Vistaprint review

Our Verdict

Vistaprint's software is limited, and its printed products are, at all-time deadening. For far better software and print quality, go with Printique or Mixbook, whose books and calendars are priced similarly to Vistaprint's. Or if budget is more important than creativity or quality, cheque out Costco's bargain prices.

For

• Calendar has adept quality photos
• Book interface has a nice variety of masks and cutout shapes

Against

• Physical products are boilerplate or beneath boilerplate
• Limited software

Tom's Guide Verdict

Vistaprint's software is limited, and its printed products are, at best ho-hum. For far better software and print quality, go with Printique or Mixbook, whose books and calendars are priced similarly to Vistaprint's. Or if upkeep is more important than creativity or quality, cheque out Costco's bargain prices.

Pros

• +

  Calendar has good quality photos

• +

  Volume interface has a nice variety of masks and cutout shapes

Cons

• -

  Physical products are boilerplate or below boilerplate

• -

  Limited software

Vistaprint'southward focus is on providing customized newspaper products for minor businesses, and it's a popular site for business concern cards. However, its photograph books, cards and calendars tend to be less than heady, and the software is designed more for quick work than customization or creativity. In our tests, while the calendar has good quality photos, the pictures of our menu and calendar are only boilerplate or beneath average.

What's more than, the production quality of all three projects was disappointing. The kicker is that the prices of Vistaprint'southward book and agenda are like to Printique'south and Mixbook's, which have far more flexible, creative software and produce much higher quality printed products. Vistaprint's cards are less expensive than Printique'south and Mixbook'due south, but if upkeep rather than customizability and quality are your determining factor, then check out Costco'south bargain prices instead.

• Best photo books
• Best photograph calendars
• All-time photograph cards

Vistaprint review: Prices

Vistaprint photo books
A 24-folio 11x8.5-inch hardback book on VistaPrint costs $xxx. You have to pay $five actress if you desire photos on the cover; otherwise, your cover volition be black or grey. The only books that Vistaprint offers are hardbacks that range from $13.00 for a v.5x4-inch book up to $50.00 for a 12x12-inch volume. The extra cost for a photo encompass runs from $3.fifty to $five.00, and high-gloss pages price $2.00 to $5.00 extra, both depending on the size of the book.

Vistaprint calendars
A 8.5x11-inch wall calendar with a black and whitedate grid is $24.99, which increases to $26.98 if y'all want your date grid to accept color. Vistaprint offers discounts per agenda when you buy more than than one. For instance, five viii.5x11-inch calendars with a color grid toll $25.threescore each, and x price $23.69 each. Vistaprint has two other size calendars. One 6.5x8.v-inch mini costs 12.99 with a b&w grid or $fourteen.98 with a color grid. One 11.5x14.v-inch agenda costs $44.99 with a b&w filigree or $46.98 with a color grid.

Vistaprint photograph cards
Vistaprint'due south cards are priced on a sliding scale by volume, and vary depending on your choice of carte stock. The price for ten 4.6x7.2-inch cards on standard matte is $1.45 each. 50 cards cost $1.35 each, and 100 cards cost $one.28 each. At the everyman book (10 cards), upgrading to Premium Matte, Linen or Premium Glossy costs 16 cents more than. All cards include blank envelopes; press your return accost on them costs 46 cents each.

Vistaprint review: Software

Vistaprint's software'south options and functionality are limited.

Vistaprint doesn't offering volume templates. Instead, yous have the choice of starting with a blank book or having its software automatically lay out your pictures into a volume, while its algorithms eliminate duplicates and blurry images. The book creation software is nicely flexible, but it has express options. Incidentally, the book interface wouldn't open up for me on Windows under Chrome or on Apple under Safari; it worked fine with Firefox.

The library of optional book page layouts is varied, though not large, but it's easy to add together, delete, move, resize, and rotate photos, text and clip art. More than problematic is the fact that when I tried to sort the photos (new to old or sometime to new), it didn't work. That would go far difficult to find a specific image, if you've uploaded numerous photos for the book.

(Image credit: VistaPrint)

The lack of a search engine for book folio backgrounds, frames, and clip fine art isn't much of a problem, because the libraries are far smaller than that of Printique, Mixbook or Shutterfly. On the other hand, they are generally well-organized into logical categories. The choice of backgrounds available for the book cover are limited to 29 solid colors; all the same, interior folio backgrounds include a overnice though not overly generous selection of attractive graphics, textures and photorealistic images. 1 of the best features of the volume software is the variety of cutout shapes and masks, which include fun border effects and slope masks (so a photograph tin exist made to fade into the folio). On the other manus, prune art is very express to unsophisticated, often juvenile graphics, and decorative frames are available in only a few colors which can't exist edited. Text input is simple, at set font increments rather than a size slider, merely more importantly the book interface offers only a handful of font colors, and the spacing between lines is sometimes unattractive. The photograph editing consists just of an auto-enhance and two filters (b&westward or sepia). The software has no drib shadows or decorative text.

