I’ve been receiving a lot of emails from readers about ArtsCow.com recently and the offer they currently are running of 400 free prints plus a free 8×8 photo book for all new member sign-ups. While this seems like a pretty great deal, you have to pay shipping and I think their shipping prices are rather steep.
Heather, over at Freebies 4 Mom, did an in-depth cost analysis of ArtsCow.com as compared to Shutterfly and found it to be much less expensive. However, the cost of the free prints, with shipping, was still $0.10 each.
Since we’ve seen multiple completely free digital photo printing opportunities in the last year, this doesn’t seem like such an exceptional deal to me, especially since I don’t order photo prints on a regular basis. On the other hand, if you normally are ordering prints from Shutterfly or elsewhere, you might want to check into this as it could save you money. (By the way, Heather offers a review of ArtsCow.com here.)
Most photo printing companies have a new member offer and these are always worth checking into. Ashley emailed me a list of many of the current offers:
Shutterfly.com –they give 25 free prints when you sign up.
CVS.com –sign up in the PhotoCenter and use your Extra Value card.
This gave me 50 free prints. I was even able to pick them up at my
local CVS. I paid 56 cents for 53 photos!
Winkflash.com –if you use code CLUBPHOTO5 you will receive 50 free photos on your first order!There are more websites such as Yorkphoto.com and Clarkphoto.com that
will give you 20 free prints. Snapfish.com has very clear pictures but
I am uncertain how many free prints they give.
Where do you get your digital pictures printed? What websites do you find have the best deals or least expensive prices? Is $0.10/print a good price to you?
{ 12 comments }
10 cents is really a great deal! I have already placed a few orders with ArtsCow and I find their quality to be decent, not great – but decent. Definitely worth the money. They have great specials too. I ordered custom mouse pads for $5.88 each with free shipping! That’s an awesome deal! I would highly recommend giving them a shot. I am getting ready to order a photo book so will let you know how that goes….
Thanks for the link! ArtsCow is definitely only a deal if you normally order a lot of prints on a regular basis. I’m hoping to try ordering one of their photo books, and I will be posting my review of it on my blog.
I’ve tried nearly all the photo sites and recently signed up for the artscow deal. I like the Snapfish site the best – great quality, wonderful customer service and the website is really easy to use. But I’ve found their prices to be pretty high. On a regular basis, I use Winkflash, which used to charge a flat $0.99 shipping charge (it might have gone up recently). Their quality is fine but the website is a little rougher around the edges.
Artscow has been good so far. The quality seems fine and I think the shipping rates are ok with the free prints (which I’ve already used on all the other sites). One of the things I like about the deal is that they’ve spread the prints out. I have been trying to order and organize my pictures on a monthly basis and their deal forces me to pay attention and keep up.
I think when I’ve used all my 4×6 prints, though (which is what I like the best since I just put them in photo albums), I’ll switch back to Winkflash though I’ll do a quick comparison of prices between Winkflash and Snapfish again.
If you’re new to the online and digital photos, Snapfish is a great site to start on because it’s so well-done.
I did the artscow.com order…The quality of these pics were really great.
I printed these from a recent cruise we went on.
I did some at a local Walgreens and then did some at the artscow and there were NO comparison.
The quality of the paper was even very different. Much heavier paper.
It was very worth it to me.
I use Snapfish-the quality of the photos is important to me. I have used CVS (really poor quality) and WalMart (so so), but I would rather pay a little more for the shipping and use SnapFish. If you pre-pay, the 4 X 6 photos are .09 each. Shipping varies with the number of photos.
I can’t recall how many free photos I got-20? From time to time, they also offer additional free photos to members.
Also, you get 20 free photos for each referral.
So, if anyone would like to sign up, i would LOVE to refer you as I scrapbook and get a ton of pictures printed. I don’t see a way of linking, so if you send me your email at
retrodeb AT hotmail.com
I’ll send you a referal. We both get 20 free prints. Or, if you feel uncomfortable with that, you can just sign up directly
I used to be an advocate of printing from my own computer, but with the cost of ink and paper, I’ve changed by mind. I print at Costco now, which is 17 cents online or 16 cents in store. I like that I can order online and pick them up in an hour or on my next shopping trip. Their enlargements are also VERY reasonable.
10 cents is an exceptional price to pay, I think I’ll take advantage of that. THANKS!
Apparently, Walmart is trying to “hop on the bandwagon”. On the Walmart wire (email) they offer ten free prints when you purchase select cereals, poptarts, waffles. I believe these include 1 hour photos which are usually 19 cents each. At Walmart.com you can see pictures and get a list of additional items you can purchase to get the prints. The boxes have a blue triangle on the bottom saying something like “10 free prints”. Off the subject, Walmart also has free classifieds on their site.
Just a warning — Snapfish lost two rolls of my film a couple of years ago including my son’s entire 5th birthday. They eventually refunded my money but I can’t bring myself to trust them again.
I use York photo exclusively because they print pictures 4 x 5.3ish. Those dimensions give you your entire shot. A 4×6 print is not the actual dimension of a digital photo, and will result in losing a tiny amount of your picture.
ArtsCow warning! I know of a few different people who had suspicious charges show up on their credit cards shortly after using ArtsCow. While it can’t be confirmed that these instances are specifically related, it can’t exactly be denied either. I have not personally used the site so I can’t say whether or not the purchase page is secure, but make sure you check. Just wanted to let you all know!
I just recently signed up for artscow.com. I haven’t ordered any prints yet, but a friend did, and they turned out nicely. 10 cents a pictures is a good price (about as cheap as you can get them once you’ve used up everyone’s free print offers
). I did order a photo book though (it was a free one so I only paid shipping), and it turned out really nice. 8×8 photo books make great gifts! When I received my order, I was also sent some coupon codes for more 8×8 photo books. I’ve still got 6 free credits in my account so I won’t be using these. If someone would like to try them out, they’d pay $13.99 per book with these coupons (that’s the total price – no shipping). Normally the books would be about $32 regular price. The photo books have 30 pages in them. Here are the codes (Crystal, if you want to put these somewhere else too, that’s great), they expire July 31, 2008:
Z4ELX26
ZTT54SB
ZJBT5WZ
ZQPEZWR
Z2Z4NGW
ZCBCH5R
Z5WBFXB
ZDSC6PR
ZC8CL17
Each code can be used only once.
Sarah
I’m looking at the artscow website, and 200 prints cost 9.99 to ship – so that is only 5 cents per pic?!
They give 200 4×6 and 200 5×7 pics – I wish they were all 4×6.
Comments on this entry are closed.