Issuu Competitors: Why FLIPPages Is the Smart Alternative

When it comes to hosting digital publications and online flipbook makers, many people are already familiar with Issuu. Issuu is one of the more popular online publishing platforms—but it’s far from the only company in its sector.

Plenty of companies offer the same kinds of services, but one platform stands out from the rest: FLIPpages. Due to unmatched customization options, flexible, affordable pricing plans, and many other reasons, FLIPpages should be your first choice when considering Issuu competitors.

Let’s discover more about FLIPpages, learn how to use the platform, and explore the unique benefits it can offer your business.

Introduction to digital publishing platforms

In the United States alone, around 100 million people use digital publishing platforms, which is expected to rise in the coming years.

Print resources have less and less effect on consumers as the years go by. Only about 30% of people read the flyers they receive, for instance, and they likely do not affect their buying choices either way.

In response to this shift in how we learn about brands and products, more companies are moving their written resources online, including their:

  • eBooks
  • Product manuals
  • Newsletters
  • White papers
  • Brochures
  • Menus
  • Catalogs
  • Other important company documents


Specific online publishing platforms are basic and only permit single-page scrolling, producing content resembling the simplest blogs and websites. Others—such as Issuu and its competitors, like FLIPpages—offer an immersive experience that feels more akin to reading an actual book or interacting with an app than staring at a webpage.

With the rise of Issuu and similar platforms, there’s been a growing demand for user-friendliness and enhanced features. FLIPages has become a top choice for digital publishing with capabilities like user analytics, offline availability, and careful mobile optimization.

Common challenges with Issuu

FLIPages offers more features than its main competitor, Issuu, and addresses many of the main issues users have with the platform. A few of the glaring problems Issuu users face include:

  • High prices: Issuu’s basic plan is over 50% more expensive than FLIPpages every month. As you enhance your options and features, Issuu’s prices skyrocket alongside them and can top out at almost $600 monthly. There are also no custom pricing options for large accounts with Issuu, a choice that is available when you work with FLIPpages.
  • Lack of customization options: Issuu offers a few options for various written content, including books, articles, and social posts. However, beyond these basic layouts, they offer little in terms of real customization options. This makes it challenging to match the style of your written content to your website theme and other branding choices.
  • Severe limitations with Issuu’s free version: You can only publish five documents in total with Issuu’s entry-level, no-cost version. Each of these documents can have a maximum of 50 pages and be, at most, 50 megabytes (MB) in size. For many companies, that’s less than a month of written material before you have to start looking into paid options.


Reviews on Trustpilot highlight several of Issuu’s main problems. Many users claim they feel “exploited” and “overcharged” by the platform’s high price point, while others haven’t been able to access their services or support despite paying for it.

With so many prominent issues facing Issuu, the digital publishing space is prime for competition and innovation. In turn, several companies have risen over the years to vie for the top spot in the industry.

Top Issuu competitors comparison

Various companies worldwide offer similar services to Issuu—but few of them have provided comparable functionality or gained enough ground to become noteworthy competitors. Let’s consider a few of the largest alternatives to Issuu and compare them across factors like usability, cross-platform integration, and overall features.

Overview of the top alternatives to Issuu

A few of Issuu’s most noteworthy competitors include:

  • FlipHTML5: FlipHTML5 is made for beginner users, and its simplistic, intuitive interface helps first-time flipbook creators make content that matches their vision and branding. Plus, customizable templates make aligning your published material with your brand’s chosen motif even easier. Users also appreciate its affordable price: Paid plans with FlipHTML5 start at just $12.50 a month.
  • Marq: Marq is well-known for facilitating brand consistency among your published works. Whether digital or print content, Marq offers the tools to make every flyer, brochure, or eBook look, sound, and read the same as the others in your catalog.
  • Publitas: Publitas is focused on e-commerce integration for online retail businesses. Its main benefit is the ability to create eye-catching product catalogs that blend seamlessly with your online site, social branding, and any brick-and-mortar stores you operate.
  • Yumpu: Yumpu offers digital publishing services for magazines, catalogs, and other documents. Its main selling point is its collection of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) features, which can help you assess and optimize your publication’s performance on Google (or other search engines) to entice more readers to your content.
  • FLIPBuilder: As much as Wi-Fi seems omnipresent in our daily lives, FLIPBuilder knows the internet isn’t everywhere. That’s why it offers venerable offline publishing capabilities and a variety of customization options to make your content true to your brand—even when you’re not connected.

Why FLIPpages is the smart alternative

When it comes to the best Issuu alternatives, FLIPpages shines through as a platform that boasts all of the best qualities of the platforms listed above without suffering from any of their faults. A few of the key features that set FLIPpages apart from the pack include:

  • Superior customization features: FLIPpages has multiple aesthetically pleasing themes optimized for different uses, including documents, social sharing, and casual browsing. It also lets you customize your company logo and choose accenting colors so readers know that everything you publish comes directly from its primary source: your brand.
  • Competitive pricing with flexible plans: Paid plans start as low as $20 per month and offer discounts for annual memberships. FLIPpages can even work out a custom pricing plan if you have exceptionally high publication needs, so affordable digital marketing is always within your reach.
  • Enhanced analytics and audience insights: FLIPpages offers key insight into your publication’s performance across several valuable metrics to help you improve your reach and customer base.
  • Offline availability and mobile responsiveness: Are you heading out into uncharted territory without Wi-Fi but still need some work done? Or, perhaps you’re separated from your computer but still have your phone to stay productive? Either way, FLIPpages offers offline and mobile compatibility; you’ll never miss a publication deadline, no matter where you are.
  • Other features: From zero ads to Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) compliance and effortless sharing across all your channels, no other digital publishing platform boasts the variety of features found on FLIPpages.

Use cases for FLIPpages

FLIPpages is an essential tool for various use cases across almost any industry. A few of the main ways users are leveraging FLIPpages’ capabilities so far include:

Other organizations, such as those in the education sector, also benefit from digitizing their publications with FLIPpages. For instance, The Kirkwood Call, a high school paper in Kirkwood, Missouri, gives students, teachers, parents, and alumni direct access to school news without physically obtaining a copy.

Marketers, publishers, and companies in other industries can enjoy the same benefits. FLIPpages makes your content more available and accessible, helping boost the total number of readers who find it.

Getting started with FLIPpages

To get the ball rolling, visit FLIPpages and sign up for your free 14-day trial. Then, follow these simple steps to publish your content in just a few minutes:

  1. Upload your document in PDF form. (You can also link a PDF instead.)
  2. Choose a suitable theme for your industry and audience.
  3. Select branding elements, like color and company logo.
  4. Publish the document.


After your publication is live, you can share the unique URL to your website, social media, and other pages.

If you’re already using Issuu to host your publications, switching to FLIPpages is simple. Just upload the same PDFs you’ve been using on Issuu to FLIPpages. From there, you can begin customizing your content using the east-to-follow on-screen resources to go from signup to upload in less than half an hour.

Choose FLIPpages for smarter digital publishing

FLIPpages is the premier choice for creating and hosting your digital publications. Compared to other Issuu competitors, it’s more affordable, diverse, and customizable. It also boasts elevated offline functionality and supreme ease of use so that you can work on your documents anytime, anywhere.

Plus, it’s completely free to try. Just visit FLIPpages to sign up for your free 14-day trial to begin digitizing your brochures, catalogs, books, and more.

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