Flipbooks AI vs Beacons: The Page That Sends People On, or the Document They Land On?

The Short Answer

Choose Flipbooks AI if the thing you want online is a document rather than a storefront. A media kit, a lookbook, a rate card, a catalogue or a course outline goes up as the finished PDF and stays exactly as designed, page for page, opening from a link anyone can tap on a phone. The free plan keeps three flipbooks live at a time on 1 GB, with no page cap and no ads. Starter, $59 a year in August 2026, removes our corner mark or puts your own logo there and unlocks brand colours for the reader controls. Plus at $108 a year adds the embed code and an allowed domain list, and Ultra at $228 a year adds background music and a separate password for each reader.

Choose Beacons if what you need is the front of the shop rather than the thing on the shelf. It routes an audience from one address out to everything you run, and it goes further than a plain link page: a storefront that can take money for a product, an email list you can actually own, and the analytics that tell you which of your links people use. Flipbooks AI does none of that. We have no link page, no store, no checkout, no email tools and no analytics, and we are not going to grow into them, so if selling and routing is the job, that is their side of the fence.

Flipbooks AI vs Beacons at a Glance

Flipbooks AI wins 5 of these 11 rows, ties 4 and loses 2. They are rows we picked, so read them that way. The sections below say plainly where Beacons is the better buy, and for most creators the honest answer is that you want one of each.

Pricing Compared

Ours takes a sentence. One pricing page, US dollars, the same figures wherever in the world you load it. Starter is $59 a year and annual only. Plus is $14 a month or $108 a year. Ultra is $29 a month or $228 a year. The free plan does not expire and keeps three flipbooks live at a time. Those were the numbers in August 2026, and since they are ours we can state them flatly rather than hedging.

Beacons runs a free tier with paid subscription tiers above it, and because there is a storefront involved, the shape of the deal has a second dimension: what you pay each month and what happens when money moves through the page. Both parts vary by tier and both are the sort of thing that changes, so we are not going to quote figures. Their own pricing page is the place to read them, and it is worth reading the fee line as carefully as the monthly one if you plan to sell.

The comparison that helps is what each subscription is actually for. Theirs buys the shop front: how the page looks, what it can sell, what you learn about the people who arrived, what you can send them afterwards. Ours buys how one document behaves for the person reading it, which is your logo instead of ours, brand colours on the reader controls, the page turn effects the free plan does not carry, then the embed code and its allowed domain list, and finally background music and a password for each reader. There is no overlap at all, which is why running both is a normal thing to do rather than a compromise.

What Each Free Plan Really Gives You

Beacons has a real free tier and it is the reason so many creators try it. You get a published page on an address of theirs, at no cost, carrying a small mark that identifies the tool, and it is a working product rather than a demo: links, blocks, a page you can hand out the same afternoon. Which of the store, email and analytics features are open at no cost and which sit behind a tier is exactly the sort of detail that moves as they ship, so read their own page rather than trusting a figure quoted anywhere else, this one included.

The Flipbooks AI free plan is narrower and aims at one outcome. Three flipbooks stay live at a time on 1 GB of storage, and the allowance is rolling, so deleting one frees its slot straight away and a free account can publish far more than three documents over a year. There is no page cap, so a 200 page lookbook goes up whole. No ads sit beside the reader, readers never need an account, nothing is listed in any public directory, and there is no inactivity rule, so a flipbook stays live until you delete it. One shared password is allowed. What you do not get for free is the choice of page turn effects, which stays on magazine, and there is a small Flipbooks AI mark in the corner of the viewer.

Read as a pair, the two free tiers answer different halves of the same problem. Theirs gives you somewhere to send people and something to sell them. Ours gives the documents in that stack somewhere decent to land. A creator can run both at no cost and end up with a storefront whose media kit button opens a proper flipbook, which is a better impression than a button that fires a file at a phone.

Branding and Watermarks

Neither tool stamps a watermark across your content and neither shows ads, so this is a question of small marks. On our side, a free flipbook carries a small mark in the corner of the viewer. Every paid plan, starting with Starter at $59 a year, removes it or replaces it with your own logo, and the same tier unlocks brand colours for the reader controls, so the frame around your pages matches your palette rather than only carrying your name.

Beacons follows the ordinary pattern for a hosted page with a free tier: publish for nothing on their address with a small mark on the page, and pay to take the mark off and to make the page look properly yours. Which tier does what, and how far the theming and the custom domain support go, belongs on their pricing page rather than in a number we have not read today. What is durably true is that a free hosted page advertises the host, and both of us do it politely, in a corner rather than across the middle of your work.

Where Beacons is plainly stronger is in how much of your public identity a paid plan lets you own, since the page is the thing customers arrive at and they have built the tools to dress it. Flipbooks AI does not compete there: no templates, no in tool page editor, no custom domains. What the pages look like comes from wherever the PDF was made, and our paid tiers change the viewer around the document rather than the artwork inside it. If the storefront is where your brand lives, spend the money there and keep our free plan for the document.

