Embroidery Digitizing Software: Hatch vs Embrilliance

Embroidery digitizing software converts artwork into stitch instructions your machine can execute. The three platforms that come up in nearly every forum thread are Hatch Embroidery (four tiers, Windows, $199 to $899+), Embrilliance (modular, Mac and Windows, $139 to $800+), and Brother PE-Design 11 (dealer-priced, around $1,957.99 full through third-party retailers, Windows). The right one depends on your machine brand, your OS, and whether you want to edit existing designs or build from scratch.

This is a decision that gets expensive quickly if you buy the wrong tier first. We’ve verified all prices and features against the manufacturers’ own pages in June 2026.

The core distinction: editing vs. digitizing

Before comparing products, the most important clarification: editing software and digitizing software are not the same thing.

Editing software lets you take an existing stitch file (a .pes or .dst you downloaded or bought), resize it, recolor it, merge two designs, add lettering, and export it in a format your machine accepts. Embrilliance Essentials is in this category. It is useful, often essential, and meaningfully cheaper than full digitizing software.

Digitizing software lets you create a design from scratch. You import artwork (a photo, a vector file, or a hand-drawn path) and manually or automatically define stitch types, directions, densities, and sequences. Hatch Digitizer, StitchArtist, and PE-Design 11 are in this category.

If you are buying pre-made designs and want to customize them, an editor is all you need. If you want to build original designs, you need a digitizer.

Hatch Embroidery: four tiers, Windows only

Hatch is built on the Wilcom engine, the same professional-grade core used in industrial embroidery shops. The consumer-facing tiers layer features on top of that foundation. Prices verified June 2026:

*Introductory pricing for new customers only, as of June 2026.

The 30-day free trial covers all four tiers with no credit card required. This is genuinely useful: you can test Digitizer features for a month before spending $899 on them.

The ceiling on Hatch is high. The Digitizer tier gives access to every stitch type the Wilcom engine supports, including the kind of manual path control that production digitizers use. The floor is also relatively accessible: Composer’s auto-digitize feature converts a photo to an embroidery design without manual path drawing, which is where most hobbyists who want to create original work start.

File format coverage is broad. Hatch reads PES, DST, JEF, VP3, ART, HUS, and roughly 25 machine-specific formats. It exports the same list plus SVG cutting files for ScanNCut and Silhouette machines. Full verified format list on Hatch’s support page.

The one hard constraint: the paid license requires Windows 11. Mac users running Parallels or VMware Fusion can run it in a virtual machine, and Hatch supports that configuration, but there is no native Mac version.

Embrilliance: modular, Mac-native, no dongle

Embrilliance takes a modular approach. You buy the components you need, and they all run inside a single platform that you download for free. Two products are most relevant here:

Embrilliance Essentials, $139 (sale from $159, verified June 2026): the editing layer. Merge designs from multiple formats, resize with stitch recalculation, recolor, add lettering, print 1:1 templates, and split designs across multi-position hoops. It reads 17 stitch formats including ART, PES, DST, JEF, VP3, HUS, and more, and writes back into all the same formats. This is the right choice if you want to work with existing designs on any machine brand.

StitchArtist Level 1, $169 (sale from $179, verified June 2026): the entry-level digitizing layer. You draw shapes and apply stitch types, which the software renders in real time. Supported stitch types at Level 1 include run variants (single, double, bean, chain, backstitch, stem stitch, sashiko), fill, satin, appliqué with the Appliqadabra tool, motif fills, cross stitch, and freestanding backgrounds. The export list covers DST, PES, JEF, VP3, HUS, and 10 others.

StitchArtist goes up to Level 3. Level 2 adds intermediate tools. Level 3 (around $800 as a standalone) adds professional-grade capabilities including the advanced path and gradient stitch work used for commercial digitizing. You can upgrade tier-by-tier.

The combination most embroiderers buy: Essentials plus StitchArtist Level 1. Together they cover both editing and basic digitizing for around $308, cross-platform, no hardware dongle, with the option to add Level 2 or 3 later. Three Embrilliance modules running on the same machine share the same platform window.

Mac users who need digitizing software generally land here. Embrilliance is natively Mac (10.9 and later) and Windows (7 through 11, 32 and 64-bit).

Brother PE-Design 11: the Brother ecosystem match

PE-Design 11 is Brother’s own digitizing software. Pricing is dealer-set; the product page says “see dealer” and lists the software as currently out of stock. Third-party authorized retailers list the full version at approximately $1,957.99 and an upgrade at $747.99, verified via search results June 2026.

What you get for that price:

• 1,000+ built-in designs and 130 fonts
• Auto Punch for automatic photo-to-embroidery conversion (the PhotoStitch wizard)
• Cross Stitch wizard
• Intelligent Color Sort, which groups same-color areas to reduce thread changes
• Wireless LAN transfer to compatible Luminaire XP1, XP2, and XP3 machines
• ScanNCut integration via FCM file import/export

PE-Design 11 runs on Windows. Brother offers a free trial download at brother.com.

The honest case for PE-Design 11: if you own a high-end Brother Luminaire machine and want wireless design transfer from your PC directly to the machine without a USB step, PE-Design 11 is the only software that supports that workflow. For everyone else with a standard PE900 or SE700, the design transfer goes through USB regardless of software, and the price difference versus Hatch Digitizer or StitchArtist Level 3 is difficult to justify on features alone.

The honest case against it: the price is more than double Hatch Digitizer’s introductory price for a feature set that most reviewers describe as comparable. The built-in designs and fonts are nice, but you can buy individual design packs for a fraction of the difference.

Side-by-side comparison

Which one to buy

Start with Embrilliance Essentials ($139) if you just bought your first machine and want to edit and merge purchased designs. The price is low enough that buying it and outgrowing it is not a major loss, and it works on both Mac and Windows without any compatibility hassle.

Step up to StitchArtist Level 1 ($169, often combined with Essentials) if you want to create original designs. The entry-level price and cross-platform support make it the most accessible starting point for home digitizing.

Buy Hatch Composer or Digitizer if you are serious about producing original designs, want the full Wilcom engine under the hood, and are on Windows. The 30-day free trial means you can verify the workflow before committing. Hatch is what a lot of digitizers who graduate from entry-level tools end up on.

Consider PE-Design 11 only if you own or plan to own a Brother Luminaire XP1/XP2/XP3 and specifically want the wireless transfer workflow. For any other Brother machine, the file transfer is USB regardless of software, and the price premium is hard to defend.

For the Brother PE900 and SE700 specifically, either Hatch Composer/Digitizer or Embrilliance StitchArtist works perfectly. Both export PES files that transfer to Brother machines via USB without any format conversion step.

The brother-pe900-review covers the PE900’s design workflow in detail. For the commercial-tier PR680W, see the PR680W review. The embroidery file formats guide covers PES, DST, JEF, and the rest in full.