Photo Book Service Reviews

With a huge selection of options from hardcover or soft cover to magazine-style or classic leather or linen cover, Photo Books come in dozens of sizes, styles and prices to suite a variety of purposes. What a great way to display your digital scrapbook, wedding photos, sports group photos, baby pics, vacation photos or other special occasion pictures. Personally, I love them and will never go back to sticking individual photos into albums. Instead of getting individual prints made then spending hours manually inserting them into a photobook or cutting and pasting a scrapbook, a digitally prepared photo book is the way to go.

I tried out a variety of photo book sites and found several that stood out from the crowd. Below is a synopsis, with links to detailed reviews for each company. There is also a chart below summarizing the key features of the major photo book services.

Photo Book Services Rankings
COMPANY
READ REVIEW	Shutterfly Review	Mixbook Review	Viovio Review	My Memories Review	Smilebooks Review	My Publisher Review	Picaboo Review	Snapfish Review
Rating (out of 5)
Quality	4.5	4	5	4.5	4.5	4.5	4.5	4.5
Ease of Use	5	5	3.5	4.5	4.5	4.5	4	4
Features	4.5	5	5	4.5	4	3.5	4	4
Customer Support	4.5	4	4	4	4	4.5	5	3.5
Price 20 page 8x11 hardcover	$34.99	$29.99	$31.99		$39.95 26 pages	$29.99	$39.99	$29.99
Promo Discounts
PHOTO FINISH OPTIONS
Glossy
Matte
Digital Silk Paper
White Borders
Acid-free archival paper
Extra thick/Heavy Paper					135lb	115-180lb	66, 100, 110lb
Lay Flat Pages
SIZES	5x7, 7x9 8x8, 8x11, 12x12	6x4 8x6, 8.5x8.5, 8.5x11, 11x8.5, 12x12, 14x11	2.5x3.75, 3.5x3.5, 5x5, 5.25x3.5, 5.5x3.5, 5x7, 6x9,7x9, 7.75x5.75, 8.5x8.5, 8.5x11 9x7, 10x10, 11.5x8.5, 12x12, 12.5x10, 14x11	6x6, 8x8 8.5x11, 11x8.5, 12x12	5.5x5, 8x8, 8x11 , 12x12, 16.5x12, 11x14	7.75x5.75 11.25 x 8.75, 15x11.5	6x8, 8x8, 8.5x11, 12x12, 11x14	2x3, 4x6, 5x7, 8x8, 8x11,12x12
COVER STYLES
Casewrap
Leather
Linen
Velvet
Soft cover
Hardcover
Spiralbound
Cover picture window
Removable Dust Jacket
FEATURES
Web Software
Free software download
Templates
Choice of Background Colors
Text-only layout
Full Bleed layout
Use Photo as background
minimum pages	20	20	none	26	26	20	20	20
free photo album sharing
Photo organizing
hi res uploads
photo gifts
SHIPPING
Ave. processing time	3-5 bus. days	3-5 bus. days	4-14 days	min. 7 days	2-7 bus. days	2-4 bus days	3-4 bus days	3-5 bus. days
In-store pickup
Overnight delivery
2-day Delivery
Canada delivery
international delivery					*
CUSTOMER SERVICE
Satisfaction guarantee		free reprint			free reprint
phone support
email support
online chat
FAQ
online user guide
user forum
Password protected
VISIT SITE

Shutterfly

I use Shutterfly a lot for my photo books. Of the mainstream online photo services I found that Shutterfly is tops for its ease-of-use, enormous variety of page styles and backgrounds, frequent discounts and fast service. Choose from a huge selection of themes including baby, wedding, travel, kids, seasonal, Halloween, Christmas, Valentine's Day, Mother's and Father's Day, pets, sports and more, plus patterns, stripes, dots and solids. You can select different photo edge styles and use different backgrounds for each page, plus add captions and text in a range of fonts, sizes and colors. You can even have a page with text only. Shutterfly also gives you the option of uploading jpegs of pages you created with your own software (such as Photoshop Elements) and placing them into photo books. Read Shutterfly Photo Book Review »

Mixbook

Mixbook is a free online service for creating and sharing personalized photo books. Users can share their books on the web free and/or order them for printing. Mixbook offers a unique collaborative scrapbook editor which allows friends or groups of people to build a book together. Another unique aspect is Mixbook's highly customizable features seldom offered by other photo book services. You can insert your own text boxes, change the size of photos and even the page layouts. This is a very hard-to-find feature and another reason why Mixbook is so great. Read Mixbook Photo Book Review »

Viovio

For sheer variety of photo book sizes and creative options (you have the option to upload PDF's of photo pages you created with your own software package) and especially price, Viovio shines. Their books are professional quality. Viovio also has a great online community for sharing and selling your creations. Read Viovio Photo Book Review »

Picaboo

From traditional hardcover and softcover books on up to high end weddling albums with flush mounts, real leather covers and silver halide pringing, Picaboo offers a great feature set and product line. Read my review »

My Memories Suite

My Memories Suite is an easy-to-use photo album software program for creating photo books, scrapbooks, DVD slideshows and greeting cards. Cross platform - works on PC and MAC. The standard suite includes a set of themed designer templates on separate discs - Holiday Designer, Travel & Wedding Designer, Family Times and Kids & Sports. The deluxe package also includes a large, hardbound personalized photobook (up to 26 pages) and four personalized greeting cards. You create your photo book on your computer then upload it to the web site to place your order. Read review of My Memories Suite Photo Book & Scrapbooking Software »

Kodak Gallery

(Kodak's photo service is no longer in business. Customer images were transferred to Shutterfly. )Kodak Gallery is another service that excels at making the photo book creation process fast and easy with an array of options for sizes, styles, backgrounds and layouts. Kodak has increased their photo book offerings and they now offer personalized covers plus linen die cut and leather covers. In addition to its original online photo book making process, where you manage every creative detail page-by-page, Kodak now offers SmartFit Technology. This feature automatically organizes, fits and inserts your photos in the order taken. You can apply custom settings book wide or page-by-page. With either option, the Kodak Gallery photo book software is very easy to use and they offer frequent discounts. Read Kodak Gallery Photo Book Review »

SmileBooks

I found one of the easiest sites to use was SmileBooks. After downloading their free software I could customize my photo book, which resides on my hard drive. Their templates are completely customizable to move and resize. Plus, Smilebooks has an interesting collection of page backgrounds with real photographs. You can even use your own images as page backgrounds. Smilebooks also has the thickest paper of the sites I visited: 135lb compared to a standard 100lb. Read Review of SmileBooks Photo Books »

If you feel creatively challenged, SmileBooks is offering a new SmileBooks Design Service. You just have to select the photos and your photo book size and style, and their creative team will design your book for you. It only costs $0.95 per page for the service plus the cost of your book. Review of SmileBook Design Service »

SPECIAL OFFERS:

Get 40% off all soft cover photo books with coupon code CRAZYPATRICK40 thru Mar 17.

Get 30% off all Greeting cards with coupon code IRISHINVITES30 thru Mar 17.

Get 20% off all Photo Gifts with coupon code STPATTYGIFTS20 thru Mar 17.

Smilebooks has a new Facebook app to turn your FB pics into a photo book. Use the app and get a Free 8x8 softcover Photo Books with coupon code SMILEYFACE (plus shipping).

Go to Smilebooks now

Photo Book Company Comparisons

All companies reviewed produce high quality photo books on acid-free archival paper with a variety of cover choices from hardcover casewrap to leather and linen. Below is a chart featuring major photo book services listing major features and ratings. Individual detailed reviews of each service are also available by clicking on the Review links.