xigxag User Reviews

What users say

Top reviews

Best app on my phone

Let me tell you about this app! Out of all of the apps on my phone it is the one that has changed my life the most. If I could only keep one app it would be this. This app has an amazing selection. It is rare that I can’t find the book I want on it. The audiobooks are of the highest quality with exceptional narrators. There is NO subscription fee. You pay for what you buy. Thats it. Not to mention that the more books you buy the cheaper they become! I have bought so many books on this platform and I have rarely been disappointed (and where I have it was a fault of the book, not the app). Customer service is always helpful and friendly and I have told so many people about this app. It honestly feels like it’s not there to rip people off to make a profit. It feels like it’s one of those rare things that are actually there to improve people’s lives and help, not just look for ways to fleece them. I can’t tell you the sheer hours of pleasure this app has bought me. I’m a busy at home mum and I do not have time to sit and read, but I can stick on my headphones and listen to a book whilst I’m doing my cleaning, cooking, errands etc. The pleasure it brings me is insane. I might look like I’m peeling potatoes, but in reality my heart is in my mouth entering some gothic haunted house (or whatever the genre). I am just so thankful this app exists and yes it does weirdly mean a lot to me and I’m not going to apologise for that!
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Excellent

Easy to use app with a great variety of books. Download of books is quick and easy, and it is a great way to get new releases for a reasonable (or even cheap!) price. The customer service team are really friendly and super helpful, you really get personalised support if required. Much cheaper than audible, and I would highly recommend for audiobook fans
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Best App on my phone

I absolutely love this App. I have used lots of different reading Apps but this is by far my favourite. I love that I don’t have to subscribe and that the books have a fixed price point that get cheaper the more you purchase. They have a great selection and are fairly priced with some great bargain finds too. I find I read a lot more as a result of having this app.
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Fantastic!

Brilliant functionality and no silly monthly subscription. Cheap books too! A real winner.

Excellent audiobook app

I have been using this app for over 2 years, and love it! The prices get lower as you buy more. The App is simple to use and reliable.

What audiobooks were meant to be

I love xigxag. I have very much enjoyed the books I have come across on the app. The books are wonderful, the narrations in my experience have been outstanding, and to cap it all the concept of the X-book is just what you might have hoped Amazon, with Kindle and Audible together, would have done: many of the books on the platform are “X-books”, which means that they include both audiobook and e-book. You can listen to them for a while, pick up reading the story where you left off, and then switch back to narration once again. This is particularly good for me as I like to listen to an audiobook while going about daily tasks, but also like to read in bed without disturbing my wife.

The price of an individual book starts out reasonable, and if you buy more than five a year they just get cheaper. I never feel ripped off, I never feel I have to buy a book to avoid wasting a “credit”, money does not get taken from me every month whether I am using the app or not. If I buy as many as a subscription model would force me to it works much cheaper, and I remain in control. I don’t mind spending money on things I’m using, but I can’t help feeling ripped off more and more these days as everybody wants to lock you into a subscription model - it’s just like the old gym membership scam where they make half their money from people who are not even using the service. Xigxag instead just offers great products at a reasonable price.
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The Best way to Aufiobook

This app has been awaited for years! A non subscription model for audiobooks that doesn’t force you to choose a book a month but lets you choose at your own pace. And the more you choose, the cheaper the price.
Very pleased to have discovered this brilliant app - highly recommended to audio readers of all ages.
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Best audio!

Really impressed. Xigxag is simple to use, cost effective and high quality. My children especially enjoy the x-books. The subscription free yet growing discount for listening to more books is a great model. Highly recommended

Easily rivals the big smile

I was so happy to find an audiobook app that isn’t evil.

There are a few tweaks needed to bring it to exactly the same functionality as Audible but I am happy to live with these. (Eg the sleep timer just stops the audio rather than tapering off gradually.)

There is an innovative extra that goes beyond Audible - their X book format which is an ebook along with the audio book and so the text can be followed whilst listening to it at no extra cost. Hurrah!

There are again a few tweaks which would make it even more accessible for some disabled users but I really like that many of the books are available in this format. There isn’t a payment that has to be made each month either - so no need to worry about how to finish one book before buying another one.
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Response from developer

Thank you for the lovely review! Please note you can choose whether the audio tapers or stops with the sleep timer. Go to My xigxag / Settings / Preferences and make sure the 'Sleep auto fade volume' is toggled right (you should see green). And, we appreciate your feedback on the x-book...we're looking to make more accessibility improvements to the listen-and-read experience soon. 💜

Great company; terrible app

A horrible app experience. Tiny writing. No chapter titles. I will persevere because I prefer the ethics of the company but Audible and Kobo have more user friendly apps. (And why can’t you add stuff to your wish list from the website?!)

I love this app

The good thing about this app is that you get to buy as many or as few books as you like without any contract. Also, the developers are extremely responsive to queries or suggestions.

I love this app

The good thing about this app is that you get to buy as many or as few books as you like without any contract. Also, the developers are extremely responsive to queries or suggestions.