Privacy and Who Can Find Your Flipbook

Flipbooks AI is link only. Nothing is listed in a public directory, nothing is submitted to search engines by us, and readers never need an account to open a flipbook. The free plan allows one shared password on a flipbook, and Ultra at $228 a year gives each reader a password of their own, which is the tier that matters when you want to know which brand opened your rate card rather than just that somebody did.

A Beacons page points the other way on purpose. It is a public page built to be found, shared and shopped, and it would be a strange storefront that hid from visitors. That is the right design for what it is. It does mean anything you attach to it is as public as the page, so a rate card behind a button on a public storefront is a rate card any competitor can read, which is fine for most creators and wrong for a few. If your numbers are negotiable, consider putting the rate card behind a password and sending the password with your reply instead.

One caveat is worth being blunt about, and most of it concerns our own product. A share link is a public URL, so a link pasted anywhere public can be crawled from that page. More importantly, on Flipbooks AI a password gates the reader interface rather than the file behind it. If a document genuinely must not leak, a signed agreement, an unreleased price list, anything with a legal consequence attached, our tool is not a substitute for a system with real access control and per person accounts. We would rather write that here than let you discover it later. For a media kit you want read, none of it matters.

Embedding and Sharing

Both products share by link, and on both sides a reader opens the result in a browser with nothing to install and no sign up. That is why they fit together so easily. A flipbook link dropped into your Beacons page works at no cost on either side, and it is the pairing we would suggest to most creators reading this: keep the storefront where it is, and put the document behind one of its buttons.

Embedding a flipbook inside another site starts on our Plus plan at $14 a month or $108 a year, and the same plan brings the allowed domain list that decides which sites may frame it, so the code cannot be lifted onto a page you never approved. Whether a Beacons page can hold a framed document, and on which tier, is a question for their own documentation rather than for us. For a link in bio page it is mostly beside the point anyway, since the whole design of that page is to send someone somewhere rather than to hold something inside itself.

The practical version is short. Publish the media kit or the lookbook as a flipbook, copy the share link, and add it to the Beacons page as its own block, labelled in plain words rather than with the file name, because Media Kit 2026 reads better than a PDF called mk-final-v3. Then use their analytics for the one thing we do not offer, which is knowing whether anybody opened it, and their email tools to follow up with the people who did. That division of labour is the entire argument of this page.

Ease of Use and What Each Tool Is For

Beacons is easy in the way a good creator product is easy: sign up, drop in your links, switch on the blocks you want, and the page is ready before the coffee goes cold. It has grown well beyond a list of links, with a store, email and analytics attached, and it still manages to feel like something you can set up yourself without reading a manual. Nothing in this comparison is a complaint about that, and the breadth is a genuine advantage over a plain link page.

Flipbooks AI is narrow in the opposite direction. There is no template gallery, no in tool page editor, no custom domains, no team seats, no API, no reader analytics, no lead capture forms and no e-commerce. You upload a finished PDF, pick a page turn effect, set a password if the document is private, add your logo and brand colours if you are paying, and share the link. The design work already happened wherever the PDF was made, which is why a flipbook looks like a designed document rather than like our product.

The deciding question is what kind of thing you are publishing. If it is a route or an offer, somewhere to go next or something to buy, that is a storefront and Beacons is built for it. If it is a document, twelve or a hundred and twenty pages with a grid somebody worked to, then breaking it into blocks on a page is the wrong shape, and hanging it off the page as a raw PDF download is the version of that mistake most creators actually make. A PDF on a phone opens in whichever viewer the phone chose, if it opens at all. A flipbook opens in the browser, on the cover, at the right size, and turns.

Who Should Choose Which

Choose Flipbooks AI if

• You have a finished media kit, lookbook, rate card or catalogue and want it to read properly on a phone
• The fixed page layout somebody designed is part of what makes the document good
• You want your own logo and brand colours around the document, from $59 a year
• You want a password on what you share, or a separate password for each reader on Ultra

Choose Beacons if

• You need one address that routes an audience to everything else you run
• You want to sell something from that page and take the payment there
• You want an email list and the analytics that tell you which links people use
• What you are publishing is an offer or a route rather than a designed document

How to Switch from Beacons to Flipbooks AI

Almost nobody should switch, because these two do different jobs and running both is the sensible outcome. What people do move is one specific thing: the document currently hanging off a button as a PDF download, which is the block everyone taps and nobody finishes reading on a phone. That is a twenty minute job, and there is no import step, because a flipbook is always generated from a source document.

1. Work out which block is actually a document. Go through your Beacons page and mark the blocks that open a file rather than a place or an offer, the media kit, the lookbook, the rate card, the catalogue, the course outline. Those are the candidates. The store, the booking link and the social profiles stay exactly where they are and are none of our business.
2. Find the original export, not the copy that got passed around. Use the PDF that came out of InDesign, Canva, Figma or whatever laid it out, rather than a version somebody printed and scanned. Text left as text stays sharp when a reader zooms in, and any internal links inside the document keep working.
3. Check the file opens on the cover. A flipbook opens on page one, so make sure the cover really is the first page and not a blank or a print slug. While you are in there, put the pages in reading order and drop anything that only existed for the printer, because a reader on a phone has no use for your bleed marks.
4. Upload it to Flipbooks AI and set it up. Drop the file on the create page, choose a page turn effect, add a password if the document is private, and set your own logo and brand colours if you are on a paid plan. Preview it before publishing, and remember that the free plan keeps three flipbooks live at a time with the magazine effect.
5. Swap the block on your page, then measure it. Replace the file download with a link to the flipbook, label it in plain words, and leave the old file live for a week in case somebody bookmarked it. Then use the analytics on the Beacons side to see whether more people are opening the document now that it opens properly, which is the only honest way to know this was worth doing.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is Beacons free, and what does the free plan include?

