Sign Making Software Buying Guide

How to pick sign making software

People shop for the machine and then buy software with whatever money is left. That is backwards.

Your cutter and your printer are machines on the end of a cable. The software is where you actually work. It is where you design. It is where cut lines come from. It is where shapes get packed onto the roll to save vinyl, where printed marks are made, and where jobs line up to run one after another. When a shop hits a ceiling, the ceiling is almost always the software.

This guide walks the choice one step at a time. In a hurry? See all sign making software or call 903-462-7700.

Step 1: Decide what the software has to do

There are three jobs. Find yours. This one answer rules out most of the products on the market.

Write your answer down before you read any further. Buying a design-only program when you need to drive a printer is the single most common and most expensive mistake in this category. It is also the easiest one to avoid.

Step 2: Know the two real choices

In this trade there are two serious options. Everything else is a general art program that was never built to run a cutter.

Vinyl Express LXi is ours. We build it, we write the help articles for it, and we answer the phone about it.

Flexi, made by SAi, is the other one. It has been around for decades and plenty of good shops run it.

Both design, both cut, both print. The real differences are how you pay for them, what computer they run on, and who picks up the phone when something breaks.

Step 3: Understand how each one is sold

This is the part most people miss until the invoice shows up, so read it before you compare prices.

Flexi is rented, not owned

SAi changed how Flexi is sold. Their own listing spells it out. Flexi comes as a monthly subscription. You can go month to month, or commit to a year. Either way you pay monthly. Or you buy a term license good for one, two or three years. When the term ends, you renew.

That is not a knock on Flexi. Lots of software works this way now. A small monthly payment is easier on a new shop than one big bill. Just go in knowing it is a bill that never stops.

LXi is bought once

You buy the version you need and it is yours. There is no monthly charge and no renewal date. Over five or six years that difference gets large.

Do the math on your own numbers before you decide. Take the monthly Flexi payment, multiply by 60 for five years, and set it next to the one-time LXi price on the product page. Then decide which one you would rather sign.

Step 4: Check your computer first

Mac users, read this before you buy any machine or any software. This trips up more people than anything else on this page.

LXi runs on Windows, including Windows 10 and Windows 11. It does not run on a Mac.

Flexi is split. Flexi DESIGN runs on Mac and on Windows. But read SAi's own note on it closely. Flexi DESIGN is design only. It does not include Production Manager. Production Manager is the part that drives your machines. So on a Mac you can draw the job. You cannot output it.

That leaves Mac shops three honest paths.

1. Design on the Mac, output from a Windows PC. A cheap Windows machine next to the cutter is a normal setup and it works.
2. Move the whole thing to Windows. Simplest to support, and the one we recommend most often.
3. Run Windows on the Mac through virtual machine software. This can work, but you are now troubleshooting two operating systems every time a cutter driver acts up.

Start with Mac options for vinyl sign making, then call us. We would rather tell you this now than after you have bought a cutter you cannot drive.

Step 5: Pick your LXi version

LXi 26 is the current version. It was rewritten from the ground up with a new interface. There are three versions, so you buy the capability you need instead of the top of the range.

Current prices are on each product page. See all three.

Two things about RIP Design worth knowing

It includes the cutting. Older versions made you drop down to a lower version to cut plain vinyl. RIP Design 26 prints, contour cuts and cuts vinyl on one license. If you were running two programs to cover both jobs, you are not any more.

It ships with our printer profiles. RIP Design comes loaded with custom ICC profiles built for PrismJET printers, PrismJET ink and PrismJET media. Color profiles are the difference between color that matches and color you argue about, and building your own from scratch is a slow job. If you run a PrismJET, this is already done for you.

Which cutters and printers does it drive?

Expert drives Vinyl Express and MUSE cutters plus dozens of others. RIP Design adds wide-format printers and drives Vinyl Express, Roland, Graphtec and GCC cutters.

Do this before you buy either one: tell us the exact make and model of every machine you own. We will confirm it is supported. Do not assume, and do not go by the brand name alone, because support is by model.

Step 6: Try it before you pay for it

Every version of LXi 26 comes with a 15 day free trial. Use it. LXi 26 is new from the ground up, so even long-time LXi users should take it for a drive first.