(Image credit: VistaPrint)

The calendar software is far more than limited than that for the book. Information technology has no photo edit tools, background options, clip art, masks or cutout shapes. Layouts are limited and uneditable, so I couldn't move, resize or rotate photo placeholders. Selecting a design option changes all the months to match the new design template. What that meant was that I couldn't select a fill-page photograph for i month and a background around the photo for some other month. Nor could I choose amid the background colors/designs available in the selected template month by calendar month.

(Image credit: VistaPrint)

When I dragged and dropped a photo into a agenda'due south placeholder, it initially scaled the picture to fit the space, which frequently resulted in a fun-house-like distortion. I had to click on the picture, select ingather and then edit the ingather area in order to become rid of the distortion. Text that is part of a layout design is permanently affixed to the page. While you can add together captions to the photo pages in the calendar, you'll have no choice of location, font or style. When creating an event on a date, y'all tin can't add a photo, though they practice have cartoonish icons such as a birthday cake or a center. If you want the event icon to display in color rather than greyscale, you have to pay $ane.99 extra.

(Prototype credit: VistaPrint)

While express, Vistaprint's card software is more flexible and versatile than Shutterfly's or Costco'southward restrictive card interfaces. In fact, ii central features in Vistaprint's carte interface are better than in its own book or agenda software. Colors may exist chosen not only from a small-scale number of swatches, but also from a total 24-flake color cycle and tin can be designated by CMYK values.

(Prototype credit: VistaPrint)

Though the photo editing tools certainly aren't as robust as Mixbook'south or Printique's, Vistaprint's bill of fare interface has sliders for adjusting a photo'southward color, saturation and lightness. As in the Vistaprint book software, photos and text on the card can be moved, resized, cropped, added and deleted, but unlike with the book, the placeholders can't be rotated. On the downside, the menu software has no alternative backgrounds beyond solid colors, and no clip art other than a scattering of shapes (arrow, rectangle, oval and starburst). But you lot can add together a table and a QR lawmaking.

Vistaprint review: Print Quality

(Image credit: Tom's Guide)

Vistaprint photograph book
The physical Vistaprint book was higher quality than Costco'southward, but that'due south the all-time we can say about information technology. Shutterfly, Mixbook and Printique'due south books' were significantly superior. Vistaprint's book  embrace was plasticky, with the feel of numerous bubbles captured under the surface, probably due to uneven gluing. As soon as nosotros opened the book, nosotros noticed that the binding was already beginning to cleft with stitches significantly exposed on the forepart and back inside, and to some extent, on internal pages.

Image 1 of 2

(Prototype credit: Tom'due south Guide)

Paradigm 2 of 2

(Image credit: Tom's Guide)

The photos were generally bright and lively. However, the interior photos tended to be yellow, and the midtones weren't as rich equally Printique's or Mixbook'southward. Too, a number of the photos on both the cover and the interior pages were overexposed. Still, photos were precipitous and clear, and the type was clean and well-formed.

(Image credit: Tom'due south Guide)

Vistaprint calendar
The rich, lush colors of Vistaprint's calendar were on a par with the Printique calendar, and were well counterbalanced across both light and dark skintones, which were pleasantly warm. The exposure was also similar to Printique's, with good detail throughout the dynamic range, but didn't take the same density of darks as Printique's photos.

(Image credit: Tom'south Guide)

However, images were blurred, which is noticeable to the naked eye. Type was mostly well-formed, merely some messages had messy margins on close inspection. The average quality newspaper felt inexpensive, merely it had a satisfying weight.

(Paradigm credit: Tom's Guide)

Vistaprint photo cards
The photos on the Vistaprint card had an unappealing yellow-orange tinge. While the midtones and highlights were detailed, and the shadows are blocky.

(Image credit: Tom's Guide)

Focus was abrupt. Type was well formed, though on very shut inspection, it had some ink dropouts. The menu stock, which isn't as thick as Mixbook'south or Printique'southward cards, had a smooth finish similar to Costco'southward.

Vistaprint review: Verdict

Vistaprint's book and agenda are priced similarly to Mixbook'southward and Printique's, but Vistaprint'southward final products don't have anywhere near their quality. Though Vistaprint'due south cards are less expensive than those 2 frontrunners, both the software and the printed cards are disappointing. We recommend bypassing Vistaprint and using Printique or Mixbook for flexible, artistic software and higher quality. If budget is the determining factor rather than customization or quality, go with Costco.

Sally Wiener Grotta is the president and lead analyst of DigitalBenchmarks test lab (www.DigitalBenchmarks.com). The scripts she created for various tech publications for testing and evaluating digital cameras, paradigm quality, software and related technologies have become manufacture standards. Amidst her numerous books is the offset major volume on image processing "Digital Imaging for Visual Artists" (McGraw-Hill), co-authored with Daniel Grotta. Her hundreds of reviews, stories and columns have appeared in scores of magazines, journals and online publications.

Source: https://www.tomsguide.com/reviews/vistaprint

Posted by: bobbaccom1950.blogspot.com

Share this post