Editor's Rating | |
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Overall | |
Features | |
Price | |
Support |
Positives
- Foolproof photo book editor
- Numerous customization options
- Hundreds of photo book themes
- Good size-to-cover pairings
- Fast printing and shipping
Negatives
- No mobile app for Android
- No offline mode
Founded in 2006, Mixbook has established its position as one of the best photo book editing services on the market. One of the reasons for the company’s impressive reputation is its nearly flawless editor that helps you quickly craft the photo book of your dreams.
This editor includes over 700 designs, layout options, and other customizations to make your photo book unique. Mixbook also offers a reasonable range of size-to-cover pairings, with eight sizes and four cover options.
For affordable pricing and shipping, you receive a quality product within one to three weeks. Mixbook is present in the U.S. and the UK, and ships internationally. It’s even possible to reduce the price by waiting for one of the occasional discounts Mixbook runs on its website or refer Mixbook to a friend and get 40% off for each successful referral.
Features
The drag-and-drop online editor offers a user-friendly and smooth experience, making photo book creation a delight. Your photos can be uploaded from a computer, social media account, file storage platform, or any mobile device.
These pictures can be used multiple times and added to your book either manually or using the quick autofill option. It’s possible to move photos in and out of their frames, rotate, zoom in or out, or flip them horizontally. They can also be added to the background, swapped, or turned into a two-page spread.
Still, this is just the beginning. During our testing, we had fun applying various effects, adjustments, transparency, and text. However, be careful when brightening darker images. Despite choosing the maximum brightness setting, they may still come out a bit dark when printed.
You aren’t limited by the selected theme’s layouts either. Mixbook allows you to change these by adding photo locations and mixing them with other themes. There are also blank layouts for those who prefer creating their design from scratch, which have a maximum of 20 photos per page.
Moreover, you can change the backgrounds without deleting the theme settings and select from almost 200 stickers to add some fun details. Plus, the software automatically adds flyleaves.
Additional Features
We found it convenient that the editing process is foolproof. Each modification is autosaved, text boxes are spell-checked, and you can only work within the crop zones. The software warns when an element goes outside these zones, or a photo has a low resolution.
You can preview your book, turn on the help feature, and even invite up to 30 collaborators, who can upload their personal photos into the same book.
Mixbook allows you to edit your photo books on the go by using the iOS mobile app or the mobile-optimized website. The software adapts perfectly to the smaller screen, letting you use your touch screen to full effect, including pinch-to-zoom capabilities. Keep in mind that you always have to be online to use Mixbook, even with the mobile app.
Designs
Mixbook offers over 700 designs to choose from, handily organized by category. The biggest surprise comes when you realize that the entire theme collection can be used in all book formats. So, you can select the shape without worrying about which design you want to use. You can also filter themes by date, popularity, and Mixbook’s suggestions.
Another neat aspect of Mixbook is the ability to change themes while in the middle of the editing process. In fact, it’s even possible to combine different designs within the same book for a more exciting final result. There’s no concerns about losing work, as Mixbook rearranges all pictures to fit the new theme automatically.
Types
Mixbook offers a wide range of photo book types. There are three formats to choose from: square, landscape, and portrait, available in eight sizes, ranging from 6×6” to 14×11”. You can order your books with customized soft, hard, or lay flat covers.
The finish for softcovers is glossy, while in lay flat covers, it’s matte. Hardcovers can either have a glossy or matte finish. Keep in mind that there are covers that can’t be paired with some sizes. One such restriction applies to softcover books, which are only available in 6×6”, 8×6”, 8.5×8.5”, and 10×10”.
There are also various types of paper to choose from. The classic semi-gloss is always a safe option, but depending on the cover type, there’s a choice of signature matte or lustre, and premium matte or lustre.
Books need to be between 10 and 399 pages (99 in the case of layflat books). You don’t need to fill the minimum required, but the company will still print your book with these pages, leaving the remaining ones blank.
Printing
We were impressed by the top-notch quality of the book, which looks in real life exactly as it did in the editor.
The covers of the books are pleasantly shiny, and all pages have a refined touch. There are no defects in the binding or the printing quality, and you won’t find issues like smudges, printing lines, or visible glue marks. In fact, the colors of each photo are so vibrant that opening your book and flipping through its pages is a true pleasure.
Pricing
Compared to other photo book builders, Mixbook’s prices are average. The pricing structure is a bit complicated due to all the different options available. Prices range from $14.99 (6×6 semi-gloss softcover book) to $179.99 (12×12 matte lay flat cover with premium lustre paper), based on a 20-page photo book. Each extra page can range from $0.99 to $4.99, depending on the book’s size and paper finish.
Still, if you still think these prices are too high, there are plenty of occasional promotions on the company’s website of up to 50% off. Plus, you get 40% off orders of $50 or more and free shipping for each friend who orders a photo book using your referral link.
Moreover, shipping costs are also reasonable: depending on the type of shipping chosen, you can get your books printed and delivered within 6 to 10 business days starting from $4.99 and going up to $29.99. Depending on the shipping method chosen (budget, standard, priority, or express), your book is printed and delivered within one to three weeks regardless of the country you live in. Our book took exactly ten days to arrive from the day of ordering, which was exactly the length of time predicted by Mixbook.
Finally, it’s worth mentioning that the company offers a 100% happiness guarantee. So, if you aren’t happy with your photo book, Mixbook either refunds your order or offers credit for future purchases.
Customer Support
Support from Mixbook’s customer service is via email or live chat every day during the company’s extended business hours. We were delighted by the live chat support, as our questions were always responded to promptly.
If your query isn’t that pressing or you’re just curious about Mixbook in general, you can turn to the company’s FAQ page, blog, or YouTube channel.
