My Shutterfly Experience

We have oh just a few photo books from Shutterfly, can you tell we're fans? These are our personal collection of 8X8 books, my personal favorite because the covers are full color and you can personalize the binding. We've also given several photo books as gifts. Grandparents really like them.
Take this photo book of my family's trip to the Grand Canyon. I love that I can create it once and then order another copy. I can easily change some of the pictures or edit it slightly depending on who I'm giving it to. In this case, I added several pages to the version I gave my parents. That way their entire trip out to see us in Santa Fe and our trip together to Arizona is all together in one place.

Plus their customer service is great. Our most recent photo book is from our trip to Chicago and on one of our copies the text was cut off. I sent a message via Twitter to Shutterfly and quickly got a response. He ended up arranging for a new copy to be overnighted to us.

It's nice how you can get professional looking results with Shutterfly, and you don't have to be digital software expert. They have a variety of page layouts and a lot of backgrounds and fonts to choose from. There are even predesigned books done in partnership with Creating Keepsakes that are beautiful. Their Year In Review photo book is one of my favorites.
Besides photo books, every year I made photo calendars for gifts. Again, their variety of backgrounds and styles can't be beat. Their stylish designs range from basic black and white, to cute seasonal, and sophisticated. I used another company, once, and came right back to Shutterfly. Being able to save important dates and use them again and again is a great time saver. I don't have to enter them each year when I go to make the calendars, they are saved in my account.Another way we frequently use Shutterfly is to make personalized photo cards. We have friends and relatives that live out of state that send ER gifts. I like to take a picture of her wearing the outfit or using the gift and make them a photo card. Many designs you can also add more photos inside the card too. Again, I have my contacts saved in my account and with a couple of clicks it's so easy to send the cards directly to them, it's just a little extra for the cards to be stamped and sent.

We have gotten Christmas cards through Shutterfly for three years now and they are printed on thick heavy weight cardstock with exclusive designs. I always get compliments on them.

What makes creating photo gifts so easy is that I have unlimited photo storage. I upload frequently and all my photos are waiting for me for whenever I have time to do something with them. I can work on a year in review book a couple months at a time and it's all ready by December.

I use their free Share Sites to share pictures with family and friends, that's mine above. I was able to customize the appearance and layout. It's like having a free blog because you can post updates, upload photos, add video, and more. Our privacy setting are so that only members I invite by email can view it so I feel secure sharing our lives on it. It's a great tool for keeping in touch. I can upload more pictures on my personal account and choose which ones to share with everyone on the Share Site.

I also used a Share Site as the Session Rep for ER's preschool class to share photos from throughout the year with the class and to keep parents updated on important information. Whenever anyone added something an email went out to all the members so they'd know to go check it. Plus members could add their own pictures and notes to the class, very handy

Shutterfly has so much to offer and fantastic products, the quality of which are much higher than competitors. It's the one company who's products I've never been disappointed in. If you have another service you like, I'd love to know what it is and why you like it. Please share your experience in the comments☺