Preservation and Sharing Resources
> Online Printers
Best Overall Online Printers
Advantages of Using Online Printers
Doing your own printing clearly gives you more control over the process, and ownership of a good quality printer provides flexibility to quickly complete small projects.
However, online printers offer a number of advantages that should not be ignored. Meaningful investments in technology and volume processing on the best equipment allows for a broad range of image product offerings, reasonable pricing, and consistent high quality. There are simply many things you can not accomplish at home, or at the local photo shop, that these professional online printers can accomplish with their equipment, expertise, and quality control.
In order to increase the chance of capturing some of your potential printing business, many online printers offer free services to encourage you to use their pay services.
► Many offer Free Unlimited Storage for your images. Having your most treasured images stored at another location and easily accessible is a good thing.
► Free Image Sharing with friends and family. This can take different forms from a simple online image album to a more sophisticated "share site", which looks a lot like your own web site.
► Competitive Pricing on standard sized prints. In addition, major online printers offer a broad range of other image based products including photo books, posters, cards, and canvas prints.
Recommended and highly regarded online printers include:
Shutterfly.com
Snapfish.com by HP
Kodak Gallery.
Although the list of services is
similar as reflected in the table below, my top choice is
Shutterfly.com.
I prefer Shutterfly based on easy site navigation,
strong help support, the broadest range of products, and a large
selection of template choices for
share sites and photo books.
Shutterfly.comis the only major
independent company that offers a broad range of online printing and
image management services. As an independent and public company
that focuses only on image management, printing and publishing, it
re-invests heavily in improving its services and innovation.
If you have the time, it may be worth the effort to visit and compare all three sites. A brief comparison follows:
Note: It is difficult to compare these providers completely as they frequently change their offers, particularly for new members. The best way to compare is to visit the sites to see what current offerings might be, and to judge for yourself which site appeals to you most.
| Feature | Shutterfly | Snapfish | KodakGallery |
| New Member Free Prints |
varies | varies | varies |
| 4 x 6 Price* | $0.15 | $0.09 | $0.15 |
| 8 x 10 Price* | $3.99 | $2.99 | $2.99 |
| Unlimited Free Storage |
X |
X |
X |
| Free Image Sharing |
X |
X |
X |
| Photo Books | X | X | X |
| Posters | X | X | X |
| Canvas Prints |
X |
X |
|
| Cards | X | X | X |
| Calendars | X | X | X |
| Archive DVDs | X | X | |
| Mugs, Etc. | X | X | X |
| Image Auto Adjust |
X |
X |
X |
A pay site worth mentioning is SmugMug.
Although users of SmugMug pay a monthly fee, the site does
provide some unique features and provides the ability to print in many
additional sizes and aspect ratios when compared to "standard" size
prints offered by most other online printers. You can check out
Smug Mug here: Take the SmugMug quick tour!
