Newsletter Design Software for Windows

Avanquest: Design & Print, Business Edition

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.

Nova Development: Print Artist Platinum

If you plan to print your newsletter on a color desktop printer, Print Artist has all kinds of templates for home, school, and business projects. It also creates PDF files and CD slideshows that play in a DVD player. Among the newsletter design-friendly features are the ability to link text boxes together (to flow text from one page to another), spellcheck, and dozens of photo cropping shapes. The fun features that dress up a newsletter design include the photo editor, thousands of graphics, and text effects.

Broderbund: The Print Shop

Newsletters are one type 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 to create a newsletter nameplate, and text and layout options such as master pages, rulers, guides, kerning, widow and orphan control, and text alignment controls. In addition to desktop printing, it exports projects to PDF.

The Print Shop is available in both Deluxe and Professional variations. The Professional version contains extras, such as royalty-free images and templates that you can use for business.

Scribus

This professional-quality desktop publishing software is feature-rich and free. It does just about anything the expensive pro tools do, including serving as quality newsletter design software. Scribus is a good choice if you need professional printing. However, 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 and export, basic drawing tools, and other professional-level features. It works similar to Adobe InDesign and QuarkXPress with text frames, floating palettes, and pull-down menus — and without the hefty price tag.

LibreOffice Draw

If you're looking for something that's simple to use and completely free of charge, LibreOffice Draw is an excellent option. LibreOffice Draw is part of the popular open source LibreOffice office suite for Windows, Mac, and Linux. When you install LibreOffice, you get Draw along with other office programs, including a word processor and slideshow program that make fantastic replacements for Word and PowerPoint.

LibreOffice is geared toward graphical office work, including charts and diagrams, but it's more than capable of quickly and easily creating newsletters. There are several free newsletter templates available for Draw.