It used to be that if you had an extensive library of PDFs and wanted to put that content online, you had to go through a largely manual cut-and-paste process to convert the PDF content to HTML and align graphics to make it look presentable. Thanks to a new tool from PubHTML5, that’s no longer necessary.

Hong Kong-based PubHTML5 offers its conversion tool in several versions in a SaaS (News – Alert) package. There are conversion tools that run on the PC, MAC and iOS devices. These take the pages of the PDF and split it up into thumbnails, zoom-in views and normal-sized pages. Upon uploading to the PubHTML5 site, script tags will be provided that can be pasted into the head tag (News – Alert) of the HTML file.

The free version of PubHTML5 allows PDFs to be converted to an online e-book, but the limit is 50 pages, the content will have a watermark on it and many advanced features are disabled. The Pro plan at $9.90 is very similar to the free version without the watermark.

The Gold plan is $24 per month allows more content to be published but still has several features disabled. The top two plans, the Platinum and the Enterprise are very similar, but offer different fee structures. For a one-time fee of $799 you can have the Enterprise version with all features enabled. The Platinum plan is available for an annual fee of $240; the only difference between it and the Enterprise version is that the Platinum does not support a command-line interface.

PubHTML5 has provided a valuable tool that will allow many print publishers to easily convert content to a web-friendly format in HTML5. The same goes for catalog publishers that want to retain the artistic quality of print media while leveraging the technology that comes from being available online. The beauty of this package is that those who expect to use it heavily but are averse to giving PubHTML5 an annuity under an SaaS plan can purchase the Enterprise plan and be done with it.