Newsletter Design Software for Windows

Aimed at businesses, Design & Print features templates for business cards, brochures, newsletters and other common business documents. Includes Print to PDF, text art, image effects, fonts, address book, and mail merge. 

Available as of 2010: Design & Print, Business Edition Version 6 for Windows

• Design & Print, Business Edition (Compare Prices)

If you'll be printing your newsletter to a color desktop printer, Print Artist has all kinds of templates for home, school, and business projects. It can also create PDF files and CD Slide Shows to play in a DVD player. Among the newsletter design friendly features are the ability to link text boxes together (good for flowing text from one page to another), spell-check, and dozens of photo cropping shapes. The fun features for dressing up your newsletter designs include the photo editor, thousands of graphics, and the text effects.

Available as of 2010: Print Artist Platinum 23 and Print Artist Gold 23 for Windows.

• Print Artist Platinum 23 (Compare Prices)
• Print Artist Various Versions (Compare Prices)

Newsletters are just one kind of template among the thousands of projects for home, school, and office found in The Print Shop. Some of the newsletter design software features include the advanced photo editing tools built in to the software, a Logo Creator you can use to create a great newsletter nameplate, and a fair sprinkling of text and layout options such as master pages, rulers, guides, kerning, widow & orphan control, and text alignment controls. In addition to desktop printing, it exports projects to PDF. The 2.0 series is newer than the 23 series but not necessarily an upgrade. It is a very different program with the same name. Check the features carefully when comparing the various versions of The Print Shop.

Available as of 2010: The Print Shop 23.1 Pro Publisher Deluxe, The Print Shop 23.1 Deluxe, The Print Shop 2.0 Professional,The Print Shop 2.0 Deluxe, The Print Shop 2.0, plus specialty editions for business cards, invoices, etc.

• The Print Shop 23 Deluxe (Buy Direct) | Pro Publisher Deluxe (Buy Direct)
• The Print Shop Various Versions (including for Mac) (Compare Prices)

Want something super simple? Choose from a dozen templates, type in some text, add your own photos then you can choose to print or email the completed newsletter to people in the built-in contact list. It'll even do the envelopes for mailing. There's a free trial version too. Purchase for download or order a CD from Spectrum Software.

Available as of 2010: EZ Photo Newsletter Creator Software for Windows

• EZ Photo Newsletter Creator (Company Store)

Here's low-cost ($20) newsletter design software. It may not have all the fun extras but it does handle the text layout requirements of newsletters, has basic graphics tools, and lots of text effects for creating a newsletter nameplate and decorative headlines for newsletters, fliers, and other desktop publishing projects. And it may be a little easier to learn to use than some more powerful programs.

Available as of 2010: Desktop Publisher Pro v. 1.4.4 for Windows

• Desktop Publishing Pro (Company Store)

This professional-quality desktop publishing software defies the old saying that "you get what you pay for" because it's feature-rich and free. It does just about anything the much more expensive pro tools do, including serving as quality newsletter design software. A good choice if you need professional printing, it doesn't have all the fun extras like graphics, fonts, and tons of templates. Scribus offers CMYK support, font embedding and sub-setting, PDF creation, EPS import/export, basic drawing tools, and other professional level features. It works in a fashion similar to Adobe InDesign and QuarkXPress with text frames, floating palettes, and pull-down menus -- and without the hefty price tag.

Available as of 2010: Scribus 1.3+ for Windows (and Mac, Linux)

 Overview of Scribus (About.com Linux)