VitalSource Technologies Reviews

This platform is a complete disaster. The print feature is broken, and the whole thing is about as unfriendly as it gets. Any publisher recommending Vital Source to customers is only going to push them away.

Been stuck using this platform throughout my college years and it's terrible. The pages don't line up with the actual textbook. The text-to-speech sounds like it's from the 90s. The chatbot is equally useless. You're charged so much to rent these digital books that they should actually function properly. Customer service is nonexistent. The so-called agent is just another robot. Getting lied to by a mandatory school platform is just fantastic.

Our university just switched to VitalSource. I requested Connect access for two of my classes and Perusall textbook access for one more. They told us beforehand that everything would be fine. It's already the end of the first week and my students still can't access any of the materials. I've sent multiple emails to VitalSource asking what's going on and got back a single response with a link to help pages that had nothing to do with my actual problem. Would not recommend Vital Source at all.

Lifetime license my foot. Turns out their definition of lifetime is just 5 years if you look hard enough in the fine print. When you dig into the details, you realize you're basically paying for nothing but cloud storage. Complete ripoff.

If zero stars was an option I'd give it. Got an ebook for class because this site had the cheapest price online. It's owned by VitalSource. They sent me a link to access it through their system and the book showed up in my bookshelf but I couldn't actually open it. Opened support tickets with both companies and tried online chat. Nobody has any idea what's going on. Eventually I had to call my credit card company to handle it. Both companies seem like straight up scams.

Their Day One Access program uses shady business tactics. You get enrolled automatically and they make it nearly impossible to cancel. The opt out button doesn't even work because you get an error saying they're still working on it and to check back tomorrow. That's pretty sneaky since even when I reached out directly to customer support, they said they couldn't remove me despite the fact that I never signed up and the cancellation deadline hasn't passed. Basically they sign you up without permission and make opting out so hard that people just give up and pay the fee. Really manipulative stuff.

Worst site and app I've used. Paid sixty euros for a textbook from Routledge only to be forced to use their garbage app. It hijacked my whole computer and kept sending me back to Chrome when I switched screens, and it blocked all my other open programs. I couldn't even type in my word processor anymore. Ever since I opened their bookshelf my Mac has been making that overworking noise and it hasn't stopped even after deleting the app and restarting. The incompetence and greed from both Routledge and Vitalsource is shocking. They made me waste so much time fighting with their terrible software instead of actually studying. Do not buy ebooks from Routledge no matter what.

Can't believe an app designed for reading business and educational books can be this poor quality. The formatting is all messed up, the font options are infuriating, you can only install it on two devices max, and the page view mode has more glitches than apps from a decade ago. It's really disappointing and far below acceptable standards.

Skip Vital Source. You pay full price like you own the textbook but you don't. They won't let you download your book if you miss the window, whether there's a pandemic or any other emergency. Bought a textbook back in 2021 and forgot to download it. When I asked them to let me access it, they said I'd have to pay extra for storage space. They try to make themselves seem different but they really can't get past these issues. They're basically taking advantage of students. Should either refund people or allow free downloads for books already purchased.

The app is slow and takes forever to load. Switched to different internet and nothing changed. Flipping one page takes a noticeable amount of time. So basically I have to wait every single time I turn a page? How long will it take me to get to the page I actually need if I'm not sure which one it is? I've used similar apps and they don't have this problem and they don't seem like they're even trying to improve it. The time wasted loading would let me finish my assignments hours sooner. Only using this because my textbook is locked to this app. Probably why they don't bother improving since everyone is forced to use it anyway. The search function doesn't work either. What does 'this feature is unavailable at this time' even mean? Is there a specific time window to use it? Does it only work certain hours? If so tell us because why is it always unavailable when I need it?