Quaterio
Carbone
PDFShift
Pritset
DocuGenerate
Adobe InDesign
Canva
PDFMonkey
Split Fee
Unbench
Quaterio is a visual document editor that runs in the browser. Think InDesign for the web: you design multi page documents with real pagination, headers and footers, page numbers and brand styling, then export them as pixel perfect, print ready PDFs. There's no desktop software to install and no designer required.
You start from templates with variable placeholders, so one layout can produce hundreds of personalized documents: invoices, reports, certificates, contracts, proposals and brochures. It handles QR codes, barcodes, interactive form fields and CMYK output with trim marks and bleed for professional print. For teams that need automation, a REST API generates the same documents at scale from templates, HTML or Markdown, with batch generation and webhooks. Connectors pull live content from WordPress, Notion, Airtable, Shopify, HubSpot and other platforms, so documents stay in sync with your data.
It starts with a free tier, and paid tiers remove watermarks and unlock API access, CMS integrations and white label output.
Split Fee is a platform for UK recruitment agencies to collaborate on permanent placements.
Every agency has candidates they can't place and vacancies they can't fill. Another agency almost certainly has what you need โ but finding them, trusting them, and making the collaboration work has always been the hard part.
Split Fee solves this. Post your candidates and vacancies to the platform. Our matching algorithm finds opportunities across every agency on the network โ by skills, location, salary, and seniority. Candidate and client data stays anonymised until both sides agree to work together. When a placement is made, we handle the fee split and invoicing automatically.
No more posting in social media groups and hoping someone replies. No more sharing candidate details with strangers on trust alone. No more chasing invoices from agencies you barely know.
45% for you. 45% for them. 10% platform fee โ only when a placement is made.
Half of a placement fee is infinitely better than none of it.
Quaterio
Split FeeNo features have been listed yet.
Split Fee's answer:
A next-generation serverless platform, built for AWS.
Quaterio's answer
Most tools here pick one side. You either get a developer API that turns HTML into a PDF, or a simple template filler with a few merge fields. Quaterio is a real page layout editor that runs in your browser, closer to InDesign than to a PDF endpoint.
The core is a pagination engine that flows your content across actual pages. Set the page size, margins, headers, footers and page numbers, then watch text and images break across pages the way they would in print. You design visually and see the finished document, not a guess.
When you want to scale it, the same engine is available as a REST API. Design a template once, drop in variables, and generate thousands of documents individually or in batch. What you draw in the editor is what the API produces.
A few things competitors rarely combine:
โข True print output with CMYK, bleed, trim marks and outlined fonts, so it goes straight to a print shop
โข An org level brand kit so fonts, colors and headers stay consistent across every document
โข Smart placeholders including QR codes, barcodes and fillable PDF form fields, not just text merge
โข Privacy first by default, cookieless analytics and no Google trackers
We're honest about where others shine. If all you need is a quick HTML to PDF call, a pure API like DocRaptor or PDFShift is lighter to wire up. Quaterio is for teams who want to design the document, keep it on brand, and still automate it at scale.
Split Fee's answer:
Split Fee is the first purpose-built platform for split fee recruitment in the UK. Instead of relying on LinkedIn groups, WhatsApp messages, and manual agreements, agencies upload their candidates and vacancies and the platform automatically matches them across agencies.
Candidate identities are revealed gradually; anonymised at first, then progressively disclosed as both sides accept, so agencies can collaborate without the risk of circumvention.
Quaterio's answer
Pick Quaterio when you've outgrown the easy options but don't want the heavy ones.
Simple template fillers and HTML to PDF APIs are great until you need real page layout, content that flows across pages, consistent headers and footers, or print quality output. Desktop tools like InDesign do all of that beautifully, but they live on one designer's machine and can't turn a spreadsheet into 500 personalized documents on their own.
Quaterio sits in the middle on purpose:
Where competitors win: if you only ever need a one off HTML to PDF call, a pure API like DocRaptor or PDFShift is faster to wire up. If you're a print studio doing bespoke artwork, InDesign goes deeper on typography. Quaterio is the better choice when you want most of that power, on brand and automatable, without juggling separate tools.
Split Fee's answer:
Most "split fee networks" are just directories or social groups where agencies post and hope someone responds. Split Fee is an actual matching engine. It scores candidate-vacancy pairs, handles the legal agreements (non-circumvention, self-billing), automates invoicing and fee splits, and manages the entire placement lifecycle from match to payment. Everything that normally requires trust, phone calls, and spreadsheets is handled by the platform.
Quaterio's answer
Teams that produce branded documents regularly and need them to look designed, not generated.
That's marketing and content teams building reports, proposals, brochures and case studies. It's operations and finance teams turning data into invoices, quotes, certificates and statements at volume. And it's SaaS companies and agencies that want to offer polished PDFs to their own users without building a rendering stack from scratch.
The common thread is someone who cares how the page looks but doesn't want to open InDesign for every variation, and a developer or ops person who wants to automate the output from real data. Quaterio serves both in the same product, so design and automation don't get split across two teams and two tools.
It's a strong fit for small and mid sized teams who need design quality and scale without a dedicated prepress or print workflow.
Split Fee's answer:
UK recruitment agencies; from boutique firms with a handful of consultants to mid-sized agencies with specialist sector coverage. Any agency that has either strong candidates without the right vacancies, or client vacancies they can't fill from their own candidate pool. Split Fee turns those dormant assets into placements.
Quaterio's answer
Quaterio started from a gap that kept showing up. On one side you have powerful design tools that make beautiful pages but live on a single desktop and can't automate anything from your data. On the other you have PDF and document APIs that generate at scale but give you no real way to see or design the page. People kept bouncing between the two, designing in one place and rebuilding it as code in another, and losing fidelity every time.
We built Quaterio so the design and the automation are the same thing. You lay the document out visually, with real pages, headers, footers and brand styles, and that exact layout is what the API or batch run produces. One engine behind both, so the preview you approve is the document your customers receive.
Split Fee's answer:
Abbie, our founder, knew that although split fee arrangements have existed in recruitment for decades, the process has always been manual: find a partner agency, negotiate terms, trust them with your candidate data, chase invoices. Most agencies avoid it because the overhead and risk outweigh the reward. Abbie built Split Fee to remove that friction entirely, with automated matching, progressive identity disclosure, built-in legal agreements, and automated billing, making split placements as straightforward as direct ones.
Quaterio's answer
We're early and growing our first cohort of customers, so we'd rather describe who Quaterio is built for than name accounts we can't yet reference publicly. It's used by teams generating branded reports, invoices, certificates and marketing documents at scale.
Carbone - Automate the creation of your documents using your favorite editor and your JSON data. Carbone generates the document in any format!
Unbench - Beyond recruitment, Unbench became a dynamic matchmaking platform, efficiently connecting companies with top specialists.
PDFShift - Convert any HTML documents to high-fidelity PDF using a single POST request
Pritset - Generate production-ready PDFs from editable DOCX templates through a simple API.
DocuGenerate - PDF Generation API - Automated Document Generation
Adobe InDesign - Adobe InDesign is a desktop publishing software application.