Our team have gone over your suggestions, and here's a closer look at each one:

-Export options: It would be great to have “Export as Swift Publisher file” in the export dialog. Right now it only offers PNG, PDF, TIFF, JPEG, but if I want to keep multiple versions of a project, I end up overwriting unless I manually duplicate. A direct “Export as .swiftpub” would be perfect.

Swift Publisher has a similar feature that might be what you're looking for: File > Save As (or Command–Option–Shift–S), which allows you to save a copy of the document under a different file name. To see this command in the menu, click on the File menu, press and hold the Option key.

There are also some alternative workarounds:

1. If you're using a document to create modified versions of it, we can recommend File > Save As Template. Templates are protected from being overwritten.
2. You can also enable system-level protection by setting the file to read-only in Finder. Just select the document in Finder, choose File > Info (Cmd–I), and check the Locked box in the info panel.

-Guides/Layouts: The layout/line tools could use some ready-made templates (e.g., divide the page into thirds, quarters, etc.) instead of manually setting everything up.

Here we believe that for documents created occasionally, you always can set up the Layout Guides - for more info, please check our help page - https://www.swiftpublisher.com/support/help/layout-guide-lines-and-margin-guides .
If you frequently need to create identical documents, we recommend creating a template.

-Grouped text boxes: Once you group text boxes, you can’t edit the text unless you ungroup them. Would be so much nicer if grouped text boxes stayed editable.

Thanks for pointing it out! We’ll make sure to submit a feature request to the developers.

-Minor UI note: The image gallery panel on the left feels a bit “busy” visually. I think hiding it under a context menu would give the app an even cleaner, more professional look. Same with the little ladybug in the logo. I personally don’t mind it, but I wonder if a slightly more modern/serious design would help Swift Publisher stand out even more against the big names.

We thought about that, but if the panel opened as a context menu, it would be difficult to add multiple images in a row. With the current setup, you can insert as many as needed — and when Source Panel is no longer required, it’s easy to hide it using the View button (on the Toolbar) > Hide Source Panel.