This photo book service lacks some selection in terms of design elements, and the interface is not the most intuitive. The book we made turned out decent, but it definitely has a few print quality issues. The truly-hard hardcover, thick pages and textured flyleaf give this book a professional look and feel that will protect your memories in style.
While we ordered the same style and size of book from every company, this company's book was noticeably pricey when compared to others. An 8 x 8-inch hardcover book costs $46.99 before tax and shipping. The standard shipping cost and tax combined will likely put you over another $10 since these books ship from Malaysia. You can add pages individually. They cost $0.75 per page, which isn’t bad considering you don’t have to add the pages in pairs.
This was obviously the most off-color cover we received. Testers noted the cover image, while crisp and clear, came out very dark. Inside, the photos also printed a little dark and graininess is discernible in some of the photos. A huge saving grace for this services is how nice and thick the pages and cover are. A flyleaf also adds to the professional and sturdy feel of the book.
In terms of design elements, this site's offerings are somewhat limited. The best photo book sites offer thousands of backgrounds for making your pages. This site only had 102 to choose from. As a comparison, Mixbook offers over 5,000 backgrounds. However, PhotoBook America has one of the largest selections of full-book layouts. Of the 120 offered there are some very attractive options for a variety of occasions. That way you don't have to cobble together a layout from scratch – just choose one you like and add your own photos.
Photobook America does not make the layout process as easy as it could be. For one thing, there are no alignment lines to help you know if your images are lining up along the same axis. There is an autofill feature, though, and you can upload photos from your Facebook account. Other photo book sites let you upload photos from a wider variety of social media sites, though.
This site is somewhat limited in terms of delivery options as well. It does not offer overnight delivery, international shipping or an in-store pickup option. Despite being shipped from Malaysia, our book arrived really quickly though it travelled the farthest distance. You might not miss those other delivery methods.
Photobook America is not the best option since the online photo book maker isn’t the easiest to use and it’s more expensive the most of the other services we tested. While the binding and paper quality are phenomenal, the cover photo and inner images came out dark and a bit grainy. Still this company offers a wide selection of book sizes and has fast delivery time.
