I recently got myself a digital camera (Canon SX110 IS). I will post my experiences while using the camera sometime in future. For now, I’ve decided to concentrate only on taking photographs, the very reason why I bought the camera. During a recent trip, I managed to capture about 500+ photos. Not all of them were work of genius but some of them came out really great and I decided to get them printed. That’s when I started looking out for online photo printing websites.

To my surprise, there were quite a lot of websites to choose from. After doing my own research and taking opinions from my friends, I decided to try out three of them – Snapfish (by HP), SnapGalaxy and ZoomIn. All three of them have received good reviews from users worldwide. All of them provided incentives for signing up which ranged from 10 to 15 (4″x6″) free prints. I was a bit lucky while signing up for Snapfish. I reached there via MeraSnap (now an extinct service) and was offered 30 free prints for signing up.

Print Sizes and Finish

All of them had various print sizes to choose from, the relatively tiny 4″x6″ to the huge 20″x30″ posters. SnapGalaxy even offered posters of size 24″x36″. Recently, ZoomIn and SnapGalaxy also introduced prints of size 4″x5.3″ which were created specifically for pictures taken with a digital camera so that you don’t have to crop your photos. While Snapfish only offers Glossy finish, SnapGalaxy offers both Glossy and Matte finishes. On the other hand, Zoomin goes one up with its offering of Metallic finish along with Glossy and Matte.

Pricing

Cost per print are relatively lower for both Snapfish and SnapGalaxy but that doesn’t always tell the entire story. While 4″x6″ prints from Snapfish costs Rs. 2.95/- each, the same costs Rs. 2.99/- each at SnapGalaxy. ZoomIn is a bit pricier with per print costing Rs. 4.00/- for Matte/Glossy and Rs. 8.00/- each for Metallic prints. ZoomIn delivers to any location in India at a flat shipping cost of Rs. 25.00/- irrespective of the quantity. Both Snapfish and SnapGalaxy charges variable rates depending on quantity ordered, the lowest being Rs. 35.00/- (upto 50 prints) for SnapGalaxy and Rs. 44.00/- (upto 60 prints) for Snapfish.

Delivery Time

In my case, SnapGalaxy used DTDC to deliver the prints which reached me within 4 days from order date. Quite impressive but the others were equally great. The prints from SnapGalaxy didn’t reach me in perfect shape, they were bent from the middle and it took me sometime to flatten them up. Snapfish used Blue Dart and the prints reached me in expected condition. It must be noted that Snapfish were the last amongst the three to dispatch the prints. ZoomIn used Elbee to deliver the products and I was most impressed by their packaging.

Print Quality

This is what distinguishes the good from the best. ZoomIn was undoubtedly the winner here. Although, they charged more per print, I feel like every penny of it was well spent. The colours were crisp and almost exactly like it shows on screen. Snapfish’s prints looked equally good at first sight but closer inspection revealed that the colours were somewhat unnatural and the details were missing. The prints from SnapGalaxy were somewhat pale in comparison and the bent photographs were enough to put me off in the first place. One thing worth mentioning here is that while both ZoomIn and SnapGalaxy used Kodak photo paper, Snapfish used its proprietory HP photo paper.

Customer Support

Both Zoomin and SnapGalaxy have top notch customer support. The kind of support is more personalized than automated. Both were keen on receiving customer feedback and were interested in improving their services in future. On the other hand, Snapfish seemed to give an impression that customer feedback is not at all welcome. I couldn’t find a place on their website to send my feedback to them. ZoomIn was the most impressive in how it encourages its customers to send feedback.

User Interface

Although all the sites were good, ZoomIn stole the show yet again. ZoomIn’s user interface was better than the other two by a country mile. Due to the use of advanced web technologies on their website, the users can edit details of photograph that were already uploaded while uploading other photographs, all at the same time. SnapGalaxy provided quite a few options for uploading but all of them seemed half baked and not exactly user friendly. Snapfish had some good online tools to edit the photographs online and those worked great.

Other Features

All of them provided unlimited web space to upload photographs. The photographs can be organized by creating photo albums. SnapGalaxy also provided user galleries which can be browsed by other users. You can also lock an album and make it private if you’re not comfortable with others viewing it. All the sites also lets you purchase photo merchandise like mugs, mouse pads, t-shirts and other gift items with your photographs printed on them.

Conclusion

While all of them were good in one way or the other, the one that really stood out was ZoomIn. I was really impressed with their service overall and would recommend ZoomIn to everyone. There are no negative points whatsoever and I hope their service achieves greater heights in future. I’d certainly use ZoomIn for all my future photo printing needs. Snapfish and SnapGalaxy have a lot of hope and they’ll have to improve their service tremendously to compete against ZoomIn.