Digital photo printing is more and more popular as digital cameras are becoming more popular and embedded in cellular phones and other devices. While printing digital photos at home is a viable option most consumers prefer to use a professional digital photo printing service when in need to print a large number of digital photos or when needing photo prints of higher quality.

There are dozens of online digital photo printing services. Although they have many differences they all work in the same way. A consumer creates an account with the service and then uploads the digital photos he or she wants to print. In the next step the consumer chooses the exact number of prints and photo paper size to use and also completes the payment information and shipment address. The digital photos are then printed and mailed to the consumer.

Although the way most digital photo printing services operate is similar they have many differences. They use different photo paper made by different companies of different quality. They also differ in their product catalog while most of them offer the same core product such as printing digital photos on 4 by 6 inches photo paper many of them have unique products such as printing digital photos on mugs calendars and creating scrapbooks.

Like any other product digital photo prints also come in different prices and qualities although the price is not always an indicator of quality. When in need to print digital photos you should always compare the many options. You can visit many of the dozens of digital photo printing services to compare their prices or you can use comparison services such as printrates that allow you to simply enter the print size and the number of prints and instantly provide you with a list of all the digital photo printing services that can provide those prints and the cost for the prints and shipping.

Shipping cost is an important issue that should not be disregarded. Some digital photo sites lure consumers to use their services by advertising very low digital photo prints prices. But when trying to buy those prints at the very last step of checkout the consumer finds out that although the digital prints are indeed cheap the total cost is high since the service levies a high shipping free. Like with any other purchase what is really important is not the price of each component but the total price you will end up paying. So always compare not just the digital prints cost but the total cost including shipping tax or any other fee.

Because of the harsh competition in the online digital photo printing market many of the services allow free trial of their service. This is a great way to check if the service provides good quality and fast processing. The down side of these trials is that most services only provides free printing while the shipping is not free. In other words the total cost of trying the service is not zero dollars.