anyone familiar with mixbook?

[clearskies]

A friend has inquired about them.....and I'd never heard of them before. Anyone know anything???

[Libby Pritchett]

Yep! I ordered my wedding album through them cause I had a Groupon. Here's what I said about them at the time (last fall):

Disclaimer: you'll have to take my review with a grain of salt being as this is the first photo book I've ever had printed from anywhere.

A while back, I found a pretty good deal on Groupon for Mixbook. I knew I needed to get my wedding photos into an album, so I decided to try them out.

I received my book today (8 1/2 x 11 landscape, 20 pages, hard back, upgraded to leather bound). Again, not having anything to compare it to, it's hard to give a full critique, but I'll say that I'm pleased overall and found it to be very much worth the cost of the Groupon. Everything is printed true to color, and the overall quality is very nice.

There are a few MINOR things that I don't care for. One of them is my own fault because I misjudged the bleed area on one of the pages, so there is a teensy white border along one edge. I'm probably the only one who would notice it as it's only on that one page.

Also, for the leather bound upgrade (which I only did because I had money left on the Groupon, and I didn't have anything else I wanted to order), I don't like that it's a dust jacket for the cover (the hard bound has the image adhered to a hard backing... I think I'd prefer that). Again... very very minor detail.

Finally, the shipping was a little high (IMO) at $11 for ground shipping (though it was fast... I only ordered a week ago). I'm spoiled though and try to look for free shipping deals whenever possible. So, I hated to throw $11 away for shipping. Those are really the only negatives I can come up with though.

Anyway, I'd never heard a review on Mixbook, and I see them on Groupon often. So, I thought I'd mention it in case anyone is ever looking at trying them out

[clearskies]

Thanks Libby!

[whites19]

Like Libby, I bought a Groupon for Mixbook last May (2011). Well, 2 actually. And I planned on using them to print my P365 pages from 2011, because I was still up-to-date at the point when I bought the Groupon. :D LOL

Well, fast forward to 2012 -- I got behind about mid-year, and hadn't finished all of my pages. So I didn't print right away in January. And then a couple of months passed... and... finally, in April, I realized the darn Groupons were going to expire if I wasn't careful, so I finally got back to work. I finished the pages up the day before the Groupon expired (LOL!) and sent them away.

I got the books back within a week (or just over?), and was pleasantly surprised b/c I ordered the lowest-level shipping and didn't expect them for 3wks. But they came faster than the site projected/promised. LESSON: don't pay for faster shipping unless you are printing at a busy time of the year (read: holidays, prior to things like Mother's/Father's Day, etc.) -- because they'll send it as soon as they've printed it. And normally, that's fast.

Here's a couple of photos of my book...

The front cover:
http://www.digiscrapwishingwell.com/TDC/photo_book-cover.jpg

One spread from the inside (this is July):
http://www.digiscrapwishingwell.com/TDC/photo_inside-pages.jpg

The quality is decent. The binding/construction is great. I'm pleased, w/ the only exception being that I printed 2 books on 2 orders (because I had 2 Groupons to redeem), and one showed up w/ that kraft-looking paper printed on the spine (yay!) and the other showed up with a plain white spine (not yay). Odd. No idea why they printed them differently. I much prefer the kraft one, although their software didn't let me customize that area unless I wanted text there. So... I *am* wondering what genius at Mixbook figured out to use the kraft from my cover on the spine -- and which non-genius didn't think of it when printing the other book! LOL :D

In terms of print/photo quality, it's average. Not bad at all. If you're not super duper picky, it's fine. A tiny bit grainy in some areas, and the colors are a tiny bit off. But it's good. I liken it to Shutterfly. It's not nearly as AMAZING as my 12x12 prints that I get from Persnickety, at all... but it'll do! The price was right ($15 Groupon plus a few extra bucks ($10 I think?) = 12x12 photo book of our entire 2011).

Hope that helps!

[clearskies]

That was great. Thanks Laura.

[Penny Springmann]

Thanks for the info! They came up in my Living Social this weekend! :)