Here is what to actually do with those 15 days. Do not just click around.

1. Install your cutter driver and cut something real. Not the sample file. A job you have already run, so you know what good looks like.
2. Import your own artwork. Bring in the messiest customer file you have. That is the real test.
3. Run a print and cut job if you have a printer, and check that the cutter finds the marks.
4. Load up a queue and see how it handles a stack of jobs instead of one.

Download the LXi 26 trial and get the support resources.

Step 7: If you are switching from Flexi

The thing that stops most people from switching is the fear of losing years of artwork. That fear is the right instinct, and here is the answer to it.

LXi opens Flexi .fs files. Your old jobs come with you. You are not rebuilding a library of past work to change software, which removes most of the pain and most of the risk.

Two more things that make a switch easier than people expect. Your existing cutter almost certainly has a driver in LXi already, so you are not buying a machine to change software. And you can run the 15 day trial alongside Flexi while your subscription is still live, so you are never without a working shop.

A word of honesty about staying put. If you know Flexi cold, your whole crew knows it, and the subscription is not hurting you, staying is a legitimate decision. Retraining a shop costs real time. Just know LXi will read your files whenever you change your mind.

Step 8: Ask who supports it

This never shows up on a feature list. It is also the thing you will care about most at four o'clock on a Friday.

When you buy sign software from a general reseller, your help comes from somebody else's phone line. They sold you a box. They cannot tell you why your cutter is offset a quarter inch.

LXi is our own software, so support comes from us. Our help library covers the real problems, not the sales pitch:

Video tutorials and training · cutting your first job · reinstalling or updating LXi · stuck in a license loop · job queue problems · adding fonts · packing shapes tight to save vinyl · shrinking page margins · numbering a set automatically · customer art approval

Still running an older version? See help for discontinued LXi versions and LXi 22.

The Flexi lineup, as it stands now

If you are comparing, here is what SAi currently sells. Note that the old perpetual FlexiSIGN and FlexiPRINT versions 19, 21 and 22 are gone.

• Flexi Complete is the full package. Design plus a 64-bit RIP Production Manager. It covers wide format, wraps, DTG, DTF, print and cut, flags and banners, and it runs up to five machines at once.
• Flexi Design is design only, on Mac or Windows. No Production Manager, so it does not drive your machines. It is a second seat for an artist, not a production station.
• Flexi DTF PRO is built for direct-to-film apparel work.
• Flexi MUTCD is a template library, not a design program. It holds USDOT-compliant highway and street sign artwork with the correct fonts, letter heights and MUTCD colors, in FS or EPS format. Warning signs, work zone signs, pedestrian and school signs, recreation signs.

That last one matters if you do road work. Getting a regulatory sign wrong is not a design problem, it is a liability problem. See our reflective sheeting and DOT compliance guide for the material side of the same job.

Browse Flexi.

What about Illustrator, CorelDRAW and Photoshop?

Keep them. Lots of shops design in Illustrator or CorelDRAW because that is what their designer knows, and there is nothing wrong with that.

What those programs will not do is drive your machines. They have no cutter drivers, no RIP, no job queue and no contour cut output. So they sit in front of your sign software, not instead of it.

LXi 26 RIP Design is built for exactly that setup. Visual Production Manager takes files straight from CorelDRAW, Illustrator and Photoshop. So your designer keeps working the way they always have. The shop still gets one place to run every machine from.

Quick answers

Ask these six questions before you buy any sign software

1. Is this a purchase or a subscription? If it is a subscription, what does it cost over five years?
2. Does it drive my exact machines, by model, not by brand?
3. Does it run on the computer I have?
4. Does it include a job queue, or does it only design?
5. Will it open my old files?
6. Who answers the phone when it stops working, and are there written help articles for my actual problem?

Related pages

• Vinyl Express LXi 26 full feature list · all LXi versions
• Vinyl cutter buying guide
• Wide-format printer buying guide
• Flexi software · all sign making software
• Drivers, manuals and color profiles
• Reflective sheeting and DOT compliance

Not sure which version you need? Tell us what machines you own, what computer you use, and whether you print. That is enough for us to answer in one call. Call 903-462-7700, contact us, or ask for a quote.