The 4 Best Alternatives to Issuu:Free, Similar & Interactive
The 4 Best Alternatives to Issuu:
Free, Similar & Interactive
Looking for an alternative to Issuu?
We tested multiple Issuu alternatives to see how they stack up and made a short list of our favorites.
Compare and contrast the features, prices and offerings to decide on the best alternative for you.
Stay in the know
Actionable advice on how to create better content & design, delivered to your inbox.
No charge. Unsubscribe anytime.
< BACK TO OVERVIEW
Create Content Experiences.
Better. Faster.
/ / newsletters
/ / white papers
/ / magazines
/ / content hubs
/ / annual reports
/ / brochures
Transform your PDFs instantly to online, responsive flipbooks.
Interactive, or flipbooks. Readz offers both.
Get a demo or try Readz for FREE today - and never look back.
OR
LEARN MORE
To Issuu or not to Issuu. Is there even an alternative to Issuu? These are questions that almost all publishers must ask themselves. And indeed, with 20,000 (according to Issuu) newly uploaded publications every day, Issuu, based in California, is the 800-pound gorilla in the world of flipbook-based online magazine / digital publishing.
Yet, you might ask yourself if you are making the right decision by doing what everyone else is doing. So we explored other digital publishing platforms that offer you an alternative to Issuu.
Introduction To Issuu
What Issuu Offers
Many, if not most, of you will already know what Issuu has to offer. If so, feel free to skip directly to the next sections ;-)
If not, here is a short overview of what Issuu can offer.
Issuu.com is a platform which allows you to upload and publish your magazines or publications (in print layout) online. They have paid plans as well as a free version. The free version on https://issuu.com allows you to create an Issuu account and use Issuu’s reader and embed your online magazine on your site.
You pay for what you get, and therefore the free version of Issue is somewhat limited.
There are strict limitations on the amount of content you can publish. With the free-version and lower paid plans, you have advertisements and “Related Articles” on your reader.
But it does allow you to have a basic digital presence. Your magazine will be available on Issuu.com as well as on the Issuu app and you can embed the magazine on your site as well. But if you find yourself wanting to upload more content, you’ll need one of the paid plans.
Let’s take a look at what Issuu has to offer, and if those features match up to what you’re looking for.
Issuu Review
Production: ExcellentIF you have a print version, it is very easy to publish on issuu
Production: Excellent
IF you have a print version, it is very easy to publish on issuu
The most fundamental feature we all want is the possibility to publish our content online.
This is pretty easy with Issuu. You take a PDF of the print layout of your magazine and upload it. That’s pretty much it. It’s a very straightforward process if you already have a finished PDF file.
Limits: Issuu limits your uploads to either 500pages/100MB or 5000 pages/500MB.
As always, when something is so easy there’s always a flipside. The publishing step is super-easy because you are merely reusing your print layout as your digital layout. While it’s convenient, this could also be considered the biggest drawback of the platform. Giving a user something meant for print in a digital reader doesn’t offer the best possible reading experience.
Technology: Issuu.com takes care of the hosting for you.
Reader Experience: Medium to Bad
Magazine dimensions
Your Issuu publication will (on most devices) shrink and so will your text. The standard magazine dimensions are 8 3⁄8” x 10 7⁄8”. This is significantly bigger than tablet and mobile devices, and even on desktops, your magazine will be reduced in size. A 15-inch computer screen is typically 13.6 x 7.6 inches. So even if the reader is using the fullscreen, your magazine will still be reduced from 10.875 to 7.6 inches. Or in other terms a reduction of 100% to 69.8%.
Eye-to-carrier distance
We normally hold a magazine at slightly over a half-arm’s-length away from our eyes. This is about the same for tablets and mobiles, but desktops typically are over an arm’s length away from the eye.
The effect of of these on your reader are that in any circumstance, your magazine appears much smaller than you intended to when you were designing it for print. Not only are your images smaller, but also your text size is a lot smaller and therefore arduous to read. This becomes a real issue on iPhone, iPad and Android devices.
So at best your magazine is hard to read, and at worst it requires additional zooming, scrolling and swiping by your reader to read a portion of a publication.
You also have added negative user experience with the extra Issuu ads (removed at Premium level), and the ‘Related Publications’ (removed at Starter level).
Conclusion
While it is easy to get started from a production viewpoint, the end product, your Issuu publication, is ok for a start, but offers a sub-optimal experience for your audience on all devices. And this includes Issuu.com and even the Issuu app on mobile.
Selling Subscriptions: Easy!
