Make an online catalog
from the PDF you have.

What an online catalog is (and why a PDF alone falls short)

An online catalog is your product catalog at a web address. Someone taps a link or scans a code, and the pages open in their browser, on a phone or a computer, with nothing to download.

Most small shops already have the catalog as a PDF. Emailing that PDF works, but it has limits. It's a heavy attachment, it looks small on a phone, and once it's sent you can't fix a price or see whether anyone opened it. A flipbook keeps your PDF as you designed it and fixes those three things: one light link, pages that turn on any screen, and a reading report.

Want to see one first? Open our live catalog example, a full fall catalog with photo galleries and Shop links on the products.

Step 1: Start from the PDF you already have

Export your catalog as a PDF from whatever you made it in. FlipWild takes PDFs up to 200 MB and 500 pages, which covers most catalogs. Upload it, and the pages are made right in your browser. You can do the whole thing from a phone too: pick the PDF from Files, Google Drive, Dropbox or a mail attachment.

No PDF yet? Our design help service writes and lays out the pages with you for $25 a page (a 12-page catalog is about $300). If you have the PDF but no time to add the extras, done for you adds your logo, product photos, Shop buttons, video and forms.

If your catalog lives in Canva, there's a short guide for that: Canva to flipbook.

Step 2: Make the products tappable

Every web link, email link and page jump already in your PDF keeps working in the flipbook. If your designer put a link on each product, you're done.

If not, open Links and video, drag a box over a product, and paste the link to that product's page in your store. Do the same over a Shop button printed in your design, or over a "see page 12" line to make it a page jump. Every plan can do this, on any page.

A few more things readers can use:

• A button at the top of the flipbook, with your own label and a link, email address or phone number. "Shop the store" or "Call to order" both work. Every plan.
• Photo galleries on a product, so readers can see more angles without you adding pages. Pro and up.
• Video and animations on any page. Pro and up.
• Search and a table of contents come built in, so a reader can type "linen" and jump to it.

Going further with buy links on every product is its own topic: see how to make a shoppable catalog.

Step 3: Share it where your customers already are

Publishing gives you three things at once: a link, an embed code and a QR code.

• By link. Paste it in a text, a social post, your link in bio or your email signature.
• By email. Put the cover image and the link in any email tool. If you'd like, MailWild (our sister product) can send it to your list as a newsletter, but it isn't required.
• By QR code. Download it and print it on a counter card, a mailer, packaging or a trade show table.
• On your website. Copy the embed code and the catalog sits on your page with its pages turning.

Public flipbooks also include a text version of every page that search engines can read, and they're listed on your own page at flipwild.io/your-name. Want it private instead, say a wholesale price list? Make it unlisted: only people with the link can open it.

Step 4: See which pages and links get attention

Every plan shows readers and link taps for each catalog, so you can tell whether the spring mailer worked at all. On Pro, Advanced Analytics adds reads by page, time on each page, who read to the end and every reader, plus tracking links for each place you share it, like "instagram" or "spring-mailer". Pages with long reading times show you which products people stop for. Pro can also send page views, page turns and link taps to your own Google Analytics.

Step 5: Keep it current without a new link

Prices change. A product sells out. Upload the new PDF over the old one and the link, embed, QR code and reading stats all stay the same. The QR code you printed on last month's mailer still opens the latest catalog.

Put each season on a bookshelf page (Plus and up) so customers can find past catalogs too.

What it costs, and when another tool fits better

Making and previewing a catalog is free. To publish:

• Starter, $15 a month billed yearly ($19 month to month): 2 published flipbooks, links, embed and QR code, readers and link taps. Shows a small "Made with FlipWild" badge.
• Plus, $32 a month billed yearly: 12 flipbooks, your logo instead of the badge, bookshelves.
• Pro, $74 a month billed yearly: photo galleries, video, an email form for leads and Advanced Analytics.

There's also Buy just one for $29 once, but it's text and images only, with no web links, so it isn't the right fit for a catalog people shop from. Full details are on the pricing page.

Be honest with yourself about two cases. If you need a free plan, FlipWild doesn't have one; Flipsnack's free plan gives you 5 flipbooks of up to 15 pages with Flipsnack branding (as of November 2026). And if you want a catalog that builds itself from your Shopify products or a product database, FlipWild doesn't sync with stores. It works from a PDF you design, and the links go to your own store.