Is this project still alive?

[MartinThoma]

On pypi, I see that the project is in Development Status :: 4 - Beta, but the last commit to this repository is more than half a year ago. Is it still alive?

If not, you might want to put it on Development Status :: 7 - Inactive

[MartinThoma]

Also: Is there an alternative?

[notarq]

Last commit was made 10 months back, so very likely inactive.
Alternative modules with ongoing development and good documentation are : PyPDF2 and Python-Docx

[MartinThoma]

PyPDF2 is not maintained, but there are maintained alternatives.