Comparing Photo-Sharing Web Sites: Snapfish, Shareapic and More

There are different reasons to use different photo-sharing sites, but some sites you might not want to even bother with. Below is a list of all the photo-sharing/editing sites I've used with pros and cons for each. The sites below are sorted in no particular order. At the end I'll share my recommendation for which sites you should use.

Snapfish
Pros: Snapfish has a lot to offer those who want to order prints and gifts using their pictures.

-Gifts: There are a lot of choices. Turn your pictures into a calendar, a collage, a mug, skins for your electronics, or even a organized personalized memory book. I used the site to create my Christmas cards last year and I plan to do this every year because they came out so nice.

-Walgreens: Snapfish works with Walgreens so you can send your prints and some of the gifts to Walgreens for pickup. I don't do this often but I have done it once when I was in a hurry and it worked out great.

-Prices: Snapfish is the cheapest out there for delivery by mail with 9 cents a photo being the current price. As a customer, you will also get A LOT of email deals. I recently just got 50 photos for 1 cent each!

Cons: It's not perfect though, as it does have some downsides.

-Speed: The site can be slow, especially when creating gifts, and you will find creating a memory book takes days because you won't be able to finish it all in one sitting.

-Small Pics: Snapfish is one of those sites that let's you upload large pictures, but does not let you see these on the screen nor allow you to download them. They do this because they want you to purchase the pics. So if you use this site exclusively, make sure you keep a backup of your pics on CD!

Conclusion: Sign up for the gifts and cheap prints!

Shareapic
Pros: There's really only one reason anyone would sign up here.

-Paid for Pics: You make a few pennies off the hits for your pics, this is why I signed up.

Cons: I quickly found Shareapic wasn't worth it.

-Approval: You need approval for every album you add, which takes time, and is less time you could be showing people your pics!

-Paid for Pics?: You really make hardly anything and it seems like the only way to make serious money would be to upload thousands of pics and get millions of hits.

Conclusion: Don't bother!

Photoshop Express
Pros: I found Photoshop Express because I'm already a Photoshop addict. It sounded cool to be able to edit pics online.

-Cool Effects: Photoshop Express offers some neat and easy to use special effects to enhance your photos including Pop colors, Black and White, and more of the basic photo editing options. Some of these I have never seen on other sites.

-Very Easy to Use: Even if you found some of those special effects on other sites, I doubt you'd find one that is as easy to use as Photoshop Express. Uploading takes seconds, and so does editing. I love it!

-Full Size: You can download full size pics so you can edit it, and download the original size picture to your computer. Not many sites allow you to download the entire pic, so this is a definite plus.

-Sharing: Sending pics to friends is awesome since it appears as a fancy slideshow that they can click through, and it loads a lot faster than most other photo sharing sites.

Cons: There is only one downside to Photoshop Express
-No Purchasing: You can't purchase anything from this site. It instead seems to be purely a photo editing/sharing site.

Conclusion: Sign up for the cool features, but find another site to purchase your prints.

Triond.com
Pros: I found Triond through a friend who said I could make some money simply by posting pics. I did find a little cash in it.
-Paid for Pics: Your pics are posted on another site and you get paid based on how many hits you get. It does have potential to make some money for you if you are committed to posting pics here.

Cons: As a photo sharing site, this site lacks a lot.

-Uploads: You can only upload one at a time and you have to put in A LOT of info for each pic including a description, keywords, categories, and more. It took me forever to add pics which is the #1 reason I gave up on this site.

-Approval: Everything you submit goes through an approval process before it will be displayed, which means you have to wait.
-Small Pics: You can't see nor download the full sized pics once they are visible on the site.

-No Organization: Finally, there is no way to organize pictures into albums. I even tried to force keywords on my last batch so that they would be searchable by keyword, but the site changed the keywords after it was uploaded. What's the point of sharing photos if you can't group them?

Conclusion: If you have the patience, it might make you a few cents. Otherwise, go elsewhere.

CVS
Pros: There is one obvious Pro to using CVS's photo system online - but not a whole lot of others.

-CVS: Of course you can send your pics directly to a CVS.

-Gifts: You can turn your photos into a variety of gifts including a Teddy bear with a photo t-shirt, a puzzle and more. I did find some unique gift ideas here, but none that I rushed to purchase yet.

-Sharing: You can send Albums to your friends through this site with the intention being that they can come to the site to order prints from your albums.

-Editing: The site does allow you to edit your photos with very basic features such as cropping or removing red eye.

Cons: I find this site to have it's share of issues.

-Speed: The site does seem slow and awkward at times. Unlike other photo sharing sites, it seems like you don't always know exactly where to go to edit or view your pics. I've received albums from friends before and they seemed to load slowly and take time to flip through.

-Small Pics: You can't view or download the full sized pics since they are trying to get you to order prints. You can't even see them that large at all on the site making them seem blurry and tiny when you send them to friends.

-Price: 19 cent prints are not worth it when you can get prints from Snapfish for 9! Sure, Snapfish adds on shipping, but they also offer a lot of deals and discounts to make it worth it.-Outdated: The site does seem a bit outdated when you compare it to sites like Snapfish that have a lot more features and run a lot more smoothly. CVS's focus seems to be on getting you to order prints instead of making it a well rounded site for sharing.

Conclusion: You might want to sign up just to order a unique gift or two, but I would order prints and share photos elsewhere.

Webshots
Pros: This is a photo sharing site if I've ever seen one and seems to truly cater towards amateur and professional photographers.

-Full Size: The number one reason I joined this site is because it allows you to download full sized pictures that you have uploaded. This way it makes it easy to send photos to your friends and family so that they can download the full sized pictures that they want.

-Easy Upload: Pictures can be uploaded all at once and then you can walk away while you wait. You can add captions to ALL photos at once directly after uploading without having to edit each one.

-Gifts: Webshots does offer a lot of different gifts, some of which other sites don't offer. It's one of the spots I always check when planning for new photo gifts, but it's not one I usually end up purchasing at just because I find other gifts elsewhere. I have a lot of gifts bookmarked though for future purchases.

-Lots to See: Webshots has lots of photo albums to browse through that are public and I enjoy looking at all the different pictures even though I keep most of my albums private.

Cons: On the downside, Webshots is missing some important features.

-Editing: You can crop and rotate photos but there doesn't seem to be any other fancy editing options. This site seems to be purely for sharing, not for enhancing, your photos.

-Prices: You can order prints through webshots, but the pricing changes based on number of prints. This means if you only want a couple of pictures, you have to pay MORE. Since I usually don't order in bulk, this is too much for me.

-View: I don't like the way the pics appear on the page. There is so much going on at the top of the screen that you have to scroll down to see the whole picture. If you are flipping through an album, that can get frustrating quickly.

Conclusion: I use this site for the main purpose of sending full sized pics to my friends and family. We don't necessarily view the albums often as they will just send me their album, I'll download the pics I want, and I'll never return.

Final Conclusion: Which site should you use?
Overall I've offered some good and some bad about all the sites. I've settled on using 2 of these sites on a regular basis but the rest I've stopped visiting. Based on what I said about the sites above, here are the sites I recommend you to register for.

-Snapfish: For ordering prints and gifts
-Photoshop Express: For applying cool effects to your photos and for sharing Full Sized Photos.

Optionally I will continue to use Webshots to share Full Sized Photos with some people I know just because they are already familiar with it. If any of the other sites appealed to you, then go ahead and give them a try, however I bet you will end up coming back to one of these two sites. Enjoy!!