Flipbooks AI vs Craft: Free Plans, Branding and What Each One Publishes

Founder of Flipbooks AI

August 12, 2026

The Short Answer

Choose Flipbooks AI if the document already exists as a finished PDF and the layout is the work. A magazine, a catalogue, a lookbook, an annual report, a menu, a programme, a portfolio: files where a designer decided every margin and the whole point is that the reader sees exactly that. You upload the PDF, it becomes a flipbook with a real page turn, and nothing reflows or rewraps on the way. The free plan keeps three flipbooks live at a time with no page cap and no ads, and paid plans from $59 a year put your own logo in place of our corner mark, add brand colours to the reader controls, and at $228 a year add background music and a separate password for each reader.

Choose Craft if the document has not been written yet, or if it is the kind of document that keeps changing. Craft is a genuinely well made writing tool with a stronger sense of design than most, and it has plenty we do not have at any price: you actually write in it, with blocks, styles and templates, several people can work on the same document at once, there are proper desktop and mobile apps that work offline, and a shared link updates the moment you edit. A document that lives there is alive. A flipbook is a snapshot, and that is the honest split between the two.

Flipbooks AI vs Craft at a Glance

Feature	Flipbooks AI	Craft
Turns a finished PDF into a page turning flipbook	Yes	No
Readers open it from a link with no sign up	Yes	Yes
Reads on a phone browser with nothing installed	Yes	Yes
No ads beside your document on any plan	Yes	Yes
A free plan that puts a document on the web	Yes	Yes
Your work stays private until you share the link	Yes	Yes
Keeps a designed page exactly as it was laid out	Yes	Reflows to fit the screen
A page turn effect chosen per document	Yes	No
Background music while the document is read	Yes	No
A separate password for each reader	Yes, on the top plan	No
Built to publish work designed in another tool	Yes	It is the design tool

Flipbooks AI wins 6 of these 11 rows, ties 5 and loses none. They are rows we picked, so read them that way. The sections below say plainly where Craft is the better buy.

Pricing Compared

Ours is short. The free plan costs nothing and asks for no card. Starter is $59 a year and is sold annually only. Plus is $14 a month or $108 a year. Ultra is $29 a month or $228 a year. Those are US dollars on one pricing page, and the same numbers appear wherever in the world you look. Starter removes the corner mark or swaps in your own logo, unlocks brand colours for the reader controls and opens the page turn effects the free plan does not carry. Plus adds the embed code and an allowed domain list. Ultra adds background music and a separate password for each reader.

We are not going to quote Craft's prices, and that is deliberate rather than lazy. They run a free tier and paid subscriptions above it, with team plans sold per person the way collaborative document tools generally are, and the exact figures and what sits in each tier move around. Their own pricing page is the only place worth reading for that, and any comparison article that hard codes a competitor's price is out of date within a year. Check it there, and check what the free tier includes today rather than what a blog post said it included.

The more useful comparison is what each subscription is actually for. Theirs buys a writing environment: the editor, the apps, collaboration, templates, whatever storage and sharing sit on the tier you pick. Ours buys nothing about writing at all, because we have no editor. It buys how one finished document behaves for a reader: your branding instead of ours, the page turn effect, control over who may embed it, music, per reader passwords. Two subscriptions that do not overlap, which is why a fair number of people pay for both without it feeling like duplication.

What Each Free Plan Really Gives You

The Flipbooks AI free plan keeps three flipbooks live at a time on 1 GB of storage, with the magazine page turn effect and a small corner mark on the published flipbook. Three is a rolling allowance rather than a lifetime count, so deleting one frees the slot straight away and a free account can publish far more than three documents over a year. There is no page cap, so a 300 page catalogue goes up whole. No ads sit beside the reader, readers never need an account, one shared password is allowed on the free plan, the flipbook is never listed in any public directory, and there is no inactivity rule: it stays live until you delete it.

