Last update: December 9, 2025
If you’ve reached this point in your research, you’re likely already feeling the pressure that comes with managing product catalogs today. Static PDFs are slowing you down. Updates take too long. Customers can’t find what they’re looking for. Your team is drowning in version control issues, scattered content, and workflows that don’t scale.
You already know you need something better, a digital catalog tool that makes your catalogs easier to update, easier to share, and easier for customers to buy from.
The challenge? There are dozens of digital catalog makers on the market, and they all promise similar results. What you actually need is clarity:
Which tool is built for your exact use case, your industry, and your level of complexity?
Below are the top 10 digital catalog software tools worth considering, each paired with a clear “best for” use case so you can immediately identify whether it fits your needs — without wasting hours comparing features one by one.
Catalog maker software or digital catalog makers are online platforms that provide users with the ability to transform plain text documents, usually PDFs, into interactive digital catalogs. At the same time, you can also refer to them as catalog management software, since they allow functionality for both the individual catalogs and the teams responsible for their creation.
Aside from the visual enhancements that further engage audiences, digital catalog creation software also allows users to organize incoming data from audience behavior-tracking methods. Other features include multimedia elements, automation, or checkout options, which may vary across different online platforms. The battle for the best catalog software started a while back as these digital catalog makers continually improved their tools.
Depending on industry and company size, businesses typically look for catalog software that reduces manual work, keeps product information accurate, and supports fast, scalable updates. Today, that increasingly means choosing a solution with automation capabilities, from data mapping to full catalog generation.
The essentials below represent the baseline capabilities modern businesses expect and the reason why platforms like Flipsnack have become a preferred choice for organizations that need both flexibility and efficiency.
Digital catalogs eliminate printing and distribution costs, but software pricing varies based on several factors. Businesses should evaluate:
Regardless of your industry or niche, the digital catalog management software holds the potential to transform your business. Join us on this exploration as we introduce you to the cream of the crop in catalog-making tools. These are the platforms that will enable you to captivate your target audience, streamline your product presentations, and elevate your brand to unprecedented heights.
Example: Melissa & Doug, Electrolux
Manufacturers that sell their products to resellers and distributors need a streamlined way to showcase their product offerings while ensuring that pricing, availability, and specifications remain up to date. Traditionally, printed catalogs have been the go-to solution, but they come with high production costs and quickly become outdated.
A digital catalog maker helps manufacturers:
For manufacturers like Electrolux, which sells appliances globally, and Melissa & Doug, a toy manufacturer targeting retail distributors, digital catalogs simplify the product selection process and enhance customer engagement.
Example: Newell Brands
Retailers with diverse product lines need a visually engaging and user-friendly way to present their inventory to consumers. Traditional PDFs or printed catalogs often fall short in terms of accessibility, interactivity, and ease of updates.
With a digital catalog maker, retailers can:
Retailers like Newell Brands, which owns a portfolio of well-known consumer goods brands, use digital catalogs to make their products easily accessible across multiple sales channels while maintaining a strong brand presence.
Example: Chez Pluie
For antique dealers and boutique shops, having a well-organized and visually appealing catalog is crucial for attracting collectors and niche buyers. Since many antique items are one-of-a-kind, it’s essential to have an easily updatable catalog that highlights the unique nature of each product.
A digital catalog maker allows antique shops to:
An example is Chez Pluie, a high-end French antique shop that uses digital catalogs to display curated collections to an international customer base. By leveraging digital catalogs, they make their offerings more accessible to collectors worldwide while preserving the charm and exclusivity of their pieces.
Here’s a list of the ten best online catalog makers out there. To put this together, I researched the most important aspects of each platform. To compile the information, I have conducted a study to cover the most important aspects of each platform. Based on the needs of those looking for a digital catalog-making solution, I looked into what each platform offers, reviews from G2 and Capterra, pricing, and customers and summarized the information.
There are other digital catalog makers or solutions providers available, but as those looking for these solutions look for them through online search engines, I looked there as well. The following came up most frequently for queries like digital catalog maker, digital catalog software, digital catalog, product catalog software, and variations of these, as well as combinations with the words top and best. For an even more expansive research, I also looked at what ChatGPT recommends.
To better understand these software platforms beyond what their marketing strategy shows and what online reviews share, I tried them out. For accurate results, I used the same PDF and tested their features to see how they work.
