Flipbooks AI vs Readymag: Should You Design the Publication or Publish the PDF?

The Short Answer

Choose Flipbooks AI if the document already exists as a finished PDF and you want it online today, with a page turn a reader can flip through, your own logo and brand colours on the paid plans, and a link that opens on a phone without anyone signing in. Nothing gets rebuilt and nothing reflows. The layout you exported is the layout people see, which is the whole point when the file came out of InDesign and the typography is doing real work. Setup is an upload, a choice of page turn effect, and a link.

Choose Readymag if the publication has not been designed yet, or if you want it to live as a genuine web page rather than as a document on a screen. It is a design tool: you build the thing inside it, on a canvas, with type controls, animation, responsive behaviour and a starting library of templates, and you publish to a web address you can put your own domain on. Flipbooks AI has no editor, no templates and no custom domains at any price, and it never will, because it starts from a file that is already finished. If the design work is still ahead of you, it belongs there and not here.

Flipbooks AI vs Readymag at a Glance

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

Pricing Compared

Our side is short and can be stated exactly. Flipbooks AI has one pricing page in US dollars and the same price wherever in the world you look from, checked in August 2026. 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. The free plan keeps three flipbooks live at a time on 1 GB of storage, with no page cap and no ads. That is the entire ladder, and there is nothing quote based hiding behind it.

Readymag is a subscription with a published pricing page of its own, and the tiers are built around what a design tool needs to sell: how much you can publish, whether you can put a custom domain on the result, and what happens when other people work on the same project with you. Numbers are exactly the thing that moves on a page like that, so we are not going to quote any here. Their pricing page is the place to check before you commit, and it is worth checking the annual and monthly columns separately, because design tools often price those quite differently.

The more useful comparison is what the money is for. On Readymag you are paying for the ability to make the publication at all: the canvas, the type controls, the motion, the responsive work and the address it ends up on. On Flipbooks AI you are paying for how a file you already made behaves for the people reading it, which is why the ladder is short. If you already have a design tool you like, and the PDF comes out of it finished, then we are an add on cost of $59 a year rather than a replacement for anything. If you do not have one, we do not become one.

What Each Free Plan Really Gives You

Ours can be described to the letter. The free plan holds three flipbooks live at a time on 1 GB of storage, with the magazine page turn effect, a small Flipbooks AI mark in the corner of the viewer and one shared password if you want the document gated. There is no page cap, so a 300 page catalogue goes up whole, there are no ads beside the reader, readers never need an account, and nothing is listed in any public directory. The three flipbook allowance is a rolling one rather than a lifetime count: delete one and the slot comes back straight away, so a free account can publish far more than three documents across a year. There is no inactivity rule either, so a flipbook nobody has opened in six months is still there.

Readymag has published a free tier for a long time and it is a real one in the sense that you can build a project and put it online, with their branding on the result. What that tier includes has been adjusted more than once over the years, which is normal for a design product, so treat any number you read about it anywhere as needing a check on their own pricing page. The thing that does not change is the shape: their free tier gives you the tool, and the limits fall on how much you can publish and how far you can take the branding.

That difference in shape is worth sitting with, because it decides which free plan is generous for you. Their free plan hands you a design canvas and asks you to do the work. Ours hands you publishing and assumes the work is done. If you are staring at an empty page, our free plan is useless to you. If you are staring at a finished export, theirs asks you to rebuild something you have already built.

Branding and Watermarks

Neither tool stamps anything across your pages, and that is worth saying plainly because the word watermark gets thrown around loosely in this category. On Flipbooks AI a free flipbook carries a small Flipbooks AI mark in the corner of the viewer and nothing else. The pages themselves are untouched. Any paid plan, starting with Starter at $59 a year, either removes that mark or swaps in your own logo, and the same $59 unlocks brand colours for the reader controls, so the chrome around your pages matches your palette rather than only carrying your name.

Readymag's free publications carry their mark too, in the way that hosted publishing tools generally do, and removing it is something the paid tiers handle. Which tier, and what exactly it covers, is the sort of detail that gets rearranged between plan revisions, so check their plan table rather than trusting a comparison article, including this one.

Where they go further than we ever will is the address. A custom domain is the strongest branding a published document can carry, because it is the first thing a reader reads and it is the thing they will remember. Readymag sells that. Flipbooks AI does not offer custom domains at any price, so your flipbook lives on our address with your logo and your colours on it. If a client is paying you to make something that looks entirely theirs, down to the URL, that is a real reason to publish it there instead, and no amount of brand colour on our reader controls closes that gap.

Privacy and Who Can Find Your Flipbook

Flipbooks AI is link only. A flipbook is never listed in a public directory, we never submit it to search engines, and readers never need an account to open one. The free plan allows one shared password across all readers, and Ultra, at $29 a month or $228 a year, gives each reader a password of their own so you can tell who you handed access to.

