Launched in 2011, Flipsnack is one of the popular solutions for flipbook creation. It allows people to convert PDFs into digital flipbooks rich with visual elements and multimedia and then publish and share them online. However, just as every other solution, Flipsnack has its drawbacks, and for some purposes, other flipbook makers are a better choice.
We’ve compared Flipsnack to other big players in the flipbook market to give you a full understanding of all their pros and cons. Check out these Flipsnack alternatives to find the best fit for your digital documents.
#1 FlippingBook vs. Flipsnack
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Among the alternatives to Flipsnack, FlippingBook is the closest to it based on the use cases the products are intended for—both Flipsnack and FlippingBook present themselves as perfect solutions for marketing, business, education, and digital publishing. Yet compared to Flipsnack, FlippingBook provides a much better reading experience. Thanks to the vector text support, text in your flipbook will always look sharp on any screen. There are at least four page-flipping options so that the reader could turn the pages any way they like. And the page-flip effect itself is immaculate, too.
Apart from that, even though FlippingBook doesn’t have a shopping cart feature, it makes a pretty great tool for sales. It offers more sharing and content protection options than Flipsnack, as well as some unique features such as shared folders, text selection, and trackable links. The fact that FlippingBook converts even huge PDF documents up to 2,000 pages and 1 GB in size makes it the most essential flipbook maker for multi-chaptered sales collateral.
FlippingBook is among the leaders in the Flipbook software category on G2, one of the largest platforms where people can discover and review the SaaS products they need.
Key features:
- Interactivity
- Branding
- Lead generation
- Advanced analytics
- Sharing and embedding
- Superior flipbook navigation with thumbnails, text search, and an interactive table of contents
- Superior looks—online documents look their best with realistic page thickness, vector text support, and smoother page flipping
- Intuitive reading experience—you can turn pages not only via arrows or by dragging corners, but also via scrolling or clicking the area next to the page
- More document sharing options, such as sharing via a link to a specific page or to selected text, and QR code sharing
- Viewers & views analytics available from the junior plan
- Better content protection—apart from password protection and domain restriction, you can also allow or restrict sharing, printing, and downloading of your flipbook
- Trackable links support for tracking individual lead activity with your flipbook
- Right-to-left support
- Allows self-hosting for hosting online flipbooks on your own server
- Also offers desktop software, an automation tool, and a mobile platform
- Doesn’t allow flipbook creation from scratch—you can’t design your PDF right in FlippingBook
- Doesn’t have a shopping cart
#2 Issuu vs. Flipsnack
Another alternative to Flipsnack, Issuu focuses largely on the online exposure of your digital publications. Just as Flipsnack, it supports digital sales from within the solution, both in the form of subscription to your publication and as a singular issue sales tool. However, it has a lot more in store than Flipsnack to help you shout out your name from the Internet rooftops—with Issuu, you can create interactive Visual Stories for your social media and automatically generate individual articles from your content to share anywhere.
Still, you may find that publishing with Issuu is a little too public—unless you have one of the higher plans, you won’t be able to remove your flipbooks from open access on the Issuu website nor prevent third-party ads from appearing next to your content. They also love sharing random flipbooks published via their platform on Twitter, so if you’re not ready for that level of publicity, you should think twice before going for Issuu.
Key features:
- Visual Stories
- Article Stories
- Digital sales
- InDesign integration
- Collaborate planning tool
- Online space with easy public access to all of your digital publications
- Unique content formats perfect for social media sharing
- More nuanced collaboration features for easy flatplanning and a smooth editorial workflow
- Integration with Adobe InDesign for Visual Stories creation
- Great visuals
- Adds third-party ads to your content, available for removal only on higher plans
- All your flipbooks are public by default, unlimited private sharing available only for higher plans
- Doesn’t allow flipbook creation from scratch
#3 3D Issue vs. Flipsnack
3D Issue is multifunctional digital publishing software. Just like Flipsnack and its other alternatives, 3D Issue allows you to create interactive HTML5 flipbooks from PDFs. And similar to Issuu, it also offers additional types of content: responsive publications for mobile devices (Experios), mobile library apps for easy document management and distribution, and a content curation tool for bringing together all your content across all platforms (Content Hubs).
However, probably because of how many tools they have to support, 3D Issue has somewhat limited functionality as a flipbook solution, and their flipbooks look clunky and visually inferior to those made with other Flipsnack alternatives.
Key features:
- Interactivity
- Experios
- Hubs
- Apps
- Online space with easy public access to all your digital publications
- Unique content formats perfect for social media sharing
- Clipping tool that allows a reader to make a screenshot of any part of the page and share it
- Easy flipbook navigation with thumbnails, text search, and an interactive table of contents
- Right-to-left support
- Native app creation
- Also offers self-hosting and automation
- Inferior visuals and poor page turning effect
- White labeling available only for the highest plan that costs $599 a month
- Doesn’t allow flipbook creation from scratch
#4 Simplebooklet vs. Flipsnack
Simplebooklet is a Flipsnack alternative with a name that speaks for itself. It’s a neat flipbook creator that can convert from various formats, such as PDF or Canva and Crello designs. With its pretty animations, creative interactive features, and eye-catching page transitions, Simplebooklet publications certainly stand out.
Unfortunately, the tool is not very powerful and doesn’t allow big file conversions, its limit reaching only as far as 350 MB and 400 pages even on their highest plan. The tool’s page-flipping effect is also not very intuitive. Hence, the best implementation of Simplebooklet is, well, simple digital booklets that don’t require much flipping nor many pages to flip through.
Key features:
- Multiple page flip transitions
- Multiple upload formats
- Interactivity
- Branding
- Conversion from multiple formats, such as PDF, Word Docs, PowerPoint presentations, Canva designs, etc.
- Fetching page flip transitions, including a trifold brochure and a menu layout
- Unique interactive features, such as page narration, interactive buttons, and animated backgrounds
- Online space aka Collection with easy public access to all your digital publications
- Native apps created from your digital brochures for offline access
- Inferior page-flipping effect—no scrolling and not very comfortable corner dragging, so the only way to turn pages with ease it is to click arrows
- Very limited upload file size and pages per flipbook number—only 350 MB and 400 pages even for the highest plan
- Doesn’t allow flipbook creation from scratch
#5 Publitas vs. Flipsnack
Publitas is one of the alternatives to Flipsnack that mainly focuses on online catalogs. Apart from the standard interactive features such as interactivity or website embedding, Publitas allows you to insert extra information about items with Product Overlay and create Personalized promotions through connection to your DMP. Publitas can also auto-generate Dynamic publications from your product inventory, helping you publish more frequently.
As a pure flipbook solution, though, it lacks elegance and is a little bit clumsy when it comes to the page-turning effect—like with Simplebooklet, you can only turn the page via arrows and that’s that. You’ll also notice that all Simplebooklet’s features are specifically tailored for online catalogs and those who produce them. The tool doesn’t offer much for other use cases.
Key features:
- Product overlay
- Product feed import
- Dynamic flyers
- Personalized promotions
- Product overlay that allows you to give your product a detailed overview without cluttering the page
- Product feed import directly from your web store
- Auto-generation of dynamic publications right from your inventory
- Personalized promotions—you can show the right products to the right customers
- Custom code embedding for further customization
- Inferior page-flipping effect—no scrolling and no corner dragging, you can only turn pages via arrows on each side of the book
- Doesn’t allow flipbook creation from scratch
In Conclusion
What is the best Flipsnack alternative? Totally depends on your wants and needs! But we do hope that you’ll find the perfect match among the tools we’ve listed.