Whether you’re transitioning from traditional catalogs or seeking an upgrade, these selections have you covered. For full transparency, the order is random, and you can choose the one that fits your needs best based on their capabilities.
| Software | Best use case | What it does best | Rating |
|---|
| Flipsnack | Best all-around catalog management (B2B + B2C) | Fast PDF-to-flipbook, catalog generator, SKU detection, strong security, shoppable catalogs, branded catalogs, checkout integrations, and advanced analytics | 4.7 / 5 |
| Publuu | Simple catalogs, quick online publishing | Easy setup, intuitive interface, easy sharing via link/embed | 4.8 / 5 |
| FlippingBook | Sales outreach & document sharing | Lead capture, viewer tracking, SSO, clean PDF enhancement | 4.7 / 5 |
| iPaper | Retail catalogues with checkout & engagement | Checkout options (WhatsApp, email), interactive catalogs, heatmap analytics | 4.8 / 5 |
| FlipHTML5 | Budget-sensitive users, creative & media-rich catalogs | AI eBook generator, animations, flexible media support, multilingual content | 4.7 / 5 |
| Publitas | Retailers needing mobile-optimized catalogs & SEO | Vertical mobile scrolling, SKU detection, easy purchasing flow | 4.7 / 5 |
| Marq | Brands needing strict design consistency & templates | Brand templating, smart fields, easy multi-catalog updates | 4.5 / 5 |
| Issuu | Multi-format publishing (magazines, brochures, catalogs) | Wide file support, content repurposing tools, easy sharing | 4.7 / 5 |
| DCatalog | Large enterprises with complex data & inventory sync needs | ERP/PIM integrations, inventory sync, team collaboration, bulk catalog management | 4.8 / 5 |
| Paperturn | Simple catalogs, accessible content, entry-level use | ADA/WCAG compliance, easy PDF upload and embed, simple interface | 4.9 / 5 |
Our digital catalog software offers a streamlined approach to catalog creation, and the first thing we can say about Flipsnack is that it is the fastest PDF converter available on the market.
You can upload a PDF, create a catalog from scratch, or use a professionally made catalog template. Your creativity is empowered to take flight without being limited by a lack of coding skills, as they aren’t necessary to use this catalog software.
Flipsnack combines design flexibility, B2B and B2C shopping features, powerful sharing controls, and enterprise-level customization in one platform.
Here are some of the features Flipsnack stand out for product catalogs:
Notable integrations for Flipsnack:
Plus, you can customize every detail of your digital catalog, from how your customers experience the digital player, controls, and brand to each line of text, media, and interactive elements. An intuitive Design Studio offers plenty of features that will enhance your catalog, not only by making it more visually appealing but more functional as well. Give your customers the one-stop-shop experience they dream of and gain valuable insights from the data collected by using Flipsnack as a lead generation tool. Automated catalogs connect with data sources for real-time updates regardless of impromptu price or product changes – the flipbook link will stay the same. Digital catalog creation and multiple public or private online distribution options don’t bring additional charges and will keep your documents secure.
Publuu is a versatile catalog-making software that’s built for streamlined content creation. By empowering you to create dynamic digital catalogues from simple and static PDFs, this online tool will bring you closer to your customers in more ways than accessibility. You only need a PDF document and the will to make each creation your own. There are more ways to enhance your prospects’ experience through on-brand digital catalogs. Color schemes, logos, and customizable display preferences are some of the ways you get to personalize your catalogs in Publuu. Their security options provide ways to protect your flipbooks from unwanted eyes if necessary, as you can never be safe enough.
Engage your client base through a responsive design that’s available wherever they may be. Elevate their experience through GIFs, videos, or other multimedia elements by sharing them via various online channels. Then, you can monitor them for valuable insights. Take advantage of this easy-to-use digital catalog software to elevate your brand’s reach and harness the power of marketing and creative design to create a distinct product for your prospects.
FlippingBook’s PDF to flipbook converter offers a streamlined approach to catalog creation, exclusively utilizing PDF uploads for maximum convenience. This powerful digital catalog software helps you convert dull PDFs into branded, shareable, and trackable flipbooks. Optimize your catalog’s ranking in search engines through SEO-boosting features like title and description options to reach an even wider audience. As a content and lead generation tool, FlippingBook can help you increase conversion rates and transform prospects into faithful customers in no time.
Customize the visual appeal of your catalogs with skin options and branding elements such as logos, background images, and color palettes, and enjoy comprehensive player controls, including sharing, printing, downloading, text selection, and more. Through privacy settings, you can choose your catalog’s accessibility, whether it’s public, password-protected, or private, with customizable permissions for viewers. Additionally, a lead form with one mandatory field, tailored skip options, and page-specific placement ensures an effective lead capture process. Enhanced by accessibility features and interactive elements like video, links, images, and GIFs, this digital catalog software maker simplifies the process of crafting, sharing, and optimizing digital catalogs.