Selling Advertising: No real extras
Statistics: Easy, but pretty basic
Content Marketing & SEO: Non-existent
On Issuu’s website, SEO is mentioned, but in today’s hyper-competitive market, under-optimized, user-unfriendly content such as what Issuu offers does not stand a chance for the better (read: interesting) keywords, even if you have superb and unique content.
Design & Interactivity: Nope
Issuu Alternative: Our overall conclusion
Issuu Alternatives: What Are The Possibilities?
Similar Digital Publishing Solutions to Issuu
Free Alternative to Issuu: Yumpu
Once you want a bit more, you’ll be looking at the paid plans immediately, and having paid subscriptions is available at $399/month.
Learn more about Yumpu on their website.
Almost Identical Alternative to Issuu: Publitas
Pricing starts at $29 monthly, but if you have a bit of traffic, you’ll likely end up in the higher tiers of $99 and $299 monthly.
Learn more here: Publitas.com
Joomag
Joomag offers a $39/month plan, but this is so limited to the point of being unusable for professionals. The lowest ‘professional’ plan will set you back $99/month per user. You have no analytics, plus you’ll only have a 1000 contacts that you can save in the subscription database.
Visit the Joomag website to learn more.
Issuu Alternatives: Want More? Interactive / Native Digital?
Readz supports advanced marketing techniques such as exit intents, contextual welcome messages or timed popups to bring in new subscribers, etc. You can start collecting email addresses through forms, and grow your email marketing DB issue by issue.
Readz also takes great care of optimizing your website for search engines, and be up-to-date with all the latest technical recommendations and requirements of Google.
This means your content will start ranking on organic search.
Readz’s platform is hyper-optimized for SEO, offers https and all content is published on a global CDN.
Many Readz clients benefit from strong additional organic growth in traffic, and hence in advertising revenue.
Readz vs Issuu
Feature
Issuu
Readz
DESIGN & PRODUCTION
InDesign / PDF Upload
Yes - PDF only
Yes - PDF + InDesign
WYISWYG Editor
No
Yes
READER EXPERIENCE
Online Reading
Yes
Yes
Mobile delivery
Yes
Yes
Responsive Content
No
Yes
App Stores
Yes
No
Interactivity
Embedded video only
Yes
Touch / swipe support
Yes
Yes
Embed on your site
Yes
Yes
CONTENT MARKETING
Custom domain
No
Yes
Email capture / forms
No
Yes
SEO
No (not really)
Yes
ANALYTICS
Traffic data
Yes
Yes
Conversion data
No
Yes
MONETIZATION
Paywall
Yes
Yes (soft paywall)
Private publications
No
Yes
Selling Advertising
Print only
Additional options
SOCIAL SHARING
Yes
Yes
PRICING
Starts at Free level
Paid plans only
While this all works nicely from a technology and production viewpoint, from a reader viewpoint it’s not so optimal. Here are some of the drawbacks of Issuu that might cause trouble for your readers.
First of all, there can be issues with the readability of your magazine. Publishing on Issuu.com and on the Issuu app means starting from your print version, and because of that you will bump into these unavoidable facts:
Aspect ratios
For desktop readers, you are placing a portrait layout on a landscape carrier. Doing this creates two very visible effects: disturbing amounts of negative space on both sides of your magazine and your intended dimensions are way off as your magazine is shrunk to fit the height of the web browser on the computer screen.
ISSUU content is shown on all devices, but is not responsive.
Notice the large empty sides on even a square desktop (which does not exist).
And text in this example from the Issuu website is simply unreadable.
Enabling the subscription options on Issuu will make the green 'buy' button appear. Easy! (but hard to read)
Yumpu is a nice FREE and similar offering to Issuu.
Publitas offers a very similar feature set to Issuu
Alternatives to Issuu
If you want a similar solution, you can try
If you want
- more responsive behavior,
- more engagement,
- more interactivity,
- more SEO,
- more advertising possibilities,
- in short, just more,
- Flipbooks: Readz also supports flipbooks. The advantage of this is that you can use a single platform to host your old PDFs as flipbooks and start upgrading content to responsive formats when it suits you.
- InDesign import. Also, if you want to start offering better mobile content, Readz offers an InDesign import feature and the Readz team can help you with this, offering the possibility for a fully assisted transition from print layout to digital layout.
Meet the world's most powerful
digital publishing solution
With Readz, you can offer flipbooks, import from InDesign or create your own custom responsive publication from scratch.

Trying to decide which digital publishing technology to go for ?
Meet the world's most powerful digital publishing tool:
With Readz, you can offer flipbooks, import from InDesign or create your own custom responsive publication from scratch.
Hop on the phone with one of our consultants for a free 15-minute discussion about your digital publishing needs.