“Shutterfly—all the tools you need to organize, share and order prints, and cards are on one page,” reads a blurb on the bottom of the Shutterfly website, and the blurb is completely accurate. Shutterfly is an online card, photo book, stationery, poster, yearbook and calendar making website, along with photo storage and photo sharing, basically personalizing various items with your pictures. There are also business options, which include an affiliate program, sport team sites, and volume discounts. There are other discounts though– no worries – such as free shipping with a $30 purchase, percentages off of photo books, free prints, and many more. When you sign up for a Shutterfly account, you receive 50 free 4×6 prints and the endless storage of photos that will never be deleted. Generally, I make photo books on Shutterfly, but I have ordered prints and made a calendar. There is the custom path – where you place the photos yourself on each page – and the simple path where pictures are placed for you.The custom path seems to be better since you get to personalize everything: you get to pick all your backgrounds, layouts, embellishments, cover style, and add captions, all of which I love.
There are little warning notes on photos or text that is too close to the edge or other photos or text which pop up as red triangles with black exclamation points that are really annoying. The warnings don’t really make your photo book turn out better. To address the warnings, you have to move your photos, and when you don’t, your photos are just where you want them.
The making of the photobook is also really enjoyable, in my opinion, and is not an extensive time-consuming project. I love how every photo book turns out, it’s always even better than the preview on the computer screen. Waiting for that orange package never takes as long as it seems it would, normally waiting for a package is really slow and nerve racking, but the Shutterfly delivery service is great and fast, worth every moment waiting and penny spent.
Prices for photo books are pretty reasonable, especially with coupons, but the shipping prices are what get me every time, $7.95 for standard shipping just seems like too much. Then after thinking about how it costs too much I realize that the service is really great and the photo book is always great, so then I click the ok button and let go of that little thing called money.
The prints and calendar products are also quite nice, I loved how they turned out – in quality, making them, and again fast shipping. For the calendar option, you pick a photo for each page that is a full page in each date block you can add text saying like birthdays or anniversaries which is awesome. Then you won’t have to worry about forgetting that one friend’s birthday or your parent’s anniversary. The prints come out just as they appear, and I was very satisfied with them.
