Magzter is one of the largest companies currently operating in the digital magazine subscription service. They currently have 27 million users and 3,000 titles participating in their Gold program, including Bloomberg BusinessWeek, Entrepreneur, The Atlantic, Maxim, ESPN The Magazine, Inc., Fast Company, and Men’s Fitness.
The real value behind Magzter is via their Gold tier of access. It costs $7.99 per month and you can read as much as you want, with no limits.
The app itself is very well designed. Its homescreen comprises of featured content the editors have showcased, but you can also checkout international magazines you may not have heard of before or even look at the latest issues that have hit the newsstand.
I think Magzter’s greatest strength is their international catalog of content. They have magazines from all over the world, such as Singapore, India, Japan and Europe. This allows you to have a wide variety of mainstream and independent magazines that you would be unable to find at your local Barnes and Noble or Waterstones.
The one feature that is sure to appeal to most readers is being able to download back issues. If you have a favorite magazine, but have missed the last few publications you can easily download it. When you click on a specific magazine, lets say T3, it shows the most current issue, but also shows the cover art of every issue in the catalog,dating back years. I also dig the fact that Magzter also has a wide selection of graphic novels, comics books and manga. They are the only service that has a deal with VIZ Media, so you can read the latest Shonen Jump.
There are some drawbacks with this app. Performing a search on Vogue, for example, I found editions for five countries were available, but not the US or UK. Other searches showed similar results, without apparent rhyme or reason. Sure, it’ll be due to licensing deals, but there’s no obvious pattern to any of it.
Michael Kozlowski is the editor-in-chief at Good e-Reader and has written about audiobooks and e-readers for the past fifteen years. Newspapers and websites such as the CBC, CNET, Engadget, Huffington Post and the New York Times have picked up his articles. He Lives in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.