Designrr Review – Fast eBook Maker For Marketing & Branding

Designrr review - Ebook Creator

Ebooks are effective lead magnets. Millions of marketers can’t be (always) wrong. And eBooks can be a great marketing channel for your blog or business. Creating an eBook has traditionally been a laborious task. Not so long ago, it was also expensive. It’s all well writing your book content in Word or Google Docs but how do you make it into something people can download and share?

Designrr provides an easy way for anyone to make an ebook. Here's a full review of Designrr from a marketer's point of view. Learn how to quickly import content from blog articles and build powerful lead magnets using Designrr.

Quick Designrr Features

  • Rapid eBook maker
  • Free conversion-optimised templates
  • Flexible 
  • Cloud-based (no software install required)
  • Save your own customised elements for reuse
  • Video transcription service (Premium & Business plans)
  • Import from existing content, blog articles, Facebook, Word Doc, Dropbox, Vimeo, and YouTube
Designrr eBook Templates
Designrr eBook Templates

Does it work and who is it for?

Designrr is software to make eBooks quickly. Designrr’s developers aren’t looking to take over the world or provide a solution that solves every book writing problem. The software does a few things really well. There are limitations; But if you’re looking for a way to brand your business, create an ebook or “instant” books from videos or podcasts, add written content to an online course, or generate tempting offers to increase your email list subscribers, you’re in luck. And with Designrr's one time payment, it’s a tiny outlay for a powerful app.

The quick guide to ebook creation

To make an eBook from a blog post:

  • Copy any URL that you want to work on
  • Click Create A New Project
  • Select Import From Url when asked to choose a source for the ebook.
  • Enter the URL and click Import
  • Pick a project template
  • Give the project a title and add a footer URL (your basic domain name or tagline)
  • Edit the project to suit your style.
  • Export to PDF

Despite being a “design” app, the user interface (UI) looks a little outdated. But this is subjective. You might love it. I’ve gotten used to modern-looking interfaces and administration panels. The interface is basic but once you get used to it, is easy to navigate and offers plenty of features.

Layout Tab

You get Project, Drafts, Help and Profile menu options (and an upgrade menu if you’re on a basic plan). 

Every text, heading or image block has its own editing settings. This is powerful and offers flexibility for getting the look and feel of your book just right.

Click on any paragraph block and the editing container appears around it in green.

Each editing option is represented by an icon.

This makes the interface neat but can lead to the odd blunder where you remove all formatting

The editing options for paragraphs are as follows

  • Re-paginate – removing elements and changing font sizes often leaves empty spaces on the page. The Repaginate option is a practical way to remove white space without messing up your formatting. Just click the button to automagically reformat the document.
  • Edit – gives you granular editing options for fonts, inserting links (for the entire block), adding icons, and merging blocks. Note that editing content here will not affect the other elements of the book. If you want global changes, use the Inspector panel on the left-hand side.
  • Lock – To allow moving of containers up/down. The preferred way is by using the up/down keys. However, if unlocked you can also drag and drop the container.
  • Clear formatting – removes formatting (bolding, underline, italics) from a paragraph)
  • Format – for changing between a paragraph and HTML-style heading sizes.
  • Delete – delete without a prompt. The Undo button will come in handy (that’s the anticlockwise circled arrow at the bottom of the sidebar panel).
  • Save element – lets you save an element for reuse. This is a neat feature for people that create a lot of branded material.
  • Move element up – Moves an element one block at a time toward the top of the page
  • Move element down – Does the opposite of the previous option, funnily enough.

An extra options is available for images: the ability to make a hyperlink from the image and the option to justify it.

Inspector Tab

When importing a document, this is the tab you’ll spend most of the time on.

There are too many options to describe but here few examples

  • Apply background colors and images to blocks (paragraphs or pages)
  • Add padding inside blocks to space out text or images
  • Add margins above and below sections of text
  • Create shadow effects on text blocs to make them pop
  • Choose from the inbuilt fonts or almost 1000 Google fonts
  • Add cool borders to sections of your content
  • Edit images inside of Designrr.

