Fontstand

Note: The Fontstand application is listed as Freeware, however, please note that all the presented fonts can be rented for 30 days periods by paying 10% of their initial purchase price. Alternatively, users can try a total number of 10 fonts per day, for one-hour periods.

Even though we mainly take them for granted in our day to day lives, fonts are actually quite important as they are responsible for everything from readability, all the way up to a brand's image.

And, just like most web designers can testify, buying fonts is not exactly a cheap affair, especially if you're aiming for that professional look and feel.

That's exactly why you might be interested in giving Fontstand a quick run-through. As you may have guessed just by reading its name, this app provides you with an impressive collection of professional fonts from almost 50 international foundries and independent designers, 1257 at the time this review was written to be more exact.

However, this is not your typical font browser app. What makes the Fontstand service/app special is the fact that you can try-out any font for one hour, free of charge. Another aspect that sets it apart is the fact that fonts can be rented for monthly periods at a fraction of the purchase price (about 10% of the purchase price).

Even better, if you rent a specific font for a total of 12 months, it will be yours forever.

If everything sounds good, then you should know that the good news doesn't stop here as you can browse, try-out, and rent fonts within a very intuitive desktop client that's available for Windows and macOS alike.

The application boasts a modern-looking and user-friendly, black-themed GUI with a few self-explanatory sections as follows: My Library, Store, Discover, and Collections, the latter being the section that allows you to thoroughly organize fonts in custom subsections.

Last but not least, it's also worth considering the fact that the app allows you to share fonts with your team members or other collaborators for a small part of the rental price.

Taking everything into account, Fontstand is definitely a useful service with a praise-worthy, think-outside-the-box initiative that steps a bit beyond the traditional licensing model of other similar services.

As for the Fontstand Windows desktop app, well, it's exactly as you would expect from a service that aims to deliver both quantity and quality with their fonts. The app looks especially good in Windows 10, it's quite lightweight, and most importantly, it's very intuitive.