Hello Kara,
My answers below:

The software loaded fine on my computer (MacBook Pro) - many said in questions that it was having difficulty or crashed.
- We asked immediately to investigate those (few) cases.

It is not user friendly.
- It is actually quite similar to InDesign, not Canva for example, because PubCoder offers so much more.

It is not easy to navigate.
- Please help us with some examples and practical tips or advice, we are always open to changes, but again if you have ever used InDesign it is quite simple.

There are no video tutorials-everything is in html format so it is difficult to wade through the information to try to find out what you are looking for.
- There are actually video tutorials (https://tutorial.pubcoder.com/) and we are adding the others.
The documentation is quite extensive, so I think you can use that: https://docs.pubcoder.com/
Could you explain what you mean by "everything is in html format"?
Also on YouTube you can find some tutorials by other users (e.g. https://www.youtube.com/c/imtonyteach).
Please contact our support service if you need some advice or just a question, we are here to help our customers.

The customer service responds, but sometimes they do not understand what you are asking (I wanted a turn the page feature, they said they did not have it) I looked further and found it but could not figure out how to get it on my book, I was told, oh, yes that will work. Still no direction how to use it or put it in the book.
- Regarding this topic, you asked for the "Flip effect" that actually is not provided by PubCoder. If you meant "tourn the page" this was our answer:
"Yes, you are able to use the “go to next page” or “go to previous page” action on your arrows to change pages."
You need to enter via the Interactivity panel, on the right side of the screen, at the "Tap" event, the "Go to page" action.
Please read more about how to use the interactivity panel here: https://docs.pubcoder.com/pubcoder_events_and_actions.html

I could not even figure out something as basic as previewing the book. I want to see if my layout is good before I try to "add" things to it.
- There is a big button called "Preview".
This was our answer to your question thought our support service "To preview the entire project you need to click on the arrow next to the "Preview" button and then click on "Quick Project Preview".
Pages always appear single unless you disable the "single page" function from the "selection" panel, this is possible for ePub3 export."
But here is the documentation:
https://docs.pubcoder.com/pubcoder_export_and_preview.html

I finally saw the audio/highlight text. This is not word for word, which would be helpful, it is for an entire sentence (according to the example).
- Here is how to highlight word by word:https://docs.pubcoder.com/pubcoder_read_aloud.html
Quoting from the documentation page "For example, adding a space character to the list will allow to setup a word-by-word read aloud."

Thanks