Yes, and it is a real free tier rather than a trial. You get a published page on an address of theirs, at no cost, carrying a small mark that identifies the tool, and you can add your links and blocks and hand the address out the same day. Which of the store, email and analytics features are open at no cost, and which sit behind a paid tier, moves as they ship, so check their own pricing page for the current position rather than trusting a figure quoted here. Our free plan is narrower on purpose: three flipbooks live at a time on 1 GB, no page cap, no ads, one shared password, and a small corner mark on the viewer.

Can Beacons turn a PDF into a flipbook?

No, and it is not trying to. A link in bio page and storefront sends people to a destination or sells them something, so a PDF attached to it is a file somebody downloads rather than a document they read in place. You can absolutely link or sell a PDF from the page, and plenty of creators do, but the reader then leaves and lands in whatever viewer their phone chose. Flipbooks AI takes the same finished PDF and puts the pages online exactly as drawn, so the link opens on the cover in the browser and turns from there, on a phone as well as a desktop.

How much does Beacons cost?

They run a free tier with paid subscription tiers above it, and because a storefront is involved there are two things to read rather than one: the monthly price and whatever applies when money moves through the page. Both vary by tier and both change, so their own pricing page is the place to check and we are not going to quote numbers we have not read today. Ours do not move: $59 a year for Starter, $14 a month or $108 a year for Plus, and $29 a month or $228 a year for Ultra, the same wherever in the world you load the page.

Can I sell a document with Flipbooks AI?

No. There is no checkout, no payment handling and no e-commerce anywhere in our product, and there is no plan to add it. If you want to sell a PDF or a course workbook, sell it through a storefront such as theirs and deliver the file the way that tool delivers files. What we are good at is the free thing that makes the sale, which is the media kit, the sample chapter or the lookbook you want a stranger to open and read on a phone without downloading anything or creating an account first.

Should my media kit be a download or a flipbook?

A flipbook, if it is going behind a button on a public page, and the reason is the phone. A PDF download opens in whichever viewer the phone chose, often at an unreadable zoom, and a fair number of people simply back out rather than pinch their way through twenty pages. A flipbook opens in the browser on the cover, sized to the screen, and turns like the printed thing it was drawn to be. Keep the PDF as your archive and for anyone who asks for the file itself, since the source document is the master copy either way.

Can I put a flipbook link on my Beacons page?

Yes, and that is the pairing we would suggest for most people reading this. Publish the document as a flipbook, copy the share link, and add it as its own block with a plain label such as Media Kit or Spring Lookbook rather than the file name. It costs nothing on our side beyond the free plan, and their analytics then tell you the one thing we cannot, which is whether anybody is opening it. Embedding a flipbook inside another site is a different feature and starts on our Plus plan at $108 a year.

Will my flipbook end up in a public directory or in Google?

Not because of us. Flipbooks are link only, nothing is listed in a public directory, and nothing is submitted to search engines on your behalf. What is true of any hosted link, ours included, is that a URL pasted on a public page can be crawled from that page, and a creator storefront is about as public as a page gets, so treat anything you hang off it as readable by anybody. If that is a problem for a particular document, put a password on it, and read the caveat in the privacy section before relying on that password too heavily.

Is there a page limit or a file size limit?

Flipbooks AI sets no page cap at all, so a 300 page catalogue goes up whole on any plan including the free one, and what actually constrains you is storage, which is 1 GB on the free plan. A very heavy PDF simply takes longer to convert. On the Beacons side the question does not really apply, since a link in bio page holds blocks rather than pages, so what constrains you there is what each tier allows and how far a visitor is willing to scroll before they lose interest and leave.

Can I import my Beacons store into Flipbooks AI?

No, and there would be nothing to import. A flipbook is always generated from a source document, so the only thing that travels is a PDF, and a storefront is not a document in that sense. There is no import path from Beacons or from anywhere else. If you want the content of a page as a flipbook, lay it out as a PDF in whatever design tool you use and upload that. In practice the two sit side by side rather than one replacing the other, with the store out front and the documents behind its buttons.

Is Beacons a good tool?

Yes, and it is one of the more ambitious products in its category. It started where every link page starts and then built the parts creators actually ask for next, a store that takes money, an email list you own rather than rent, and analytics that tell you what is working, without losing the set it up yourself simplicity that got people in. It is better than us at everything it does, and it is not attempting to publish your PDF. The split is easy to hold in your head: Beacons is the shop front, a flipbook is what a customer opens when they want to see the work.