You finish the brochure in InDesign, hit File then Publish Online, and a few seconds later you have a link to send. Easy. The awkward part comes later, when the client goes quiet and you have no way to tell whether anyone opened it, let alone which pages they read.
Publish Online will not tell you. Export the HTML5 package instead and you dodge that problem only to walk into another one: now you are holding a folder of a hundred-odd files that has to live on a server before anyone can see it.
The export is just a static site, so getting it online is the easy bit. The part InDesign leaves out is everything that happens after you send the link, namely who read it, for how long, on whose domain, and whether you can still pull it back. This post walks through how to add that.
Publish Online vs the HTML5 package
There are two ways out of a fixed-layout InDesign document, and they end up in very different places.
Publish Online pushes your document to Adobe's servers and hands back a publish.online link. It is fast and needs no setup. You can even wire in a Google Analytics ID and a cookie banner from the Analytics tab before you publish. The trade is that none of it is yours. Adobe hosts the file, Adobe brands the URL, and Adobe sets the limits.
Export as HTML5 Package writes the whole thing to a folder on your disk: an index.html, a file per page, and the CSS, fonts, images, and JavaScript behind them. This is the version you can actually own, because it runs anywhere a static site runs. The snag shows up the moment you look at the folder. A link is easy to email; a hundred files are not. So most people zip it, and then stall on where to put the zip.
Everything below uses the HTML5 package, since it is the one that leaves you in control.
What Publish Online does not give you
If you send design work to clients or investors, four gaps show up fast.
- Per-viewer analytics. Google Analytics gives you aggregate traffic. It will not tell you that one particular partner opened the deck twice and went back to the pricing spread. Designers have been asking Adobe for better per-document numbers for years, with not much to show for it.
- Access control. A Publish Online link works for anyone who has it. No email gate, no allowlist, no check on who is actually opening the document.
- Expiry and revocation. Once the link is out, it stays out. There is no end date, and no way to cut off a single recipient after the deal closes.
- Your domain and branding. Every link sits on a
publish.onlineaddress. For client work that reads differently than the same document on your own domain, and clients do notice.
The export is the integration
Nothing to install, nothing to connect. You export the HTML5 package the way you already do and upload the zip. Because the file is the whole integration, the same steps work for anything that produces self-contained HTML, including the in5 plugin.
Host the export with tracking in three steps
- Export the HTML5 Package. In InDesign, choose File then Export, set the format to HTML5 Package, and save the folder. Zip the folder it produces.
- Upload the zip to HummingDeck. Drag it into your library. HummingDeck unpacks the bundle and serves it as a single document, page structure intact and any embedded video still working.
- Send a tracked link. Set the gating you want and send one link. Engagement starts the moment your recipient opens it.
Read the engagement
Gate the link to verified emails and every open ties back to a person instead of an anonymous hit. On a fixed-layout InDesign file, that means you can see which spreads someone lingered on, which they flipped past, and where they gave up.
A few signals do most of the work here:
- Time per page. A long dwell on the pricing or scope spread is a buying signal. A fast skim to the end is the opposite.
- Return visits. Someone coming back to the document a week later usually means a stalled conversation is moving again.
- Forwarding. When a second viewer opens the link from a different network or location, the document got passed around inside the company. That is a champion doing your selling for you.
Bot filtering throws out link previews, scanners, and crawlers along the way, so what is left is real people rather than the junk that clutters a raw server log.
Lock the link down
This is where a hosted export pulls clear of any public link.
- Email gating. Restrict the document to an allowlist. Each recipient verifies with a one-time code before it opens, which is also what makes the per-viewer view possible.
- Link expiry. Set a date when the link stops working, so a proposal does not stay live forever.
- Revocation. Cut off one recipient without disturbing anyone else who has the link.
- Custom domain and hidden branding. Serve it from your own domain so the link reads as yours.
When Publish Online is still the right call
None of this makes Publish Online a bad tool. For anything meant to be public, a portfolio piece, a free lookbook, a handout at a conference, it is the quickest route, and tracking would not tell you much anyway. The case for a hosted export is narrower: the document is going to specific people, and you care what they do with it.
The same flow for in5, FlipHTML5, and Issuu
None of this is really about InDesign. Anything that exports a self-contained HTML5 flipbook drops you at the same dead end, holding files with nowhere private to put them.
| Path | Role | Per-viewer tracking | Self-host the file |
|---|---|---|---|
| Publish Online | Adobe hosts | No, aggregate GA only | No |
| InDesign HTML5 Package | Author exports HTML5 | No, none built in | Yes |
| in5 (InDesign plugin) | Author exports HTML5 | No, your own GA | Yes |
| FlipHTML5 | Author and host | No, aggregate only | Yes |
| Issuu | Host and discovery | No, cannot identify readers | No, PDF download only |
| HummingDeck | Host and tracking | Yes | No, hosted on HummingDeck (custom domain via CNAME on paid plans) |
The last row is the odd one out on purpose. HummingDeck does not export the document, and like Publish Online it hosts the file on its own infrastructure rather than handing it back to you to self-host. The difference is what it accepts and what it adds: take the HTML5 package InDesign, in5, or another maker produced, point your own subdomain at it, and put per-recipient tracking and access control on top.
- in5. The popular InDesign to HTML5 plugin produces the same kind of bundle, and its users routinely bolt on Google Analytics to claw back the engagement data the export ships without.
- FlipHTML5 and other flipbook makers. These turn a PDF into a flipbook and then host it for you, on their domain, with their branding. Take the HTML5 output they produce and put it on a platform that adds the tracking the maker hides, and the link, the domain, and the data move with the file.
- Issuu. An Issuu listing is built to be found in public. When a catalog or report is meant for a specific set of people, a private link on your own domain is the better fit.
The short version: if it exports to a self-contained HTML5 flipbook, you can host it with per-reader tracking. The flipbook sharing page covers the flow for InDesign, in5, FlipHTML5, and Issuu exports.
Related reading
- Host a single HTML file with built-in analytics for the single-file version of this flow.
- How to share a presentation online when the document is a deck rather than a document.
- Share a Claude Design export as a tracked link for AI-generated HTML that needs the same treatment.
- How to track if someone opened your PDF when the export is a PDF instead.
- How to track an investor pitch deck for fundraising-specific engagement signals.