Natural Reader

Currently trying to contact their support, trying to dispute the monthly charge of a yearly subscription that was "cancelled" in the first month. They do not provide a page to remove/update payment information.

Steer clear of this site if you have to spend money.

1/ I have Natural Readers 15 Professional. It has what they call Conversation Control where you can insert a voice into a text. However the Conversation Control is for only one sentence at a time. Each sentence needs to have an individual voice Conversation Control inserted to it. It will not do a whole paragraph at a time - all with one voice and then the next paragraph with another voice. Some programs will allow for whole paragraph voice control but not this program.

2/ I had Natural Reader on one computer, but that computer was trashed (mother board kept crashing). I loaded Natural Reader onto another computer. When I go to Natural Reader's website to look at my account, I am not able to see my account as active. I asked NR why and they said I had it on two computers. I said that I only had it on one; that the original computer was trashed. They would not accept my explanation. So, I can no longer receive tech support or have an online presence with NR.

I remember using NR15 on my last laptop, and it worked well. I was able to use it offline, make mp3 files easily, and had extra features that were useful when needed.
With the NR16 I'm forced to log in, and connected to the internet, or nothing useful works.
The mp3 converter even when used online, is too much of a hassle. I've only used it a handful of times ever since I got it and every time it feels more like a downgrade.

Do not download this crap software for your are warned. Software is extremely unstable and is also a false advertisement in terms of functionality. Seems like alfa mode right now. Also, who knows what kinds of viruses are contained within this software. It certainly is not what it seems on a Mac. I will certainly try it on a PC and get back with you on that.

Ironically, this product is designed to assist those with difficultly reading text and yet talking to customer service on the phone is not an option.

After emailing back and forth with NaturalReader for days (their response time is slow), a question I had about their product went unanswered. I gave up.

Their customer service is badly in need of improvement, and it is really unfortunate that they do not offer a means of customer service (via phone) for those with visual barriers.

For $20/month I thought it could do better.
I have a free application that has better voices than natural reader. I feel it is too expensive and it offers very little. Also, I always have to find where I left off from the last time I had it read text. With other free applications, you can do much more and it picks off where we left off the last time I used the application.

I used the trial version for a little while and all was good. I paid $100 for a month of the commercial version and used it for roughly 4 days. I haven't been able to access the site for the last two days. They told me it was either my firewall or virus protection causing the issue, but I cannot access it from a different computer in a different location or via my cell phone using data. I'm likely out $100 on this deal. Be warned before you decide to commit.

Well, I can't speak for the functionality of the full-blown downloadable version, but the online version doesn't even work (at least, not on my computer), so it doesn't instill much confidence for the downloadable version. I've tried it at least a couple dozen times over the past several days, and all I get is a lame-assed pop-up that says, "Something must have gone wrong." (DUH!) "Try again later." I've tried emailing the stupid company to tell them of the problem, and so far, I've not received a response, nor have they fixed the problem. I mean, come on, folks: It can't be that difficult to make a text-to-speech software that actually WORKS, can it? As it is, this thing's virtually useless, and therefore, utterly worthless.

I have paid for this program for two years, I was always able to convert from text to audio, and now out of nowhere they charge me to do it and I still have the same plan that I originally paid for... beware!

I have contacted NR several times trying to get information about the product for our IT department so that I can use it for work. Support responds by sending me to the end user agreement and advises the software has had no formal evaluations or certifications.(this relates to 3rd party risk assessment that I requested). The user agreement tells me nothing about the security risks of my company using this product. I have asked support to forward my request to someone with more technical knowledge. They have not responded. The website provides absolutely NO security information to advise how documents that are stored in their cloud are protected.
Voices are pretty much horrible and irritating to my ear with the exception of one British voice
The product help with text to speech at an ok level... I wouldn't give it much more than 2 stars

Natural Readers Team,
I'm very disappointed not only with the product but with your service. I bought this subscription thinking the performance would be better. The subscription proved to be a failure with a capital "F". And now this is my second email asking for a refund as the first did not reach the address "*******@naturalreaders.com" that you have In your website "https://www.naturalreaders.com/personalwebfaq.html" You might say that $58.99 +Tax is not much, but I trusted you and I'm not satisfied with your product.

