Affinity Design convertability for external purposes?

[plaintivepate]

Hello all! I'm a traditional artist and am fairly new to graphic design. I purchased Affinity Design for my iPad so that I could begin providing vector-based images to my clients who are looking for digital products for various purposes.

I understand that Affinity Design is a competitor to Illustrator, and that Affinity Designer cannot save files in .AI format, only .AFDESIGN format. Is there any instance where the .AFDESIGN file will not suffice when sending off an image to third parties -- for t-shirt design, business card design, other print-on-product type stuff? It seems like in a lot of cases I would just provide the file to my client in PDF format, but not all. Just trying to figure out if using Affinity Designer and not having the option to save as an .AI file creates any limitations on what I'm able to offer my client. Thanks!

EDIT: After doing more research, it seems like saving as EPS will do the job, and if the file gets passed off later to another person who uses Illustrator, they can always open as EPS and resave as AI. Is that true?

Edited October 30, 2020 by plaintivepate
Additional information added

[3DJ]

Hi, so I would use PDF for “Export”. That I believe will keep the as much as possible in a vector format and rasterize only effects and such that are unique to affinity. This will be the best format to go to illustrator with in my experience. Since ai files like to bake in PDF compatibility anyway, this should be better than an eps.

-Jim

[plaintivepate]

Thanks Jim! I appreciate your recommendation.