Craft's free tier is a real free tier rather than a countdown, and people use it for years. What it gives you is the thing we do not have: a place to write, with the blocks, styles and structure that make their documents look good with almost no effort, plus sharing a document as a web link. Where the limits fall, on documents, blocks, storage or which sharing options are included, is exactly the kind of detail that changes between releases, so read it on their pricing page rather than here. What we would bet on is the shape: free to write and share something, paid to unlock the heavier features and to work as a team.

Held side by side, the two free plans answer different questions. Theirs answers "can I make and share a nice looking document without paying", and the answer is yes. Ours answers "can I put a document I have already made on the web, with a page turn, with no cap on pages and no ads, without paying", and the answer is also yes. If you have a PDF in hand, ours is the shorter route. If you have an idea and no document, theirs is, and a flipbook has nothing to convert.

Branding and Watermarks

A free Flipbooks AI flipbook carries a small mark in the corner of the reader. Nothing is stamped across your pages, there are no ads, and the pages themselves are your PDF untouched. Starter at $59 a year removes that mark or replaces it with your own logo, and the same plan unlocks brand colours for the reader controls, so the frame around your document matches your palette rather than ours. It matters that both of those sit on the cheapest paid step: branding is not held back for a business tier.

Craft's approach to identity is different in kind, not degree. Because you write inside it, the look of the document is made of their styles, themes and cover images, and a shared page inherits whatever you chose. That is real design control and it produces genuinely attractive results, more attractive than what most people get out of a word processor. Whether a small vendor mark or a "made with" line appears on a shared page, and on which tier it goes away, is their call and it can change between releases, so check their current sharing settings rather than trusting a figure in an article.

Underneath that sits the real difference. In Craft the brand is applied while you write, so the document and its styling are the same object. With us the brand arrived in the PDF: the typography, grid, photography and colour were settled in the design tool, and our job is to render that faithfully and then put your logo where our mark was. If your brand lives in an InDesign template or a Canva kit that a designer maintains, that pipeline points at us. If your brand is a set of defaults you would rather not think about, that points at them.

Privacy and Who Can Find Your Flipbook

Both tools are private by default in the ordinary sense: a document is yours until you create a share link, and neither of us publishes a directory of other people's work. A Flipbooks AI flipbook is reachable by its link and nothing else. It is never listed anywhere public, never submitted to search engines by us, and readers open it without an account. You can set one shared password on the free plan, and Ultra at $29 a month or $228 a year gives every reader a password of their own.

Now the caveat that belongs on every page we write, because it is about our product rather than theirs. A Flipbooks AI password gates the reader interface, not the file behind it. If a document genuinely must not leak, a contract before signature, unpublished results, anything with personal data in it, then a link plus a code is the wrong control and you want a system with real access control instead. Say the same thing to yourself about any shared web link: the URL is the credential, and URLs get forwarded. We did not test how Craft's sharing controls behave at that level, so treat their side as unchecked rather than assuming it matches ours.

There is one structural difference worth knowing. A shared Craft page is a live view of a document you can still edit, so what a reader sees can change after you send the link, which is useful when the content should stay current and unhelpful when it must be fixed. A flipbook is a snapshot of a file: once published, page 12 says what it said when you uploaded it, and changing it means uploading a new version. For anything that will be quoted back at you later, contracts, price lists, published editions, the snapshot is the safer object.

Sharing a flipbook is a URL. The reader opens it in any browser, turns pages with a click, a swipe or the arrow keys, and never signs into anything. If you want it inside a page you own, the embed code arrives on Plus at $14 a month or $108 a year, and the same plan brings the allowed domain list so you can name which sites may frame the flipbook and block everyone else. On the free plan there is no embed code, so you share the link, which is what most documents in an email or behind a QR code need anyway.

Sharing a Craft document is also a URL, and theirs does something ours cannot: it stays in sync. Edit the document and the shared page follows, so a link you sent in March is still correct in June without anyone re-sending anything. If your document is a proposal that keeps being revised, a handbook, a running project brief, that is a genuine advantage and it is the reason to keep it there. Whether a shared page can be iframed elsewhere, and on which tier, is a detail to check in their current sharing options rather than take from us.

