The 4 best alternatives to Issuu

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.

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.

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.

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.

On Issuu.com, people can follow you, and Issuu will notify them when you publish new content. This is again automatically taken care of for you, but like with social media platforms, you are dependent on Issuu’s rules to interact with those followers. Content marketers swear by email marketing, but with Issuu there is no option for users to subscribe to your email list or for you to collect email addresses. Organic Search There are no organic search options, or optimizations. Issuu users should not expect traffic from organic search. The reality is that people are not going to discover you because you are buried amongst the other several thousand Issuu publications. There is just too much competition for your Issuu publication to show up as latest content amids other new magazines.

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.

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What remains the same: you will still be publishing content in issues, and you will still have the options of monetization, and paid promotion of your content. The biggest difference between publishing with Issuu and publishing with Readz, is that with Readz you’ll be publishing a digital native experience. There will be endless opportunities for interactivity and customization of the digital reading experience. The downside of this, and there is no way around it, is that it will require some additional layout work. This can be small, or big, depending on your plans and customization wishes.

But Readz does offer a couple of unique advantages:

- : 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.

- Gradual transition to responsive content: The Readz team has assisted multiple clients with their transition from PDF to responsive. The team can help you with training, a first design, and even building your content, taking the pain out of the transition from print layout to digital layout.

The upside is that all the digital marketing and content marketing options that you do not get with Issuu, are now available to you.

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.

The UPsides of Issuu For publishers with an existing print edition, it is easy to get started on Issuu. You can also set up a paywall, and start promoting this option. The DOWNsides of Issuu You’ll be offering your readers a flipbook or ‘print-replica’ experience, which is sub-standard in today’s landscape of readers increased expectations. Your only growth is through paid promotion. You cannot establish an infrastructure for content marketing through email marketing or organic search.

Alternatives to Issuu