When comparing Xara Designer Pro X vs Adobe Illustrator CC, the Slant community recommends Adobe Illustrator CC for most people. In the question“What are the best vector graphics editors?” Adobe Illustrator CC is ranked 5th while Xara Designer Pro X is ranked 10th.
Specs
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
Pros
Pro All-in-One suite
It has extensive built-in tools and features for all your design needs.
Pro 25000% zoom
Quick speed to zoom in and out with the mouse-wheel whilst editing.
Pro Integrated Google Fonts installer
Easily install fonts from Google Fonts repository to use in all your projects directly from the font interface.
Pro Xara's cloud integration
The new Xara Online Designer allows you to work on-the-go.
Pro Automatic backup and costumizable version control
Automatically backups your projects every few minutes and has version control, which allows you to always go back to an user-defined number of old versions of your files.
Pro Xara apps smooth integration
Smoothly switches between any Xara / most MAGIX apps like Xara 3D Maker, PhotoStory, MAGIX Video Edit, etc...
Pro Tutorials and Demos
Xara constantly publishes tutorials and always has updated demos of new features.
Pro Import from.. / Export to.. other graphical suites
You can easily import from and export to Adobe and Corel suites in their native file formats.
Pro Community friendly
Xara and MAGIX have a very close relationship with its user community.
Pro PDF-X export
Perfect PDF-X export for a better product design printing experience.
Pro Built-in Pixabay free image library
Search and download free images from Pixabay to add to your projects without ever leaving Xara Designer Pro.
Pro Plugin support
It recognizes and fully support plugins from Photoshop and others.
Pro Amazing integration with all other Adobe Software (PS, Ae, Id...)
Pro It's the industry standard
Pro Advanced tools
Pro Has all the vector tools you could dream of
Pro Flexible, non-intrusive interface
Small palette menus and the ability to save multiple menu layouts keep the UI out of the way.
Pro There are many tutorials on the internet
Pro Frequent updates
The CC subscription model means that major releases are no longer necessary, so existing users gain immediate access to new features.
Pro Easy to learn
It's easy to learn how to work with this software.
Cons
Con Lacks starting page size options and file creation wizard
It has a few and outdated templates for file creation and no wizard. So many times, you'll have to customize page sizes to your needs after creating a random A4 project.
Con Expensive
Con Subscription model
Illustrator CC requires a $19.99/mo (minimum) subscription to use. Adobe no longer sells previous versions of Illustrator.
Con Heavy use of CPU/RAM
Con Steep learning curve
Con Very slow
Even in very good computers Illustrator is very slow.
Con You never truly own this software
As soon as you stop paying you to lose access to the software. This should be illegal.
Con Install useless and intrusive software
When you install any Adobe product it also installs lots of useless and intrusive software and services.
It adds two services and up to three auto-starting software that runs when you start your operating system and keep running constantly. One is for auto-updating, others for "checking" if you are not a pirate and some others that seems to be just to collect information.
Con Imprecise coordinates
Oftentimes your 140 is 139.9997 and as a vector program it doesn't rely much on precision.
Con No proper selection mode
In a vector-art program, the critical selection mode is the one in which objects must be fully enclosed by the selection marquee to be selected. In the simple example shown here, selecting all the circles should merely require you to draw a selection rectangle around them. But in Illustrator, there's no way to avoid selecting other objects as well, even though they're not totally enclosed by the selection box. Year after year, Adobe fails to fix this bizarre oversight, making Illustrator a tedious pain to use.
Con Buggy
Software can be very buggy at times.