We've grown accustomed to having nearly every photo we've ever taken at our fingertips, and while smartphone and cloud storage are great, there's something wonderful and cozy about reliving memories over a beautiful photo album.
But nostalgia isn't the only benefit of photo books—you can compile photos taken from multiple sources, tell a story, or create a memorable gift. Custom photo books let us arrange our favorite pictures to our exact liking. With themed styles, countless cover choices, and customizable designs, we can capture our memories in a beautiful, bound book.
We've chosen six of our favorite custom photo book services for you to use to make your own album. They offer a range of products with different levels of customization and quality, so you can choose the right service for you, whether your priority is printing speed, user-friendliness, quality, design options, or price.
Top picks for custom photo book services
Best overall: Shutterfly
Best budget: Vistaprint
Easiest to use: Mixbook
Highest quality: Printique
Best for keepsake albums: Artifact Uprising
Best for parents: Chatbooks
Best overall
Shutterfly is a major photo service platform where you can get prints, design holiday cards, create home decor, and make photo books. It offers dozens of pre-made themed styles and the option to completely customize your book.
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Whether you have an eye for design or just want someone else to do the legwork, Shutterfly has options for you. Creative types can get super hands-on with customizing each and every page, but those who want a little more handholding can take advantage of the tool's auto place feature or free 24-hour designer service.
There are plenty of designs to choose from and upgrades such as gift boxes, premium paper finishes, metallic accenting, and rounded page corners to make your book feel extra special. Those who just want to get their photos off their phones and onto the page will find options starting at around $25 before discounts.
Shutterfly regularly offers deals, such as unlimited free pages and 40% off photobooks. If you're an Amazon Prime member, you'll get even more value if you connect your Prime account, including 45% off regularly priced items and free shipping on orders over $35.
Browse Shutterfly's photo book options.
Best budget
Few photo design services offer similar quality for the price as Vistaprint, which starts its photo books at just $9.
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If you don't want to spend more than a tenner on a photo book or have a lot to order and don't want to break the bank, Vistaprint is the cheapest option that still offers great quality. Books start at around $9, and there are frequently offers that bring the cost down even further. You won't find as many premium features or customizations as other services, however, and you'll need to be comfortable doing a lot of the layout legwork yourself.
Print quality is solid, and turnaround is quick. Sometimes cheap, solid, and fast is all you need — if that's the case, Vistaprint delivers.
Browse Vistaprint's photo book designer.
Easiest to use
Mixbook has been rated as many people's favorite custom photo book service because its design system is extremely intuitive and user-friendly.
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You can start with one of their trendy themes or a blank book, choose a landscape, square, or portrait layout, and start adding pictures to its many layout options.
Mixbook has a huge collection of stickers, designs, and fonts, but it also lets you upload your own stickers or backgrounds to make your photo book even more personal. Plus, you can invite others to collaborate on your photo book so they can upload and add their own photos or pages.
Browse Mixbook's photo book options.
Highest quality
Printique is a great, high-quality photo book option for non-professionals. It offers leather and fabric covers and only uses professional photo and inkjet paper to ensure your photos are printed at their best.
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Printique is one of just a few photo printing services that uses silver-halide printing, a chemical process that produces images that are sharper, truer to color, less prone to fading, and more vibrant than ink printing.
In addition to its glossy, matte, and best-selling Luster options, you can choose linen, metallic, or pebble-textured pages. The only things less customizable are the photo layouts themselves: Printique requires the photographs to take center stage rather than stickers, words, or themed designs.
Though all of Printique's options are already high quality, you can upgrade to a Premium album, which is built, bound, and printed a little differently so it has a luxurious feel throughout every page. Premium albums are customized similarly but have different design options available, such as a metal album cover, and are created with longevity in mind.
Browse all of Printique's photo book options.
Best for keepsake albums
Artifact Uprising is a premium service worthy of documenting your most important life events. Its signature layflat photo albums are heirloom quality (and priced accordingly).
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Wedding albums and keepsakes are a whole different beast than your everyday vacation photo book. Not only is print quality paramount, but we're also looking for several archival-quality options with binding and storage. On that front, Artifact Uprising is the service we trust above others.
Several editors on our team have used Artifact Uprising to design and print wedding albums. The layout designer is easy to use, and the finished product feels luxe and special, with thick, layflat pages bound in cloth covers with metallic embossing. These photo books are attractive enough to leave out as coffee table books and a unique option for your most special memories.
Browse Artifact Uprising's photo book options.
Best for parents
We love the thoughtful features Chatbooks has added specifically for parents, including "toddler insurance" and monthly recurring mini books.
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While Chatbooks has options for everyone, we think this service has several unique features that parents of little ones will appreciate. For starters, the brand offers "toddler insurance" and will replace your book for free if it's fallen victim to toddler scribbles or messes.
Second, Chatbook offers a recurring subscription of mini photo books starting at $8 a month plus shipping. If your priority is documenting all your kiddo's milestones, it's a great option for getting photos off your phone and onto paper. Each book can take as little as few minutes to make in the app, and a subscription makes a special gift for new parents.
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