Elements Tab

If you’re creating an eBook from scratch or want to do some heavy editing of a project, the elements tab lets you use design elements in any part of your document.

Designrr's Elements Tab
  • Add ordered lists, definition lists (dictionary style), tables, labels, and quotes by dragging them across. With a bit of experimentation, it’s possible to create highly professional-looking designs.
  • Embed YouTube videos and image grids.
  • Drag a Table Of Contents element to have Designrr automatically populate the list with the headings of your documents. 

Other importing Options

  • Import from Word
  • Import Manually 
  • You can also create an empty project and start with a blank slate.
  • Import From Facebook. You can import from your personal account or any brand account you’ve got administrative rights to (the Pro version and above let you import from any Facebook Page). Select the time range of posts to import and filter the posts by the number of comments and reactions, and click Import. It’s a simple process but has limited uses. Would you want to read an eBook of Facebook post titles and images? Better use of this feature is to import selected Facebook posts inside another ebook. This feature is part of the software.

To Keep in Mind

There are a few quirks that require a little pre-knowledge.

Make sure that when changing a section’s appearance, the “Apply for:” option reads “Selected Elements Only”. Otherwise, you’ll change ALL similar elements in your project. 

And likewise, set the “all similar elements” selector when changing the font style for an entire ebook. This is a handy feature, but a dangerous one when misused. 

Manipulating the fonts can be a little frustrating. The software moves the cursor focus off the element you’re editing more often than not. An example is when you delete a font’s size variable in order to enter a new one. After you click delete, the paragraph changes font-size but the focus shifts to the paragraph and not the element editor. This slows the workflow down. There are other bugs with the font sizing that are not worth going into here. But let’s hope the development team can iron them out soon.

The documentation needs updating so don’t rely 100% on the help files.

Designrr’s eBooks have set spacings and layouts (you can override this). Adding blank spaces can break the design. The recommended way is to add padding and margins. 

When dragging an element from the Elements tab, the focus changes to the element for editing. This means that the left-hand panel changes to show the Inspector Tab and not the Elements Tab.  This might seem logical, but it would be nice to have the option to disable this behaviour. Helps when adding multiple elements at a time.

Pros

  • Support – The support team is fast to answer questions and is always helpful. They even fixed up issues I had with formatting and offered guidance for improving my work.
  • Flexibility – Want more freedom on how your eBook looks? The “Enable Free Element Dragging” option lets you be more creative. It helps to know what you’re doing here. For most people, letting the software do most of the layout arrangements is a good thing.
  • Access editing options from the inspector tab, inside the content or by right-clicking on elements.
  • Multiple theme options – it’s easy to see how your book will look after applying the template. 
  • Powerful – I imported a huge blog post to test the system. They appeared in seconds, formatted with images and links, and all ready to go.
editing text

Cons

  • Designrr can be a little buggy. I’ve crashed it a few times when returning from the preview or selecting too many things simultaneously. It’s not unforgiving. 
  • Limited exporting options on the lifetime deal. But if you want to create eBooks from blog posts, Google Docs, or Word, you'll be fine with the one-time fee Designrr .
  • Takes a little getting used to the interface, which could look more modern.

What is a Lead Magnet anyway?
A lead magnet is a product or service you offer to a website visitor in return for their email address. Visitors that subscribe to your email list are considered leads because they've shown interest in what you have to offer. These leads have the potential to become customers.

Pricing Plans

Designrr is a powerful tool used by over 10,000 marketers, course creators, and content creators. Created by Paul Clifford, a software builder and marketer who has been building software for over 20 years, this tool is an excellent addition to the content marketing toolkit of any online business.

Lifetime Deal

The Designrr Lifetime Deal is a one-time fee of $27. It’s an absolute bargain, even if you only use the software a few times. The time you will save creating ebooks in Designrr compared to using Word, for example, can be huge. This deal, like all of the monthly plans, allows you to create unlimited ebooks.

Standard Plan

$29 a month for 100 templates and unlimited projects and unlimited ebooks.

