

 Download / Buy Magestore PDF Invoice Plus Magento 2 Extension (no longer available)

Download / Buy Fooman PDF Customiser Magento 2 Extension