How Shoebox compares
We sell a $14 monthly print subscription, so read this knowing where our interest lies. Every figure in the other column comes from a page on that company's own site, linked and dated, and somebody here read it. Each page says plainly where they beat us.
Doing it yourself
The cheapest option, and the one most people mean to take. Upload to a lab or walk into a drugstore, pay a few cents a print, wait or collect. Nothing about it is hard.
The catch is that no day makes you do it. If you are the sort who does, you do not need a subscription and we would rather you kept your $14.
The ones we get asked about
| What | Shoebox | Google Photos premium printsThe same shape as ours — ten prints a month, posted — chosen for you, from the library we read. | ChatbooksA book that fills itself, 30 to 60 pages at a time, where we send ten prints. | MootshThe same shape as ours — ten prints a month, posted — and the only one. | Shutterfly and the big labsCheaper per print than us, in every size. | FreePrints and apps like itPrints for the cost of postage, if you do the ordering yourself. |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Price | $14 a month, $1.40 a print, post included. | No price on their help centre. $6.99 in their 2020 post.1,2 | $10 a Mini, $15 to $34 a Monthbook.5 | $18 a month, $1.80 a print, post included.1 | From about 29¢ a 4×6, before postage.1 | Free: up to 85 4×6 a month, 1,000 a year.1 |
| Ten prints, all in | $14, mailed. | $6.99 at their 2020 price, postage in it.1,2 | Not the subscription: $12 for ten 5×5 or 5×7, posted free.5 | $18 — ten prints is the membership.1 | About $2.90 of prints, plus postage — our sum.1 | About $1.99: ten free prints, cheapest post.1 |
| A year of it | $168: twelve months at $14, shipping in it. | About $83.88 at their 2020 price — our sum.2 | $60 to $180 by book count, less 10% up front or two books free.5,3 | About $216 a year, our sum on their price.1 | About $34.80 of prints, plus twelve postages — our sum.1 | About $23.88: twelve $1.99 postages, prints free.1 |
| Shipping | Included, within the United States and Canada. | In the price. United States only, 10 to 14 working days.1 | Free standard post, five countries, no upgrade.1,2,4,5 | Free. Countries not stated.1 | Paid per order, unless an offer covers it. | From $1.99, at most $9.99 an order.1 |
| Commitment | $14 a month until you cancel. | Cancel any time; a month in review still bills.1 | 4, 6 or 12 books a year. Cancel before the cycle bills.3,5 | $18 a month, cancel anytime.1 | None. Pay per order, or never order again. | None. Use one this month and ignore it for a year. |
| Where photos go | Sorted on our own server. Never an AI company. | Already Google’s. Their software picks the ten.1,2 | Uploaded to their service. | Uploaded to their service. | Uploaded to their service. | Uploaded to their service. |
Checked 29 July 2026. Every column but ours comes from that company's own pages. Google Photos premium prints: 1. Google Photos help: about premium print series (support.google.com). 2. Google’s announcement of the print series (October 2020) (blog.google). 3. Google Photos help: print product and shipping information (support.google.com). Chatbooks: 1. Chatbooks help centre: how Monthbooks work (help.chatbooks.com). 2. Chatbooks help centre: what Monthly Minis are (help.chatbooks.com). 3. Chatbooks help centre: how subscription billing works (help.chatbooks.com). 4. Chatbooks help centre: how Minis and Monthbooks ship (help.chatbooks.com). 5. Chatbooks pricing, United States (chatbooks.com). Mootsh: 1. Mootsh membership page (mootsh.com). Shutterfly and the big labs: 1. Shutterfly’s photo print guide (shutterfly.com). FreePrints and apps like it: 1. FreePrints pricing (freeprintsnow.com).
Names people still search for
These come up and are not in the table, because none of them sells a monthly print subscription today.
- Groovebook. Closed. Shutterfly, which owned it, took the last orders on 8 April 2022 and stopped billing after that date, and groovebook.com answers nothing today. Their closing page described a monthly book that closed at a hundred selected photos, and it sent members to two Shutterfly offers instead — a free 6×6 hardcover book each month and free 4×4 and 4×6 prints, both with the postage to pay. That is what replaced it, as their own page put it in 2022, and none of it renews. web.archive.org groovebook.com
- Printic. Gone. printic.com now redirects to a page offering the domain for sale. We found no closing notice of their own, so we are not going to put a date on it. printic.com
- Parabo Press. Trading, and not a subscription. Their shop lists print sets from $10, wall art, books and calendars, each bought one at a time. Nothing on it renews, so there is nothing to compare a monthly price with. parabo.press
What Shoebox does that most of them do not
- It sets a date. An email on the 1st, a lock on the 10th. Prints happen because the month happens, not because you remembered. The Google Photos premium print series does too; the others wait for you to order.
- It shortlists, and you choose. Scrolling thousands of photos is the reason nobody prints any of them. We hand you about a hundred and ask for ten. Google picks the ten for you and gives you five days to argue.
- It keeps your photos out of AI companies. The curator runs on our own server. Nothing you send us is passed to an AI provider or used to train anything.
- It sells one thing. One price, ten prints, shipping included. No cart, no upsell at the end, no sale to wait for.
Where we are the wrong choice
- Cost per print matters most. We are not close to the cheapest. We never will be at ten prints a month.
- You want this shape for less. Ten prints a month, posted, is what the Google Photos premium print series sells for about $6.99 at their last published price, from 2020 — under half of ours, and their column says what you give up for it.
- You want everything kept. A book or a bulk order records the month. Ten prints edit it.
- You want sizes, frames, canvases or gifts. We print 4×6 and nothing else.
- You back up only to iCloud. Shoebox reads photos through Google Photos, so there would be nothing for us to see.
- You already print regularly and enjoy it. Then the habit is not your problem, and the habit is what we sell.
Start this month
If the reason your photos are not printed is that nobody ever gets around to it, that is the part we fix.
$14 a month, shipping included, within the United States and Canada. Cancel any month.
Prices here were read from the companies' own sites on 29 July 2026. They change their prices and their products, so check theirs before you decide. Every name belongs to its owner and we are not connected to any of them. If we have got something wrong, write to hello@shoeboxprints.com and we will fix it.