Issuu

Our school definitely appreciates having a home on the web to archive our publications. Professional appearance with nice sorting capabilities. Nice social sharing and easy to pull out stories for custom sharing. Well done.

There are so many features that cost. As a small private educational institution who is not wanting to use Issuu to sell, we cannot afford the $20 each month to house our materials, even though begin able to schedule to publish and allow viewers to occasionally download would be excellent. We wish there was a educational/non-profit discount. We use smugmug for exactly the same purposes with photos, and their $75/year is very doable to gain some extra features over the free version. There are commercial features we miss out on there as well, but we don't sell our photos either, so it's just right.

Issuu is amazingly simple to navigate. In particular this year when most class work has been online, I was able to teach students basic page layout using Google Docs. The pdf that students produced was easily uploaded to Issuu and the link shared with their classmates for critique. Of course they could share a Google Doc link, but everyone loved the way that Issuu allowed their work to be opened up into a double page spread that could easily be flipped forward or backward to view. They are aware that a subscription would remove ads, but as novices, it is great to become aware of possibilities for marketing and other publication.

I found this equally easy to use whether using InDesign or a simple Google Docs pdf. I can’t think of anything that I would change.

I love how simple the platform is for both publishers and consumers. I'm a relatively light user, but I have never once felt the need tp even consider other platforms. It has an attractive interface and makes my job easier.

I sometimes feel the language in the UX and in tutorials and the pricing model etc is so specific to typical magazines where there is a single design distributed to the masses. I have a very different use case where I sell customer one-off magazine designs to clients and use Issuu to work through revisions and approvals with them. I also maintain my issuu profile as a way to showcase my work. I'm sure there are lots of other unique use cases too. Really, this is such a small nit, but it is the one thing I would complain about if I had to.