As a retailer favorite due to its extensive eCommerce features, iPaper’s innovative digital catalog creation software takes your dull PDF catalog and brings it into the 21st century. Through enriching features like videos, images, and interactive actions, a digital catalog enhanced with iPaper will be fine-tuned to your exact specifications to showcase your products and services. Engage your audiences with a product detail view option for additional information or images without having to leave the catalog. They’ll fill up their basket, wishlist, or bucket list and have multiple checkout options to choose from.
Extensive branding and design elements allow you to ensure consistency for a professional end product that your customers will remember. Ensure it reaches them via their desired channels, as share optimization takes your catalogs wherever you want them to go through extensive options available. Comprehensive statistics, including heat maps, let you dive deep into your audience’s viewing experience. Create digital catalogs that reach the market in no time with automation and without any sweat.
The digital catalog software from FlipHTML5 comes with ample versatility regardless of whether you want to upload a PDF catalog, start your publication from scratch, or use a ready-made template. While their free plan is more limited than other platforms, you can choose from various customization options. Still, once you populate your digital catalog with your market offer, make it more appealing either through professional images you can upload or dynamic visuals that will infuse character into your design.
Interactive elements like buttons, hotspots, slideshows, maps, and tables are at your disposal to increase audience engagement. Still, take their experience to another level through seamless video integration in FlipHTML5 that can be achieved by embedding, linking, or incorporating YouTube, Vimeo, or even your own videos. Additionally, you can also use audio enhancements or various character representations to achieve a more immersive experience. Whether you start your catalog creation journey from scratch, fine-tune their templates, or simply enhance a PDF publication through interactive elements, this app gives you the tools to create dynamic digital catalogs in a matter of minutes with little to no technical know-how.
Publitas is a simple PDF converter that gives you the ability to connect with your customers in a digital way by optimizing your digital catalog for SEO ranking through its title and description, broadening your target audience further than sharing links through various online methods can. Turn your digital product catalogs into revenue-driving assets by accessing a global market. Publitas offers an easy-to-use platform for retailers that are looking for a digital solution to their catalog production and distribution.
Through dynamic and shoppable elements, you get to guide shoppers through their purchasing experience from the discovery of your offer all the way to their conversion simply through digital catalogs. Include link hotspots to take them to your website, internal flipbook links for better navigation, or videos of your products in action and increase conversions through a complete shopping experience. Do this by simplifying the back-and-forth with your customers by allowing them to order directly through your digital catalog. Check-out solutions such as eCommerce integration, WhatsApp and email checkout, and favorites lists will reduce friction points in your customers’ buying journey and provide them with ample purchasing opportunities in a professional digital catalog.
While all the other digital catalog maker software from this list start with PDF upload, Marq stands out as it enables users to upload content directly from InDesign. Still, you can also start your digital catalog from scratch or take one of their templates and customize it to showcase your brand and products. Feel free to let your brand identify shine as this software gives you the canvas to do so as a power-packet brand templating platform.
Propel your business by displaying your offer via professionally curated product information, images, and other customizable elements. Seamlessly incorporate tables, smart fields, buttons, and online videos into your catalog to enhance your audience’s experience through Marq and ensure brand consistency within set design parameters. Customize your content through smart brand assets, and let the automation magic do its job once you connect data sources for advanced automation across multiple creative elements. Bring all your brand elements in one place and give your creative teams the tools they need to succeed. It doesn’t matter if you have any catalog creation experience. The Marq platform works as a one-stop solution for crafting, sharing, and analyzing digital catalogs.
Issuu offers a broad range of file compatibility, allowing you to upload content from Word Documents, PDFs, and PowerPoint presentations, along with various other formats. Regardless of what format your catalog is in, you can easily transform it into a simple yet interactive digital catalog for diverse content needs. Issuu also offers the possibility to connect with Canva and InDesign, and various templates that you can use and learn to use through their webinar series. The digital catalog-making software will convert your links and logos, easily making it possible for you to integrate your brand elements within the flipbook.
Additionally, in Issuu you can repurpose publications to other formats like articles or social media posts smoothly. There are also content enhancement elements like external linking, shopping links, and page navigation that will give your clients an easy-to-browse catalog that doubles as a shopping experience as well. While Issuu doesn’t support video and image uploads, there are plenty of videos available online that you can insert into your flipbook through a simple yet manageable link to give your clients a seamless and engaging experience.
The digital catalogue software from DCatalog takes catalog creation simplification to another level through easy PDF uploads through branding, navigation, and interactivity. Level up your sales through an all-in-one solution that seamlessly integrates eCommerce, order forms, and lead capture features. These features will help boost your business, whether you are targeting the direct consumer or engaging in B2B marketing, and give your customers the online catalog experience they deserve.
