To much money for their assortment For a student from the Netherlands I wouldn't recommend it. The price is to high and there where not one of my schoolbooks. They advertise with that they have a Dutch store but the haven't...

Avoid at all costs I really wanted to like this website, but I have to say my experience has been absolutely horrible. My problem is that it lags ALL. THE. TIME. I use it for one of my uni textbooks which is available in very few places in my country, this website being one of them. It seems like the book is too long/has too many chapters for the website to load it properly. I have completely given up on using the search function to search for certain words or phrases, as the website simply cannot handle it and freezes, which sometimes even causes an error message. Not ONCE has the search function worked. Even something as simple as turning a page causes lagging. Reloading the page does not work in the slightest, neither does switching browsers. The internet connection cannot possibly be the problem either, as I have tried both at home, at campus, at my parents' house, and many other places. There is no other explanation for the lagging, than this website being bad. My question is - whyyy even distribute a long book if the website can’t handle it? Do not recommend.

no epub download Total scam, they say the ebooks are epub, but there's no option to download - the only option is to read through their website or one of their app. If I knew that beforehand I wouldn't buy. And it seems they're trying to clean their trustpilot page - I suddenly got an email: VitalSource Technologies would love to understand your experience better, so they’ve asked for more details about your review—like an order number or email. If we don’t hear from you within 3 days, your review may be taken offline. after a year of silence. Thankfully I still had my order number, so this review won't be taken offline, but other ones may well be. And a new 5 star review that looks like advertisement showed up.

Great resource I've been using Vitalsource since I discovered it in 2019. I was tired of carrying around textbooks and at the time most eBooks were still on Adobe's Digital Editions software, which was a very barebones reader more concerned with DRM protection than offering an actual reading experience, to put it nicely. When I mention Vitalsource, I'm referring to two things: 1. The eBook store, and 2. the Bookshelf app that they author. The Store --Selection The VitalSource store has a good selection of textbooks. Most books you'd need for school (or supplemental learning) on mathematics, physics, and computer science authored within the last 10 years are there. --Purchases and Refunds Purchases and access are easy. Most books have both rental and lifetime purchase options. The options seem to be dictated by the publisher, so every once in a while a books is rental only or lifetime only. Everything is laid out on the product page and I've never run into any errors. Prices are competitive with Amazon and other retailers. Refunds seem to be automated, so as long as you haven't already read more than 20% of the book, haven't returned the same book in the past, and haven't already returned 3 books in the last 90 days, you can expect a quick refund. Sometimes books from certain publishers or delivered by the publisher cannot be refunded. This is all detailed in the return policy. The Bookshelf app --Features and Performance The Bookshelf app's feature set has stagnated in recent years, and I stumbled on this page because I was looking for a way to report feedback on how highlighted notes should have better UI, but the desktop and web apps are good and by a country mile the best DRM reader out there. It's even better than the Kindle app - step up your game, Amazon. As with everything else in life, there are some weaknesses. The desktop app is a memory hog. This might have to do with existing DRM protection implementations, but if not, performance in this aspect can be improved, and may be the reason users with lower end hardware face issues. Conclusion Vitalsource has a great marketplace and offers the best DRM reading app available today. They're not perfect, and the app has weaknesses that regular PDF apps like Adobe Acrobat or Readdle's PDF Expert don't have, but it has more than enough features and is stable enough to rely on for daily use. Well worth checking out if you prefer eBooks over paper copies.

Not fit for purpose I was recently asked to review an academic book for a journal. It was delivered using this vital source platform. I have tried to get it to work for two months, and today reported to the journal that for the first time in thirty years I would fail to complete a review. Frankly I cannot find a good word to say about this platform; it's a nightmare to get on, and a nightmare to use. It's horribly slow, counter-intuitive, hard to navigate, hard to use... has no useful functions and lots of bells and whistles of no use whatsoever. Today, after failing to get on altogether on one device due to a malfunctioning captcha, I got the book on another... to find that the pages were reduced to a window like a stamp in the corner. When I tried to change this the text turned yellow. that was the last straw. If I had paid money for this experience I would be livid. As it is I'm just furious.