Despite its strengths, PageMaker’s market share declined sharply after Adobe introduced in 1999. InDesign offered a more modern codebase, better integration with Photoshop and Illustrator, and advanced typographic features such as OpenType support. Adobe announced the end‑of‑life for PageMaker in 2004, encouraging users to transition. Nevertheless, a sizable “legacy user base” persisted for years, often because of institutional investments in templates and training material built around PageMaker 6.5.

PageMaker 6.5 was succeeded by version 7.0 and eventually replaced by Adobe InDesign in 2000, which modernized the engine to compete with QuarkXPress.

Adobe releases PageMaker 6.0, integrating it deeply into the Adobe ecosystem with Photoshop compatibility.