ALAFOTO

Shutterfly is a fun and easy web site for storing photos online and ordering a wide variety of prints and gifts designed around your snaps. To join is free and once you have signed up the prices for ordering prints are quite reasonable. The site is very beginner friendly and is ideal for anyone delving into online photo solutions.

Costs:

Membership is completely free and comes with 50 free prints

Features:

Free photo sharing and print ordering with unlimited storage
Share uploaded photos with your friends and family
Images stored at full resolution
Free online storage for your photos
Unlimited storage space available
Order greetings cards designed from your favourite photos
Secure storage facilities to keep your photos from prying eyes
Create a customized web site to share your photos
Order prints of your photos in a range of different sizes
Let others leave comments on your photos
Enhance your prints with more than 400 different border styles
Personalize your prints for free with a message on the back
Video sharing version of Shutterfly also available
Online photo tips section to improve your photography skills
Downloadable desktop software to organize and edit your picture collection
Comprehensive “how to” guide teaches you how to use the whole site
Upload photos from your iPhone
50 free 4×6 prints when you join!
Membership is completely free!
Works with almost any device that can run a web browser

Shutterfly is a fun and easy web site for storing photos online and ordering a wide variety of prints and gifts designed around your snaps. To join is free and once you have signed up the prices for ordering prints are quite reasonable. The site is very beginner friendly and is ideal for anyone delving into online photo solutions for the first time. As well as being able to order prints and gifts Shutterfly provides some decent features for sharing pictures with friends and family. Although perhaps not as comprehensive as some other sites, these still work well and are a welcome addition.

The first thing most people will want to do after signing up for a Shutterfly account is to start uploading some photos. Thankfully uploading is as simple as signing up – which itself is so simple we would recommend it for complete novices. The uploader tool is Flash based, which means it runs through your browser but provides a rich user interface to make it very easy to upload. You can also upload through Shutterfly’s desktop (PC only) tool that is downloadable for free and helps to organize your photos on your computer too. Mac users aren’t left out and can download a plugin for iPhoto which allows you to upload directly from within iPhoto itself. The final option available is to upload directly from your iPhone with the dedicated iPhone app.

After uploading some photos you are ready to start taking advantage of the real features Shutterfly has to offer. The site is mainly aimed at getting you to order prints and gifts as this is presumably the way they make most of their profit, but don’t let this lead you away from the useful community and sharing features that are also available. The simplest way to share your photos is by providing the email addresses of the people you want to share with who are then all sent a unique link leading them to either individual photos or whole albums as you choose. If you want to add a bit more pizzazz to your albums you can create a customized web site with a wizard-like builder interface. This makes it really easy to display your photos as you want to and also add in some great community features such as calendars and schedules.

There are many different types of products you can order from Shutterfly – and of course you are regularly reminded what these are! Good quality albums, posters, calendars and a wide range of other things are available. It is also possible to order customized greetings cards and the designs for these regularly change – especially around holiday times. Of course you can also order straight forward prints in a variety of different sizes and either get them delivered direct to your door or pick them up in your nearest Target store. A nice touch is that you can also add personalized messages to the backs of your prints – perhaps to remember who is in a particular photo.

We would highly recommend Shutterfly to anyone – especially those who aren’t too confident when using computers. Everything is made really easy for you and the site is designed very cleanly and easy to navigate. The prices for gifts and prints are pretty much on par with similar types of sites, but you do get 50 free 4×6 prints when you join. Also membership is free for apparently unlimited storage which makes the whole bundle a pretty good deal in our eyes!