Here is the caveat we put on every one of these pages, because it is the honest limit of the product. On Flipbooks AI a password gates the reader interface, not the file behind it. A shared link is a public URL, and a URL that ends up somewhere public can be found. If a document genuinely must not leak, a flipbook tool is not the right container for it and you want a system built for access control instead.

Readymag's output is a web page, and a published web page behaves like one. That means it can be found by search engines the way any site can unless you tell it otherwise, and it also means the ordinary web controls apply: you can generally set a project to be private or gated, and their own documentation is the place to confirm which tier that sits on and how it behaves. Neither of these products is a secure document system. The difference is only that a web publication is a public artefact by default and a flipbook link is an unlisted one by default, and both assumptions can be undone by a link being pasted in the wrong place.

Embedding and Sharing

On Flipbooks AI, sharing a link is free and works on every plan. Embedding your flipbook inside another site starts on Plus, at $14 a month or $108 a year, which also brings the allowed domain list: a list of the sites permitted to frame your flipbook, so nobody else can drop it into a page you have not approved. Ultra adds background music, which changes what sharing a link feels like for a lookbook or a portfolio more than most people expect.

Readymag is on the other side of that question, and it is a fair point in their favour. Their output is already a web page, so the sharing unit is a URL you can style, put a domain on and treat as a destination in its own right rather than as something to be nested inside another site. And within a project, embedding external content is part of the design job, so live elements can sit inside the publication instead of beside it. If your document needs to hold something that updates, that is their territory.

The practical version of this is a question about where the document is going. If it will be a page on a site you already run, sitting inside your own navigation, then embedding matters and that is a $108 a year answer here. If it is going to be the destination itself, sent as a link and read as a standalone thing, then a designed page with your own domain on it is a strong answer and Readymag sells exactly that. Both tools share by link, so on that narrow point there is nothing between them.

Ease of Use and What Each Tool Is For

Flipbooks AI is narrow on purpose and the whole session is short. You drop the PDF on the create page, choose a page turn effect, add a password if the document is private, set your logo and brand colours if you are on a paid plan, preview it and publish. There is no template gallery, no in tool page editor, no custom domains, no team seats, no API, no reader analytics and no lead capture forms. The design happened wherever you made the PDF. That is a limitation and it is also the reason the tool takes ten minutes to learn.

Readymag is a design tool and carries the learning curve of one, in exchange for the things a learning curve buys. You get a canvas, real typographic control, animation and scroll behaviour, responsive layout work, templates to start from and a published result that is a proper web page. People who use it are usually designers making editorial pieces, portfolios, case studies and digital stories, and the reason they choose it over a general website builder is that it gives them layout control rather than a set of blocks. If that describes what you are making, everything in this comparison points there.

So pick by the document, not by the feature list. A finished catalogue, magazine, brochure, report, menu or lookbook that was designed for print and exported as a PDF belongs in a flipbook, and rebuilding it as a web publication is a week of work to get back to where you already were. A publication that has not been made yet, that wants motion, that wants to behave differently on a phone than on a desktop, and that wants to live at your own address, belongs in a design tool. The mistake is using either one for the other job.

Who Should Choose Which

Choose Flipbooks AI if

• Your PDF is finished and you want it online, branded and readable in a couple of minutes
• The layout and typography must survive exactly as exported, with no reflow and no rebuild
• You want your own logo and brand colours on the cheapest paid plan, $59 a year
• You want a page turn a reader flips through, and on Ultra, background music or a password for each reader

Choose Readymag if

• The publication has not been designed yet and you want to build it rather than upload it
• You want templates, a real canvas, animation and responsive control over how it behaves
• You need the finished thing to live on your own custom domain, which Flipbooks AI does not offer at any price
• Your document has to hold live or interactive content rather than fixed pages

How to Switch from Readymag to Flipbooks AI

There is no import step and there is not going to be one, because a flipbook is always generated from a source document. Moving here means having a PDF, so the first question is whether one exists. If your Readymag project was designed inside the tool and never had a print version, this is a rebuild in the other direction, and it is worth being honest with yourself about whether it should move at all.

1. Find or make the source PDF. If the publication started life as a print file, use that original export rather than anything reconstructed from the web version, so the text stays sharp and internal links survive. If it only ever existed as a Readymag project, you will need to produce a PDF from wherever the artwork lives, and a page that scrolls will need laying out as pages first.
2. Write down what only exists as a web page. Animation, scroll behaviour, hover states, embedded live content, forms and anything that responds to the reader do not travel inside a PDF. Note which page each one sits on before you cancel anything, because that list is what you are deciding to give up or to rebuild elsewhere.
3. Decide what genuinely needs to stay where it is. If half your list is interactive, keep that publication on Readymag and move only the documents that are truly fixed pages, such as the catalogue, the report or the brochure. Running both is a normal answer, not a failure, and it is cheaper than forcing one tool to do both jobs badly.
4. Upload the PDF to Flipbooks AI and set it up. Drop the file on the create page, pick 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 the flipbook before publishing, and remember the free plan keeps three live at a time with the magazine effect.
5. Repoint every link, then retire the old one. Embeds, QR codes, email signatures, social posts and anything printed still point at the old address. Keep the old publication live while you swap them over, and if the flipbook is going onto a site you run, budget for Plus at $108 a year so the embed code and the allowed domain list are available when you need them.