Bottom Line
All things considered, we found Mixbook to be a prime example of how to offer a quality service. The only disappointing elements are the lack of a mobile app for Android and the inability to use the software offline – but the countless positive aspects of Mixbook easily eclipse these flaws.
With a near-perfect and highly reliable editor, hundreds of designs, and a wide range of size-to-cover pairings, creating a photo book in Mixbook is a joy. The extra sparkle is the final high-quality product.
What’s more, Mixbook’s affordable pricing, fast shipping, and prompt customer service make it the ideal choice for preserving your most cherished memories. The cherry on top is the referral program and occasional discounts, and the company’s 100% happiness guarantee.
Visit MixbookUp To 50% Off First Order + Free ShippingBest Photo Books of 2024
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Jochen says
To celebrate my son’s six-months birthday, I was looking for a way to create a nice looking photo-album filled with pictures from my iPhone.
Since I ordered from Mixbook before, and I was happy with the result, I decided to give it another try.
After browsing through the many predefined themes Mixbook offers, I ended up choosing a theme that looked really nice.
Uploading pictures from my phone to the website was very easy. I was able to drag and drop the pictures into the virtual album and style it with all the things I wanted: text, clipart, decorations, …
I selected “Express Shipping” to make sure I received the album in time. However, since this was shipping in the 2nd week of December, my order was queued for 9 days. I reached out to Mixbook and they refunded my shipping costs to make up for the shipping delay.
To summarize: a good experience, I received a quality printed photo album.
Ken Cooper says
MixBook OWNS Every picture you up load!!!!!! Most people don’t read their agreement.
By posting Member Content to any part of the Service, you hereby grant, and you represent and warrant that you have the right to grant, to Mixbook an irrevocable, perpetual, non-exclusive, transferable, fully paid, worldwide license (with the right to sublicense) to use, copy, perform, display, modify, publish, reformat, translate, excerpt (in whole or in part) and distribute such Member Content and to prepare derivative works of, or incorporate into other works, such information and content, and to grant and authorize sublicenses to do the foregoing.
Katrina L says
Thank you so much for bringing this information to light. Definitely won’t use them because of this reason.
Anna says
Thank you for the information. That is huge information. With that I cannot use their service.
Andre says
Thanks Ken for pointing this out. So many businesses today seem intent to profit off of us no matter the ethics involved or our consent. That being said I do have to wonder whether MixBook is well and truly up to no good, or if this is the legalese required for them to merely perform their basic stated purpose: to take your uploaded photos (as files), move them from one server to another (copying in the process) and to print them out in the layout you choose (a published derivative work as the file is not a file any longer but hard copy and may have been cropped along the way to boot meaning it’s not the _exact_ same image you uploaded). It’s hard to know for sure and a healthy dose of skepticism is always warranted nowadays, but it could be these folks are not trying to cheat their customers and that notice covers their use of your files to produce the book for you.
Tiffany says
While many services have this kind of language, some do not. I appreciate knowing where each service stands on the privacy issue and thank you for sharing.
Daniel (Best Reviews Team) says
Hello, and thank you for your comments!
While we can’t confirm whether what Ken wrote in 2018 was accurate, we can say that, at the time of writing this reply, the statement about Mixbook owning your pictures is false.
On the company’s Terms of Service page, there’s a dedicated section to ‘Member Content’. In there, you can read:
“You are solely responsible for your Member Content and continue to own and retain all rights in your Member Content. You hereby grant, and you represent and warrant that you have the right to grant, Mixbook and its designees a fully paid, worldwide, non-exclusive right and license to use, reproduce, and otherwise engage in any other actions with respect to your Member Content for the purpose of providing the Services to you.”
There are two main reasons for this. The first one is that you provide Mixbook permission to prepare, manipulate (if necessary), print, pack, and ship your photo book, which contains pictures that are yours. Secondly, this is the way for Mixbook to protect itself from copyright infringements, as you can only create photo books with your own photos or content that you got permission to use for personal or professional use.
In short, you’re only providing rights for Mixbook to provide their service to you, nothing else. For example, the company can’t take your uploaded pictures and use them on their social media page. Legally, the company is obliged to have this permission from you to be able to provide their services to you. As already mentioned, we don’t know if Ken’s comment showcases what Mixbook had written in their Terms of Service back then. That being said, we believe that Mixbook never thought about using its users’ content for its own gain. We also recommend always reading the company’s Terms of Service and Privacy Policy pages for yourself before using a service, regardless of whether it’s Mixbook or any other platform.
Have a nice day!
Dale says
If they are going to claim ownership of my pictures I am not going to use their service.
Daniel (Best Reviews Team) says
Hello Dale, and thank you for your comment.
Please read our reply to Ken’s comment, where we clarify the question of member content ownership. Have a nice day!
James says
Sounds like this is the best as far as production of photobooks, of the reviews I have read. However, the transfer of ownership to a company that is tasked with just printing pics at a fee for that service is unethical in my personal view. As I am not a professional photographer this really is unlikely to impact me, but, on principle alone, I would avoid using them.
Daniel (Best Reviews Team) says
Hello James, and thank you for your comment.
We’re happy to know that you like Mixbook. Regarding the ownership of member content, please read our reply to Ken’s comment where we clarify the misunderstanding. Have a nice day!
Doris T Northstrom says
Can you advise if I can get a book portrait size 11 x 8 HxW and have 380 lay flat pages.
Thank you!
Daniel (Best Reviews Team) says
Hello Doris, and thank you for your comment.
Unfortunately, Mixbook only allows you to build layflat photo books with up to 99 pages. All others can have a maximum size of 399 pages, but keep in mind that the exact size of Mixbook’s portrait books is 8.5×11 (WxH). Have a nice day!