Magcloud.com is a self-publishing platform owned by Blurb. Like Blurb, MagCloud offers self-published authors a way to get their publications out into the world. There are some similarities in products across the two, as well as some differences. Here are a few points to consider:

Same owner, separate sites

Blurb owns MagCloud but they're separate sites and require separate usernames and accounts. Your Blurb login won't work on MagCloud and your MagCloud login won't work on Blurb.

Product and paper options

MagCloud offers magazines plus other items like digests, flyers, brochures and posters. MagCloud products are all softcover; there are no hardcover options. Blurb offers hardcover and softcover books and two softcover magazine formats.

MagCloud’s Standard (magazine) format is trimmed to 8.25x10.75 inches (approx. 21 x 27.5 cm), while Blurb’s trim size is 8.5x11 inches (approx. 21.5 x 28cm).

Most MagCloud publications, and Blurb’s Premium Magazine, Photo Book formats, and Standard Color Trade Books, are all printed on the HP Indigo. The print quality will therefore be similar across these products. Blurb’s Economy Magazine format and all other Trade formats are printed with different presses.

MagCloud’s magazine paper weight ranges from 100# to 60# semi-gloss text depending on the format, page count and binding type.

Blurb magazines come in Premium (80# matte text) and Economy (70# silk text).

MagCloud offers perfect binding, saddle stitch binding and spiral binding, depending on the format and page count. All Blurb publications are perfect bound. You can read more about MagCloud binding options here. 

Design tools

There are no design tools specific to MagCloud--you simply upload a PDF that you’ve made using the program of your choice. There are templates available for many popular programs, from InDesign to Microsoft Word.

Blurb offers multiple design tools to make your book, including BookWright, the plug-in for InDesign, and the book module for Adobe Lightroom.

You can't take a book made in one of Blurb's design tools and upload it to MagCloud.

Shipping

MagCloud allows you to ship to multiple recipients in one order. For example, if you're sending your latest magazine to 20 people, you can place one order with 20 recipients instead of 20 separate orders. Blurb requires you to place a separate order for each address.

MagCloud offers a slightly wider range of ship-to destinations. You can see a list of all countries Blurb ships to here, and a list of all countries that MagCloud ships to here.