Frequently Asked Questions

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

Readymag has offered a free tier for years, and it is a real one: you can build a project on their canvas and put it online, with their branding on the published result. The exact allowance has been revised more than once, which is normal for a design product, so read it from their own pricing page rather than from any comparison article. The shape is what stays constant: the free tier gives you the design tool, and the limits fall on how much you can publish and how far you can take the branding. Our free plan is the opposite shape, three flipbooks live at a time on 1 GB, no design tool at all.

Can Readymag turn my existing PDF into a flipbook?

That is not what it is for. Readymag is a design tool for building web publications, so its unit of work is a page you lay out on a canvas rather than a file you upload. Even where a PDF can be brought in somehow, you would still be looking at a web publication rather than a flipbook with a page turn a reader flips through. If your document is already finished and exported, uploading it to a flipbook tool takes about a minute and keeps the layout exactly as you designed it, which is the job Flipbooks AI exists to do.

How much does Readymag cost?

Readymag publishes its own pricing page and sells subscriptions, with the tiers built around how much you can publish, custom domains and working with other people. We deliberately do not quote their figures here, because pricing pages change and a stale number in a comparison is worse than no number. Check their pricing page directly, and compare the monthly and annual columns separately. Ours can be stated exactly and was checked in August 2026: Starter $59 a year annual only, Plus $14 a month or $108 a year, Ultra $29 a month or $228 a year, with a free plan under all three.

Can I put my own logo on a Flipbooks AI flipbook?

Yes, from the cheapest paid plan. Starter, at $59 a year, either removes the small Flipbooks AI corner mark or swaps in your own logo, and it unlocks brand colours for the reader controls at the same time, so the chrome around your pages matches your palette. Free flipbooks carry the corner mark and nothing across the pages themselves. What we do not sell at any price is a custom domain, so the address stays ours even when everything the reader sees is yours. If the URL has to be yours as well, a design tool that offers domains is the better buy.

Will my Flipbooks AI flipbook show up in Google?

Not through us. A flipbook is link only, it is never listed in any public directory and we never submit it to search engines, so the only way anyone finds it is because you gave them the link. The honest caveat is that a shared link is still a public URL, and a URL pasted somewhere crawlable can be found by anyone who finds that page. On our side a password gates the reader interface rather than the file behind it, so a document that genuinely must not leak needs a system with real access control instead of a flipbook.

Can I password protect a document in either tool?

On Flipbooks AI, yes, and one shared password is included on the free plan. Ultra, at $29 a month or $228 a year, gives each reader a password of their own, which is what you want when you need to know who you handed access to. Readymag offers project level protection as part of publishing a web page, and their documentation is the place to confirm which tier it sits on. Neither tool is a secure document system, and if that is your requirement you want something built for access control rather than for reading.

Can I embed a flipbook on a site I already run?

Yes, from Plus, which is $14 a month or $108 a year. That plan brings the embed code and the allowed domain list, which controls exactly which sites are permitted to frame your flipbook so nobody drops it into a page you have not approved. Link sharing is free on every plan including the free one. On the Readymag side the question is a bit different, because their output is already a web page and is usually meant to be the destination rather than something nested inside another site.

Do I need any design skills to use Flipbooks AI?

No, and that is the point of the split between these two tools. You upload a finished PDF, choose a page turn effect, add a password if you want one, set your logo and colours if you are paying, and share the link. There is no canvas to learn, no template to pick and nothing to lay out, because the design already happened wherever the PDF was made. Readymag asks for the opposite: it hands you a real design tool and expects you to do the layout work, which is exactly right if the publication does not exist yet.

Can I import a Readymag project into Flipbooks AI?

No. Flipbooks AI generates a flipbook from a source document, so the only path in is a PDF. If your publication started as a print file you still have the export and the move takes one upload. If it was designed inside Readymag and only ever existed as a web page, then animation, scroll behaviour, live content and forms do not survive the trip, and you would need to lay the content out as fixed pages first. In that case the honest advice is often to leave it where it is.

Is Readymag a good tool?

Yes, genuinely, and it is better than us at everything it sets out to do. It gives designers real typographic and layout control in a browser, with animation, responsive behaviour, templates to start from and publishing onto your own domain, which is why editorial teams and independent designers have used it for years to make things that would otherwise need a developer. It is not a flipbook maker and it is not trying to be. The split is simple: if the publication still needs designing, Readymag is the right place for it, and if it is already a finished PDF, we get it online in a couple of minutes without touching a single page of it.