A PDF is out of date the moment you send it. Catafy never is.

01

Quick verdict: Catafy vs a PDF catalogue

A PDF catalogue is a photograph of your price list at one moment in time. It is easy to make and easy to forward — which is exactly the problem. The moment a price or stock changes, every copy in every buyer’s WhatsApp is wrong, you cannot see who opened it, and the order still has to be typed out in a chat. Catafy replaces the file with a link: always current, gated by OTP for trade pricing, tracked by buyer, and ordered from in two taps. The PDF still has one use — an offline attachment — and Catafy can generate one on demand.

02

What each is built for

A PDF is a print format. It is designed to look identical everywhere and never change — good qualities for a brochure, bad qualities for a price list that changes weekly and is viewed on phones. Every edit means a new file, a new round of forwarding, and a period where buyers are ordering from the wrong version. Nothing comes back: no view, no click, no cart.

Catafy is a live selling surface. Products are edited once and every shared link is current. Catalogues can be public, private or semi-private; trade buyers verify by OTP and see the price list assigned to their group; MOQ and minimum order amount apply at checkout; live analytics show who is browsing what; and orders trigger automatic updates on WhatsApp, SMS, email and push. When a buyer genuinely needs a file, Catafy exports a PDF of the current catalogue — so you keep the format without the problems.

03

Catafy vs PDF for wholesalers

Wholesalers usually maintain three or four PDFs — retailer, distributor, export, “no price” — and inevitably send the wrong one. Catafy keeps one product master with price lists per buyer group; the buyer sees their own rate after OTP verification and seller approval. MOQ and minimum order amount are enforced at checkout, set and variant ordering is one line, and screenshot protection shields rates and designs.

• No more version chaos — change a price once; every buyer’s link updates.
• Price lists per buyer group — one catalogue, several rate cards.
• OTP-gated access with approval — unverified numbers do not see trade rates.
• MOQ and MOA — per product and per order, applied automatically.
• Who opened it — live tracking by buyer and product, not a read receipt.

04

Catafy vs PDF for manufacturers

A new-collection PDF sent to dealers is a new-collection PDF sent to the market. It is forwarded within the hour, prices included. On Catafy the collection is released as a private catalogue to approved dealers at dealer rates, with screenshot protection on, and live tracking shows which dealer opened which design. Catalogue-access approvals go out automatically on WhatsApp from your own number.

05

Catafy vs PDF for distributors

A distributor’s reps carry a folder of brand PDFs and forward them to retailers by hand. Catafy gives the distributor several catalogues from one inventory, collections per route or season, team seats for reps, per-segment pricing, live visitor tracking across the team, and automated confirmations on WhatsApp, SMS, email and push. Reps share a link; retailers order from it; nobody types the order twice.

06

Feature-by-feature comparison

What Catafy includes, and what the PDF workflow actually gives you.

07

Buyer experience: opening a file vs opening a link

A retailer receives a 30 MB PDF on a mid-range Android phone on a patchy connection, waits, pinches and zooms through pages, finds the product, and messages you to ask if the price is still right. On Catafy the same retailer taps a link, verifies by OTP, sees their rate card, filters to the category, orders sets and quantities with MOQ warnings inline, and gets a confirmation from your business number. Both run in the browser; the branded app is optional.

Send both to a real buyer and time how long each takes to produce an order.

08

When you still need a PDF

Some buyers want a file for a printout, an internal approval or an email thread. Catafy generates a PDF of the current catalogue and estimate PDFs with GST columns on demand — so the file is always a snapshot of live data rather than the source of truth. The catalogue link stays the primary channel; the PDF becomes an export, not a workflow.

09

Moving from PDF to Catafy

The work is getting product data out of a print file and into a structured sheet — once. After that, updates are edits, not redesigns. The onboarding call included on every plan covers the import.

1. 1

   Extract products from the PDF

   List product names, codes, categories and prices in Excel — from the design file if you have it, or by transcribing the current PDF once, for the last time.

2. 2

   Gather images by product code

   Use the original photos from the designer or photographer; Catafy’s AI Studio can enhance older shots.

3. 3

   Define buyer groups and price lists

   Decide who sees which rate — retailer, distributor, export — and the MOQ for each. A PDF had one price; Catafy can have several.

4. 4

   Bulk import into Catafy

   Map columns, import with images and attributes, and check variants and prices on a sample.

5. 5

   Set catalogue modes and connect WhatsApp

   Choose public, private or semi-private, enable OTP, and connect your WhatsApp Business number via Whaaty for automatic order updates.

6. 6

   Share the link and stop sending the file

   Send the catalogue link to buyers on WhatsApp with a one-line OTP note, and retire the PDF so old prices stop circulating.

10

Pricing: Catafy vs the real cost of PDFs

Catafy pricing is flat and public. Every plan includes unlimited orders, online payments with zero transaction fees from Catafy, and a 7-day free trial with no card required. Prices below are per month on annual billing, exclusive of 18% GST. Mobile, email and WhatsApp OTP login options for buyers are included on Growth and Scale; Starter uses a single login type.

A PDF looks free. Add the designer’s time for every revision, the sales hours spent re-sending files and re-confirming prices, and the orders lost to wrong versions and slow phones, and it is not. Compare that against a flat Catafy plan with no transaction fees.

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How to decide in ten minutes

• How many versions of your PDF are circulating right now?
• Do different buyers need different prices for the same product?
• Would it hurt if your PDF was forwarded to a competitor?
• Do you know who opened the last catalogue you sent?
• Do orders arrive as line items, or as messages you retype?
• How long does a price change take to reach every buyer?
• Do your buyers open catalogues on phones, from WhatsApp?
• Do you enforce minimum quantities?

If the answers describe a file that is out of date, untracked and forwarded freely, the PDF is costing you orders. Keep it as an export; move the selling to a link.

12

Related reading

• Cataloguing features →Products, variants, videos, collections
• Private showcasing →Show new designs only to approved buyers
• Live analytics →Who opened what, in real time
• AI product photography →Enhance older product photos
• B2B catalogue best practices →Structuring catalogues that convert
• Catafy vs Excel →If the price list is a spreadsheet