The pairing is worth saying out loud because a lot of people land on it naturally. Write and refine in Craft while the content is moving, and when the thing is finally signed off and laid out, export a PDF and publish that as a flipbook for the audience who should read the finished version. The working document keeps its own life; the published edition gets a cover, a page turn and your logo. Nobody has to choose a single tool for a job that genuinely has two halves.

Ease of Use and What Each Tool Is For

Craft is pleasant software, and that is not a small thing. The editor is quick, the blocks make structure easy without a manual, the templates give you a decent starting point, the apps work offline, and a document you have not styled at all still looks respectable. Most of the design credit in a Craft document belongs to Craft. If your problem is that documents written by your team look messy, buying an opinionated editor fixes it at the source in a way that no publishing tool downstream can.

Flipbooks AI is easy for the opposite reason: there is very little to learn because there is very little in it. Upload a PDF, choose a page turn effect, set a password if the document is private, add your logo and brand colours if you pay, share the link. The gaps are worth listing plainly: no template gallery, no in tool page editor, no custom domains, no team seats, no API, no reader analytics, no lead capture and no e-commerce. There is no import path from another tool either. If any of those is on your list, you are looking at the wrong product and we would rather you found that out here.

So the question is what stage your document is at. Nothing written yet, or written and still moving: that belongs in a writing tool, and Craft is one of the better ones. Written, designed, exported and signed off: that belongs in something that respects the layout and presents it like a publication, and that is what a flipbook is. Craft is closer to us than most tools on this site precisely because both of us think a document should look good. We just work at opposite ends of the same afternoon.

Who Should Choose Which

Choose Flipbooks AI if

The document is a finished PDF and its layout must survive exactly as it was designed
You want a page turn, a cover and your own logo rather than a scrolling web page
You want branding and brand colours from $59 a year, or per reader passwords at $228 a year
The design happens in InDesign, Affinity, Illustrator or Canva and you only need it published

Choose Craft if

The document has not been written yet, or it keeps changing after you share it
You want real time collaboration, offline apps on desktop and mobile, and templates
You would rather one tool wrote, styled and shared the document without a design step
You need the shared link to update automatically as you edit the source

How to Switch from Craft to Flipbooks AI

Nobody should abandon a writing tool for a publishing one, so read this as moving one document rather than moving your work. It is the right move when a document has stopped changing and deserves to be presented instead of scrolled: an edition, a report, a catalogue, a proposal that has been accepted.

Pick the documents that are actually finished. Go through what you share as web pages and separate the living material, the handbooks and briefs that get edited weekly, from the fixed pieces that are signed off and quoted. Only the fixed ones belong in a flipbook, because a flipbook is a snapshot and updating it means republishing.
Lay the document out before you export it. A shared page reflows, so exporting it straight to PDF often gives long lines, awkward breaks and no cover. If the document deserves a flipbook, rebuild the layout in the tool you would normally design in, or at least set proper page size, margins and styles, then export a print quality PDF.
Write down what lives in the app and not in the file. Comments, version history, collaborators, embedded live blocks and the automatic updating of a shared link are features of the editor, and none of them survive inside a PDF. Note which ones your readers rely on, because that decides whether the flipbook replaces the shared page or sits next to it.
Upload the PDF 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 the free plan keeps three flipbooks live at a time with the magazine effect.
Repoint the links and keep both tools. Update emails, QR codes, embeds and social posts to the flipbook URL, leave the working document where it is so the next edition has somewhere to be written, and if you are on Plus, add your sites to the allowed domain list so only they can frame it.

Frequently Asked Questions

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

Craft runs a free tier that lets you write and share documents, which is more than a trial, and people use it for a long time before paying. Where the limits fall, on documents, blocks, storage or which sharing options are included, moves between releases, so their pricing page is the place to check rather than any article. The Flipbooks AI free plan is a different sort of free: three flipbooks live at a time, 1 GB of storage, no page cap, no ads, the magazine page turn effect and a small corner mark on the published flipbook.

