They say a picture is worth a thousand words and when you sift through photo albums you’re instantly taken back to family vacations, holidays, graduations, weddings, baby showers, etc. Photo albums make for amazing birthdays, Mother’s Day, anniversaries, Father’s Day, and Christmas gifts for friends and family. Today, to capture these moments, all you need is a smartphone. But, when was the last time you printed the photos from your phone?
While some people like to hang photos on walls or put them in frames on the fireplace, photo albums are a great way to hold all the memories in one convenient place. Unfortanelty, over time, your collection of photo albums can clutter your living space, become old and blurry, or darken and rip.
So, what sets digital photo albums apart from printed photo albums? To begin with, you’re not limited to the number of pages the album has and you don’t have to worry about losing photos over time—all the photos are in one spot. With digital photo albums, the prints are stored and saved online forever. For high-quality digital photo albums, these are the sites you should look into.
Amazon Prints
Amazon literally has everything and their photo albums online are no exception. All photo books require a minimum of 20 pages and the prices start at $9 for a 5×7 inch softcover book and they go up to $60 for a 12×12 inch premium layflat hardcover book. To customize the book, you can pick themes including holidays, travel, weddings, and baby and each page can have a different template and layout. You can also choose between borders, quotes, embellishments, and backgrounds.
Mixbook
You’re bound to find a template you want with Mixbook, which has over 470 pre-set themes to choose from. There are four book types including softcover, glossy hardcover, matte hardcover, and leather-bound and four types of paper including semi-gloss, pearl finish, premium matte flat lay, and premium lustre flat lay. The prices for a 20-page book start at $16 for a softcover 8×6 inch book and they go up to $85 for a leather-bound 20×20 inch book. You can customize your photos with cutouts and borders as well as text and stickers.
In addition to having tons of options to choose from, the website is super user-friendly with video tutorials on how to use the site and design your photo album book.
Shutterfly
Shutterfly is one of the most well-known printing services and you can print photos on mugs, calendars, tote bags, puzzles, magnets, phone cases, photo books, etc. Pretty much if you can think to put a photo on it, Shutterfly has done it. Each page in the photo book can hold up to 12 pictures and you can easily resize images, add texts, backgrounds, and embellishments. A 20-page 8×8 inch softcover book starts at $15 and for an 11×14 inch silk hardcover, layflat book is just over $200. They also have a service where one of the company’s designers can create the book for you.
Snapfish
If you’re looking for a bound book, Snapfish is the place to go. With 26 photo options including softcover books, leather-bound books, linen-bound books, layflat hardcovers, etc., you’re sure to find one in your style and price point. There’s even an app that allows you to design the book straight from your phone. A 20-page 5×7 softcover starts at $13 and a 12×12 premium layflat hardcover costs $100. There are also video tutorials and how-to articles on the site if you have questions about how the process works. Snapfish offers over 120 themes and a huge selection of backgrounds.
Walmart
For basic photo books, that are cost-effective, Walmart’s got you covered. If you’re looking to get a photo book in a hurry, with Walmart’s photo center, you can build a book online and have it shipped to your door within a few days or you can pick it up in-store the same day or with one-hour printing. The same day book only holds 20 double-sided pages and the one-hour pick up only has 15 single-sided pages. A 5×7 softcover book will cost you just under $11 and a 12×12 premium layflat costs $60.
Pinhole Press
While most sites require 20 pictures to make a photo album, with Pinhole Press, you can make an accordion fold-out Brag Book with just eight photos. They also offer personalized educational photo books for kids that allow you to turn your child or their friends and family into bugs or animals. There’s also mommy and me books, daddy and me books, first-year books, birthday books, emotion books, etc. The Itty Bitty softcover photo book, which features 20 pages of 3×3 photos, costs only $13 and the hardcover square layflat book starts at $80.
Artifact Uprising
Although these books are pricier, the company has premium fabric-bound covers, custom foil stamping, and high-quality, thick-cut paper. The templates are super easy to use and you can directly upload images from Instagram, an iPhone, or Dropbox. For a softcover album, the prices start at $15 and for premium layflat photo album the prices go up to $300.
AdoramaPix
For those of you who don’t have time to go through all your photos and neatly arrange them into a photo album, AdoramPix can do it for you. Within seconds, the Auto-Builder feature organizes your photos into albums. There are softcover, hardcover, leather-bound, and metal-covered options to choose from and they have square, portrait, and landscape book shapes. The prices for softcover start at $13 and metal-covered books cost $225.