I'm not interested in any agreement, discount or rebate. Please don't make me think you stole this money from me. Be professional and process my refund asap. I'll put this message in your reviews and feedback to make you accountable and to respect the people that buy from you.

I gave one star rating but in reality, there should be STAR MINUS. I subscribed to this service last year at the beginning of the semester. I thought it would be helpful for my online classes. It wasn't. I went into the system and canceled, then got an email 11 months later telling me that they were about to bill me again. I went back into the system canceled AGAIN! I doubled checked that my subscription was canceled. I try to login with my email. The email was not recognized. I thought I was in the clear. Nope. I just got an invoice saying that I was successfully billed. Calling BBB and anyone else I can find on Monday. Furious.

I decided to try this since my free version of Speechtify kept skipping over a paragraph from a paper I kept trying to review. After successfully processing my $129.00 payment, the software failed to download. I will be contacting customer service tomorrow for my refund. DO NOT WASTE YOUR TIME OR FINANCES.

Evidently, these scrag mules dont read at all.
- I have used this program for 3+ years
- It is the best out of the 10+ other Text to speech i have tried
- They CLEARLY state their subscription fees and reasoning on website
- You can demo test any voice or just use the free voices FORVER
Dont listen to the other idiots, i accidentally came across this review page anyway, just figured id chime in because I couldn't believe it.
Enjoy the program.

I have used NR since 2013. The greatest thing since sliced bread was NR Pro on my Iphone which I got around 2015 or so. I paid for it. I paid for the voices. I used it everyday. Now I have an Iphone SE and to my GREAT displeasure I learn that NR Pro is no more and now the company is run with PURE GREED to make you have a perpetual charge every month AND deletion of your files after one year! WHAT KIND OF BS is that? This app is junk because it "improved" things by getting ride of the ability to transfer content from NR on my desktop into my phone with a simple Qcode. No more file retention and I don't care to see what other "improvements" they are screwing people over with! Bye Bye NR. Piece of crap!

The demo only allows 5 minutes to test out before if forces you to purchase. As soon as you do and really use the software, you will see it definitely will not meet your expectation.

This software has some critical issues which require an awful lot of "prep" to your text, if you want it to sound natural when being read.

For example, if you have a clause that is separated by 2 M-dashes (fairly common in literature), the software does not give you any pause whatsoever. I had to turn all my M-dashes into semicolons to get a pause.

Then, if you are converting to MP3, there are two annoying problems:
(1) The software does not give you any pauses for a line-break (really?), so you have to add a period and a space at the end of every title, or bullet list item, or poem line, in order for it to read naturally.
(2) you can only make an MP3 with 20 pages or less, so forget about it if you are trying to read a gutenberg novel; this is simply too much work to be worth it.

It blows me away that you actually have to pay for this software, when you can turn a gutenberg novel into a computer-read audiobook on a mac for free. And without these annoying problems.

On the flip side, the voices are very nice, and so if you have a bunch of time to prep your text, then download small sections of novel, then join them together into a single file, sure, go for it. I was looking for something that was going to save me time, not eat up my time.

With their highest tier paid accounts, there is a very low limit on much text can be read per day. If you plan on using this to read books(pdf/epub/etc), then don't bother. I can't even get through a normal sized book before it changes to their unlimited "PREMIUM" voices which are pure robotic trash. There is nothing premium about them, and it's unthinkable that their daily limits are so low.

I contacted their useless support staff trying to pay for more characters per day, but they simply told me to open a 2nd account. Yes, they expect me to login and logout of various accounts every day just to finish a book in a somewhat human voice. How stupid can they be? Paying customers want to pay more for their service and they simply tell them to go through a bunch of nonsense every day just to accomplish this? I hope some other company comes along and offers reasonable limits or upgrades as these fools clearly don't want to make money.

The app is buggy and has artificially low limits. It's not worth the money.

They charge credit card monthly without clear communicating the conditions. I have to dispute the charge with my bank. AVOID!

The app is awful. The voices sound different when you download audio. There are no good voices in the Premium plan. Just in Plus.

They took my money for an upgrade but never upgraded! Can't reach anyone or get my money back or upgrade!