Font managers like Suitcase Fusion and Universal Type Server are designed to manage your own collection of licensed fonts. They take your entire valuable collection of fonts and put them into a central location that is easily accessible by you and your team.
Typekit does not manage fonts that you have licensed or downloaded from locations other than Typekit.
@typekit can typekit replace the use extensis suitcase?
— chris pantoja (@beatkat) January 5, 2017
Typekit is not a font mgmt tool. You can sync TK font selections on your own machines, but you can't share fonts with other users.
— Adobe Typekit (@typekit) January 5, 2017
When those Typekit fonts are available on your desktop, Suitcase Fusion and other professional font management tools automatically detect the downloaded fonts and make them available for use.There are spots where you may hear the term “font manager” in relation to Typekit. The Adobe documentation for Typekit does at times refer to the web tool that controls the download of fonts to your desktop as a “font manager.” This web tools only manages fonts in the sense that it pushes fonts from the Typekit database down to your machine, that is all.
Because the average designer has over 4,000 fonts in her collection, keeping all of those fonts available for use, while not necessarily active on the system is critical for speedy, error-free design work.
If you are an individual designer and are interested in testing out the easiest way to manage your fonts, download a free trial of Suitcase Fusion. If you are interested in learning more about a font management solution for your entire organization, request a demo for Universal Type Server.