In a not-so-shocking turn of events Walmart is one of the fastest and most affordable photo services out there. Order online, grab your cart, take a stroll down aisle four, and grab your groceries because by the time you’re done you’re going to have a photo book to take home with you. Walmart gives a huge range of design options, perfect for any special occasion and with one-hour, and same day pick-up, it’s great for those special occasions that you might have forgotten about.
It's tough to top Walmart, and although the print quality isn't quite as high as many of its competitors, you can't beat the convenience, and you'll struggle to better the low prices. That's why it earns a spot on our list of the best photo books.
Walmart Photo: Pricing
Walmart Photo offers one of the cheapest photo books on the market. You can order an 8 x 8 hardcover book for $21.96. Walmart Photo does not charge for standard shipping, but you might spend a couple dollars on tax. The price for additional pages depends on the size of book you order. For an 8 x 8 book, you’d be looking at an additional $1.32 for each extra page spread. That's pretty much in line with what we’ve seen with other providers.
Should you be looking at something a little smaller than a 4x4 mini book could cost as little as $10, while a premium 12x12 book (that’s three times the size) will cost around $60. There are a range of sizing and price options in between, and you’ll be sure to find something to suit your needs. In true Walmart style there are always the coveted Rollback prices to keep you interested, with sales ongoing.
While it's very cheap, we think something like Shutterfly offers better value, because for a few dollars more you get a far better final product.
Walmart Photo: Quality & Services
The book we made with Walmart Photo wasn’t the best. When placing photos in the online editor, we couldn’t make the cover image fit within the window. This resulted in the image appearing too zoomed in and extremely pixelated. Some members of the family didn’t even make it on the cover.
Many of the images inside the book are pixelated as well. In a blind scoring panel, our testers gave this sample the lowest print quality score of all the books we ordered. The binding and cover were relatively sturdy, though the pages felt very thin when compared to some competitors' books. There is no flyleaf. The one good thing about Walmart Photo, aside from the same day pickup, is that it doesn’t print its logo anywhere on or inside the book.
Walmart Photo: Book options
Walmart Photo offers many different book sizes and cover options. There are eight sizes – 4x4, 4x6, 5x7, 8x6, 8x8, 8x11, 11x14, and 12x12 inches – as well as mini photo books and flip books. Each book size has different cover options, so the size you order determines what kind of cover options are available. There are ten different covers: Hard Cover Glossy, Hard Cover Matte, Soft Cover, Linen Cover, Leather Cover, Paper Cover, Layflat Glossy, Layflat Matte, Premium Layflat, Mini Premium Layflat. Though, again, the availability of each of these depends on your book size.
Walmart has done a good job of creating a range of templates and styles to suit your needs. Due to the quick turnaround of its print and pick up deal, it doesn’t allow for as much customization as other sites. After you’ve picked your template, you’ll be taken to an easy to navigate picture upload page. Most of the controls are labeled when you first enter, and it resembles other sites of the same type pretty closely.
Even though the templates make it quick and easy to create a photo gift, they limit your creative design ability. Layouts, templates, pictures and text aren’t adjustable. You can’t even add embellishments to the photos, which makes it hard to get creative with your project. Try our top pick - Mixbook - if you want to have better choice.
The photo upload box is an easy drag and drop interface to keep things simple. However, whatever resolution you upload pictures in will be the resolution that they’re printed. If you use low-quality images, they will be blurry in the printed version. Make sure all your pictures are as high quality as you can wrangle otherwise your album simply won’t look its best.
Select sizes and cover options are available for same day pickup. If you’re in a real time crunch, you can even order one-hour pickup. While Walmart Photo provides one of the quickest ways to print a custom photo book, if you don’t want to print it immediately at a store, you also can have it printed and shipped to your home. If you choose this route, the standard production time averages around two to three days. If you’re willing to pay more, you can choose from overnight, two-day and standard shipping methods, so you can get your book quickly or economically. Some of these services have been affected by Covid, with the same day pick up being cut for the time being, though 24 hour delivery from your local store is still available.
Walmart Photo: Support and user reviews
Walmart’s support options are limited. There is no telephone number on the site; however, there is a live chat option. The site also lists a technical support email and features a FAQs section with common problems and solutions.
Walmart has had pretty poor reviews from users. Common issues that people face has been with the fact that there isn’t a great deal of customer service available when each individual store has to deal with their own photo orders “I went to pick [the photo book] up, but the clerk could not find it”, with one customer going so far as to say that they are “never going to use photo center again”. Overall Walmart has the lowest customer rating of any photo book provider with just 1.5/5 stars on TrustPilot. Ouch.
Should you use Walmart Photo?
Walmart Photo is one of the few services that allows you to create a custom photo book online or in the store and have it printed within the hour. This is especially useful if you find yourself shopping at Walmart often. The online design interface doesn't give you a lot of creative flexibility and the design options are limited. While it was still decent, the print quality of this photo book was the worst of any we ordered, and the paper quality was pretty flimsy, but the binding was sturdy. If you don’t need your gift in a hurry, we highly recommend using a top-tier service like Artifact Uprising for far superior printing results.