Great but

Since the latest update the playback speed keeps randomly going up to 2x please fix! (Also please make it easier to get it back to 1x, the slider is not that accurate)

Best audiobook app!!

I've been using xigxag for a few weeks now and can confidently say it's the only audiobook app I will use from now on. I
downloaded it primarily because it's the only place I could find to spend national book tokens on audiobooks and that alone is great but I also love that there is no subscription model, allowing you to purchase only what you want to read and you get discounts the more books you buy.

I also love the x book feature!! For the books available it makes it even more worth your money as you get an audiobook and ebook all in one. This is great when you want to read as well as listen or alternate between reading and listening depending on your mood.

Furthermore the customer service is great, I had an issue with an x book I purchased not showing the text and within a day the issue was resolved (thanks Kelli.) I also appreciate the ethics behind this company such as their stance against AI narration.

I never usually write app reviews but I couldn’t recommend xigxag enough!
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Response from developer

Wow - what a lovely review! ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Thank you for taking the time to recommend us. We really appreciate it. 💜

Great audio books

Has a great selection of quality audio books. Really great team would recommend to anyone!

Great app

Brilliant app. Feels much better value than the subscription model alternative…

Fantastic in every way besides one

This apps is awesome, the service itself if great, for someone like me that wants to own their audio books rather than rent them via other services. One small thing that’s missing and that’s a basket to add multiple books and buy in bulk. For me I’m looking to buy the Terry Pratchett discworld collection (there’s a total of 41 of those.) and having to buy them individually would be a nightmare. I understand that with the decrease in pricing every 6 audiobook might cause issues but maybe a limit to have 5 books max in a basket would be handy. Either way it’s not a deal breaker and I’ll be collecting the books slowly, just a thought is all.
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Response from developer

Hi there 👋 Thanks for the note and sorry for our delayed response. As you may know, Apple force us to use their (rather limited) payment system for in-app payments, which is why you can only buy one book at time in the app. We're working on multi-purchase on our website as we speak, so watch this space! We appreciate you taking the time to write a review. 💜

Misleading

Misleading. I checked to see that once I had purchased books, I would be able to download them, which it assured I could. What this means is Download onto the app to play offline, not actually download. My Children do not use smart devices, and xigxag assumes that all children have these. Now I have two books that I have purchased that can only be listened to off my phone, which defeats the object entirely. Half the point in an audiobook these days is to get away from screentime, not to encourage it! Very disappointed in the books I've now purchased that are totally useless to me.
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Response from developer

Thanks for the review and we were terribly sorry to disappoint. We have a lot to explain in not a lot of space on our website and I'm sorry we confused you. We recommend checking out our helpful info on our website if you're unsure of anything: https://xigxag.co.uk/helpful-info/. And, you can always get in touch with a real human at support@xigxag.co.uk. We were happy to refund this purchase immediately once you got in touch. We're a small company and constrained by what the big publishers allow us to do with their authors' content. In this case, they require us to control access to their books in the xigxag app. That said, we have developed a limited feature stream-only solution on our website, which you can find at https://player.xigxag.co.uk/player.

Clunky UI and annoying notifications

A great idea, especially for ADHDers, but the execution just isn't there yet.

This app is terrible to navigate. If you can get an x-book, the auto-sync doesn't work well - I assume that's due to things like the footnotes.

Footnotes are hard to flick between as there's no easy way to go between the main text and the note. You also have to remember what was said when you get to the footnote as you're unable to check easily.

Note taking is near impossible with audio as you cannot pinpoint where you want the clip to start. Obviously not a must have but something I was very excited for as a consumer of audiobooks.

The notifications have me feeling frustrated as a slow reader. I don't need reminding that my books exist and I certainly don't need one asking me to tell the community that I didn't enjoy the book. I'm still reading, thanks! I've not had a chance to get back into it.

If I was more self conscious about my reading I might have given up altogether, thankfully I'm just frustrated!
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Response from developer

Hi there. I'm sorry you didn't have the best first experience. We are working on making improvements to our e-reader experience to solve some of the challenges you identify.   That said, you can turn off Buzz notifications at any time in My xigxag > Settings > Notifications and turn off push notifications on your iPhone by going to Settings > Notifications, selecting xigxag and deselecting "Allow Notifications". You can also edit a quote or note once you've captured it by going to My xigxag > My Quotebook, selecting the quote, then selecting 'Edit'. We really don't want anyone to feel bad about reading and we're sorry that our app affected you in this way. We built xigxag to allow more people to enjoy more books with the most accessible book platform ever imagined. We hope some of this solves your frustration with us, with more solutions to come. 💜 Thanks for sticking with it.

Excellent app

I really love this app and that I am not tied to a subscription. I wish they had a bigger catalogue but I’m not going to blame them, I hate that so many good audiobooks are audible exclusives. I hope more people move to this ethical and much better app instead. I love that it’s a B corp and I think the x book idea is genius. You should definitely give it a try.
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Response from developer

Awww. Thanks for this! We expect to double our catalog over the coming months and fewer and fewer books are being produced exclusively. We're also trying to get more books made into audiobooks! We appreciate the xigxag love. 💜