Shutterfly Reviewer's Comments

We were slightly disappointed with Shutterfly’s results. As one of the most popular online digital printing services on the Internet we expected more from this company. Although the service offers some of the best photo gifts and had the fastest turnaround we reviewed, their per print price is expensive, their shipping is expensive and the prints we received were average at best.

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Ease of Use - Ordering Process:  

Shutterfly’s step-by-step upload and ordering process is so easy even the most inexperienced users can use their service.

Quality of Prints:  

To test for quality, we sent the same digital photos to all of the online photo developers we reviewed. 

• Sunset: This picture was dark comparitivly. In many of the top services you were able to see the sun kissed cheeks of our models, but Shutterfly’s print was dark and the girls were indistinct.
• Black and White: Again the image was dark, but didn’t seem to favor one color more than another like yellow or red.
• Aerial: Of the lot this is the best image we received from Shutterfly. The cloudy sky was cleared with only a slight amount of yellow in the buildings.

Note: To check quality, we took each set of prints received from the online photo developer and laid them down, side-by-side for comparison.

Pricing:  

Shutterfly has relatively high per-print costs compared to many of our other services. We found that although Shutterfly has one of the most recognizable names in the digital printing industry, they can afford to maintain completive cost with our higher ranked services like Snapfish and York Photo .

Service and Site Features:  

Shutterfly’s gift options isn’t the largest we’ve seen; however, many of their ideas are unique, fun and useful. They include the basics like keychains, mugs and t-shirts, broken down by product or subject. Our favorite gift ideas are the Children’s books that allow you send in a photograph of your child and Shutterfly will digitally impose your child’s picture into a story book with Dora, Sesame Street, Thomas the Tank Engine and more.

We were disappointed to discover that although Shutterfly is a leader in it’s industry, you could not upload photographs from your camera phone directly to their website.

Shipping Costs/ Turn Around Time:  

Shutterfly's charges to ship us four 4 x 6 inch prints was $1.79, the actual postage for USPS First Class was $1.14, leaving $.65 for packaging and handling. This total shipping cost was more expensive than most of the services we reviewed, but comparable to most of the larger brand services.

Our prints came in a lightweight, cardboard sleeve inside a similarly lightweight, cardboard envelope.

We gave each photo developing service anywhere from 1 to 6 business days to send us our completed prints; Shutterfly not only met that requirement, but had the fastest delivery time.

Summary:  

Pricing is a little on the high side, but if you buy in volume or you pre-pay, then you can get prices reduced substantially.