Be sure your brand isn’t getting lost in the shuffle through DCatalog’s branding elements through logos, color palettes, and URL mask customization. Improve customer navigation through a dynamic table of contents, introductory pages, and bookmarks, while links, videos, pop-ups, and animations will spark their interest further. Detailed tracking will allow you to make data-driven decisions based on how your audience engages with your digital product catalog. Real-time updates will maintain content accuracy, providing your sales team with the ultimate tool to showcase your updated offers to prospective customers, regardless of where they are. Appeal to your audiences through this dynamic, informative, interactive, and effective sales tool and drive conversions across retailers, dealers, and distributors. Receive quote requests, submit orders, and generate sales. That easy.
Paperturn is one of those digital catalog software programs that look like they were invented in the 1990s, but don’t let that fool you. While this digital catalog-making platform looks basic, it comes with a punch as it gives you the tools necessary to create engaging flipbooks that can work as ordering product catalogs. Many of its most useful features, like internal and external links, videos from hosting platforms Vimeo and YouTube, uploaded images and sounds, and embeds within your flipbook, are only available in the Pro package, but there’s a plus to this.
While these features require an upgrade, they are so easy to use that even a senior with limited technical knowledge is able to use them. That’s the level of technical know-how necessary for those using Paperturn. But that’s not a bad thing because simplicity is, in this case, the key to success. Their shopping cart or wish list features also become available with the upgrade as this digital catalog software checks all the requirements for polished publication to engage prospective buyers. Add the lead form and the data gathered from Paperturn statistics or Google Analytics, and you have all the elements necessary for a professional digital catalog to share across online media channels and reach your audience in no time.
I already mentioned above that the list is in no particular order, like first to last or some form of ranking order. Still, seeing as many of those who read this article want to find the best digital catalog maker for them, in the next section, we’ll rank them based on different characteristics.
You’ve already seen that not all are the same or offer the same functionalities, so based on what guides your decision, I’ll arrange them based on some criteria with the best three for each.
For interactivity, given the wide variety of digital catalog makers, I looked into design options, user-friendliness, and intuition. As these are the most complex digital catalog makers, I’ll go beyond the basics: links, videos, images, and audio uploads and look at more advanced interactive elements. While in FlipHTML5, you have animated characters that you can design to personalize your catalog, in Flipsnack, you can add product tags, shopping buttons, popup frames, slideshows, overlays, Vimeo or YouTube widgets, and many more.
From the list above, three online catalog makers stand out when it comes to branding. While Marq stands out with its smart field options that allow you to apply smart branding to any template you create, Flipsnack sparks competition through customizable profiles, branding kits, locked templates, and the ability to connect to your custom domain or subdomain, among others. iPaper is neck and neck as their branding options are exhaustive and proficient as well.
In the list above, I selected the more feasible digital catalog makers available on the market. From that list, given the title of the article, I had to include criteria related to sales functionalities. DCatalog provides the tools to give customers a one-stop shopping experience. Still, iPaper takes the cake with WhatsApp, Viber, email checkout options, shop export, and others. At the same time, Flipsnack comes with shopping and buy buttons and lists for quotable catalogs with orders that reach your inbox seamlessly.
Digital catalog makers need to promote your products or services, but how you do it can make a difference. These three product catalog software have ample public sharing options: direct link, email, social media, QR, and multiple download formats. Still, while they offer a wide variety of security and data protection options through restrictive sharing alternatives, Flipsnack stands out with SSO login or unlisted publications; your catalogs will only be accessible to those who need to access them.
Retailers and wholesalers depend on data to drive business decisions and to better understand their audiences. These three catalog management software take data analysis to a whole new level. While Flipsnack comes with integrated statistics and Google Analytics for optimal results, Marq shows content usage across teams for a more comprehensive story. Still, it’s iPaper that takes the lead with their heatmap, so see the areas most navigated and interacted with from your catalogs.
So there you have it. Now it’s your turn to review your company’s needs and select the digital catalog maker that fits your goals. Each platform has its strengths, and pricing varies, but the right choice is the one that helps you enhance your catalogs, reach a wider audience, and present your products in a way that truly does them justice.
After analyzing all these tools, one thing becomes clear: the best solution is the one that removes manual work, offers real-time updates, and delivers an engaging experience for your customers. Flipsnack, for example, brings together design, interactivity, automation, and advanced sharing options to simplify the entire catalog creation and distribution process.
Whether you value strong design features, interactive elements, automation, or flexible sharing, these catalog makers offer everything you need to create modern, dynamic catalogs. You can provide your customers with a shopping experience that works anywhere, without printing costs, while your team benefits from valuable insights that help you scale.
Flipsnack, for digital catalogs, delivers powerful advantages across industries:
Simplifying catalog production is easier than it may seem. Once you begin using one of today’s best digital catalog makers—especially a fully featured platform like Flipsnack—you’ll discover how effortless and efficient catalog creation can truly be.
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