Does Craft put a watermark on a shared document?

Shared pages made in Craft look like the document you wrote rather than a branded template, and their styles do most of the work. Whether a small vendor mark or a made with line appears on a shared page, and which tier removes it, is theirs to decide and it can change, so read their current sharing settings instead of trusting a figure here. On our side a free flipbook carries a small corner mark and nothing across the pages, and Starter at $59 a year removes it or swaps in your own logo along with brand colours.

Can I turn a Craft document into a flipbook?

Yes, by exporting it as a PDF and uploading that file. The thing to watch is that a document written to be scrolled does not automatically make a good page: exporting straight from an editor often gives long measures, headings stranded at the bottom of a page and no cover. If it matters, set a page size, margins and styles before exporting, or rebuild the layout in a design tool. Once the PDF is right, the upload takes about a minute and the flipbook looks the same to everyone who opens it.

Which one keeps my design intact?

Flipbooks AI, because a PDF fixes everything. Every font, image, column and margin is locked into the file, so the flipbook a reader opens on a phone in another country matches what you approved. A shared web document reflows to fit the screen, which is exactly right for something people read as a page and exactly wrong for a spread where the layout carries meaning. If your document was designed as facing pages with a grid, choose the tool that preserves it; if it was written as prose, reflowing is a feature rather than a fault.

Can I password protect a document on either tool?

Flipbooks AI allows one shared password on the free plan, and Ultra at $29 a month or $228 a year gives each reader a password of their own. The limit is important and we would rather say it than let you find out: our password gates the reader interface, not the file behind it, so a document that genuinely must not leak needs a system with real access control instead. Craft has its own sharing controls, which we did not test in August 2026, so check what their current options cover before relying on either product for something sensitive.

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

Not through us. A flipbook is reachable by its link, is never listed in any public directory, and is never submitted to search engines on our side. The caveat applies to every hosted link, including theirs: a URL pasted somewhere public can be found from there, so the link itself is the thing to look after. If you want a document to be findable, a flipbook is a poor choice for that job, because search engines read a web page far better than they read a file behind a reader interface.

Can I embed either one on my own website?

The Flipbooks AI embed code arrives on Plus at $14 a month or $108 a year, and the same plan adds the allowed domain list so only the sites you name can frame your flipbook. On the free plan you share the link. Whether a shared Craft page can be iframed into another site, and on which tier, is a detail in their current sharing options that we did not verify, so check it there. Linking from one to the other always works and is the simplest thing when embedding is not available.

Is there a page limit or a file size limit?

Flipbooks AI has no page cap at all: a 300 page catalogue uploads whole, and the free plan comes with 1 GB of storage, which is the thing that actually limits you rather than the number of pages. A very heavy PDF just takes longer to convert. Craft measures its plans in the units a writing tool uses, documents and blocks and storage, so their pricing page is the place to see where the ceiling is on the tier you are on. Neither product tends to be stopped by an ordinary document.

Can I import my Craft documents into Flipbooks AI?

Not directly, and there is no import path from any tool. Flipbooks AI builds a flipbook from a source PDF, so the route is always the same: export the document as a PDF, upload the PDF, set it up. Anything held in the editor rather than the file, comments, version history, collaborators, live blocks and the automatic updating of a shared link, does not travel with the export and has to stay where it is. That is a fair reason to keep both tools rather than move everything.

Is Craft a good tool?

Yes, and it is the closest thing on this site to a tool we would recommend alongside our own. It is well built, quick, pleasant to write in, and it takes design seriously in a category where most products do not, so an ordinary document written in it comes out looking better than it would anywhere else. Collaboration, offline apps and shared links that stay in sync are all things we do not offer at any price. The honest split is that Craft is where a document is made, and Flipbooks AI is where a finished one is published.

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Flipbooks AI vs Craft: Where Should Your Finished Document Live?