Photo books are perfect for storing precious pictures, and they make for fantastic gifts as well – for birthdays, Christmas, christenings, Father’s Day, Mother’s Day, and beyond. Creating one should be fast and straightforward, an effective way of keeping treasured memories.
It is best if you always looked first at the quality of the album – from the actual paper and bindings used and color accuracy and style. If your photos aren’t recreated in perfect clarity, color, and brightness, then this degrades the overall quality of the photo book.
We’ve chosen top photo book services to make it easier for you to opt for the best.
Mixbook Photo Book
Mixbook offers a wide diversity of photo book alternatives and templates to help you create the perfect photo book for any event.
- Excellent print quality and strong book
- Easy to use software
- Plenty of customization options
- Money-back guarantee
- Lacks window covers
- Not the cheapest
Mixbook offers high quality with lots of options while remaining super simple to use. You have thousands of backgrounds and stickers, pre-designed books to choose from. You can choose to put a book together from scratch if you. Mixbook has got you covered, whether your theme is romance or seasonal, family or everyday, travel, or kids.
You can upload photos from your phone, computer, directly from Facebook and Instagram, or you can use the images you’ve already uploaded to the site.
Mixbook offers four different page finishes, five different cover styles, and you can order the photo books in landscape, portrait, or square shape in 6- by 6-inch, 8.5- by 8.5-inch, 10- by 10-inch and 12- by 12-inch sizes.
They also offer “100% Happiness Guarantee” on orders, meaning if you are not satisfied with your order, you can return it. Don’t forget to look for discount codes and special offers to get your photo books for the lowest price!
Shutterfly
Shutterfly offers a vast selection of media on which you can print your photos, and it excels in packaging, but quality comes with a price.
- Wide template selection
- Excellent print quality
- Plenty of backgrounds
- Easy to use
- No shuffle function for photo arrangement
- Can be uneven photo reproduction
- No same day pickup
Shutterfly is one of the most well-known photo book services. It has a wide template selection, graphics, and backgrounds for you to use, including themes from favorite franchises like Sesame Street and Disney.
Easy to use with a very intuitive design interface. It allows you to customize every aspect of the photo book – from resizing and moving images, so you’ll have a one of a kind photo album.
If you don’t have the time or mood to do it yourself, they also offer the option to use a designer, and in just three days, he does all the work for you.
You can upload images directly from Facebook, Instagram, and other sources with the possibility of adding up to 1000 photos. They also provide stock photos from Shutterfly’s Art Library.
Without the sales tax, an 8- by 11-inch 20-page hardcover photo book can cost about $40 before shipping and tax. But the site regularly gives significant discounts (up to 50% off for all prints and other items) and has a lot of freebies. Be sure to check them!
Amazon Prints
Amazon Prints gives decent picture quality at a deal price. The photo-printing service’s web interface is less intuitive and full-featured than the competition’s, and its packaging is the least protective.
- Great pricing
- Decent print quality
- Free standard shipping for orders over $15
- A brand you know
- Easy to use and design
- Fewer design options than competitors
If you are looking to make a quick, stylish, and affordable photo book, Amazon Prints is the answer. Although it is one of the cheapest services and does not offer as many binding and cover options as some of its contenders, the designs have high print quality and are well built.
If you are in a hurry, Amazon Prints provides 13 pre-designed photo books and an autofill feature. You also have the option to create your own layouts, using different backgrounds, stickers, and 100+ general theme options.
With Amazon Prints, you can share your photos with other users and create collaborative photo projects.
Quick delivery is a plus, and if you have an Amazon Prime membership, you can have your photo books delivered twice as fast.
Walmart Photo Books
Walmart Photo provides average photo printing quality at low costs, and even grants same-day pickup.
- Create and print in-store
- Fast creation and collection
- Lack of customization
- Average-quality print
Walmart Photo is probably the best choice for a fast photo book online or in-store and pick it up just an hour later. The downside, you don’t get as much creative freedom as the other photo book services, and the design tool is harder to use.
You can upload photos from your computer, Facebook, Instagram, Flickr, Dropbox, and Google Photos. The book’s size can be customized from 5 by 7 inches all the way up to 12 by 12 inches.
The editing options are limited– a black-and-white or a sepia filter, the ability to crop, zoom, tilt, brightness adjustment, and red-eye elimination.
Snapfish
Snapfish offers good picture quality in its very affordable prints. With its modern website, you have an extensive collection of gift options for your photos.
- Easy to use
- Good selection of templates
- Lots of backgrounds
- Online gallery sharing
Snapfish offers are over 120 themes, lots of backgrounds, all of which are easy to pick and pair as the book editor guides you through each stage with drag and drop simplicity.
If you are feeling creative, you can make your own design; the binding, cover, and paper options will help you make a unique photo book. Uploading photos to make an album it’s also really easy by organizing all of your uploads into a file.
With Snapfish, you can print your photos on various items, including books, cards, calendars, home décor (including pillows, blankets), puzzles, playing card decks, and iPhone cases.