Pro Plan

The Designrr Pro plan costs $39 a month and gets you 200 cover designs and 200 additional templates. You can import from Google Docs and export to Kindle, iBooks, and ePub formats and PDF. Exporting to Flipbook format is an added feature in the Pro Plan. This plan also includes 3D cover creation. This plan is great for anyone interested in content repurposing.

Premium Plan

Premium costs $49 a month and gets you a lot more features.

Features of this plan include:

  • HTML export for embedding in any website. (Granted, you can do this with some coding yourself)
  • And 4 transcription hours for video or audio a month. Great for video marketers and podcasters who need a transcription service to get audio into show notes or blog post format

Business Plan

Cost $99 a month and include 8 hours of transcription plus all the other features.

If you’re a Facebook Live broadcaster, YouTube creator, or Podcaster, the audio-to-text features of the Premium and Business plans could save money. Transcription is an expensive process. Tools like Rev and Temi will do the job for a fee, but you’ll have to wait as it’s a manual process.

Once the video or audio is imported and transcribed, you can listen and edit the text, add images, and when you’re happy, push it over to an eBook project for final exporting. 

Designrr alternatives

VistaCreate offers a free eBook designer and a suite of design tools that most marketers and entrepreneurs will find very useful.

Beacon – $19 a month. There's a free plan but you'll need a paid one if you want to export to PDF and remove the beacon logo. The books are gorgeous however and it’s easy to use.

Wondershare PDFelement – a professional-looking, PDF designer suite that lets you make beautiful ebooks with buttons, forms, signatures, and more.

Adobe Illustrator / In-Design – I’m a fan of Adobe products. But if you run a small business or website, AI is overkill for 90% of your needs. For the other 10% or when you’re producing a New York Times Best Seller, hire a professional. Designrr is perfect for eBooks and lead magnets.  

Adobe Express – a reasonably good ebook creator with templates.

Canva – Canva has an ebook creator tool, but Designrr's ebook creator is still better.

iBooks Author – Only for Apple products (you can’t read the books on non-Apple devices) but is very professional and 100% free.

Get Designrr.io's Lifetime Deal
Designrr - Fast ebook and lead magnet creator tool

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12 thoughts on “Designrr Review – Fast eBook Maker For Marketing & Branding”

  1. I just paid $27 for a special deal with Designrr and haven’t rec’d anything. Now I can’t find a way to contact them. Can you help.

  2. Thanks Keith.
    I’ve just contacted them. Let’s see how it goes.
    I don’t know where you got that email from. I find the Designrr website very difficult.
    Regards
    James

  3. Claudia Zunker

    thanks for the review on the Designrr Package. I have tried twice to purchase it, both times the sale did no go through. I contacted via their facebook page, they responded by saying I should use my laptop or PC for the purchase which is exactly what I did. No explanation as to what may have gone wrong or how to solve the problem. Hopefully they will respond soon. I have In design but I find it too complicated and intricate to use, and it sounds like this is a lot easier.

  4. Hi Keith,
    Do you think this is any good for a recipe book or should i be looking for software that is more specific? This looks quite easy to use & thats why it has caught my eye. Thanks

    1. Hi Lisa. I think it’s going to be perfect for a recipe book. We’ve already done some ebooks for courses based on food production and I’ll be releasing a cookbook on my food blog in a couple of weeks. The fact that you can import from other platforms/tools makes it easy to work with. Try it out! You can refund if it doesn’t do the job for you.

  5. Hi Keith, thanks for your article though which I clicked the link to buy the onetime offer. I am then offered an upgrade allowing me to publish to Kindle. I thought i would have been able to do that from the basic offer. Is that not correct? Thx

  6. Hi – I’ve created a Recipe Book in Word for a non-profit animal sanctuary that we are planning to sell on our Facebook page as an eBook. Since we are a non-profit, I am looking for the most cost effective program! I have 2 requirements (1) the pages need to be in a flip style. I’m thinking Designrr has that option but I couldn’t find it and maybe it’s just a given. (2) the ability to download the eBook so it can be sent to our supporters who purchase the Recipe Book. We don’t want them to click a link that takes them to a 3rd party site. Hope that makes sense! Do you know the answers to these 2 items? Thank you so much!

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