Chatbooks Alternatives: Photo Books and What Else to Consider in 2026
Short answer
Trove is a free app that emails one curated edition of the week to your whole family every Sunday — laid out, with a short written summary, unlimited recipients, no app and no account on their end — mails a printed edition of the month for $4.99 a month in the US, and prints photo books from $29.99 when you want the year on a shelf. That is the answer for half the people searching this, the ones who arrived at photo books because the pictures were trapped on a phone and nobody saw them. If you genuinely want a different printer, the field is better than it looks: Mixbook's Story Mode and Artifact Uprising's Autofill both lay a book out for you automatically, Shutterfly has AI autofill and a free designer service, and entry prices are $14.99, $19 and about $25 respectively — so "you have to design them" is no longer the trade-off. Chatbooks is still the cheapest per book on a subscription: Monthly Minis $10, Monthbooks $15 to $34, free shipping. What it asks is thirty to sixty photos a month, which its own copy budgets at five minutes.
Chatbooks' particular trick is that it removes the step where photo books die: layout. You pick the month's photos, and it designs, prints and ships the book. People looking for alternatives usually want one of two quite different things.
- A different or better printer — more design control, better paper, different pricing.
- Something other than books — because what you actually wanted was for family to see the photos, and a book two or three times a year does not do that.
If you want a different printer
| Approach | Entry price | Best for | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Trove | Books in the app, plus a monthly mailer and a weekly emailed edition | Free app; books $29.99-$54.99; mailer $4.99/mo | Printing plus weekly sharing |
| Chatbooks | Monthly subscription books (Monthbooks, Minis); you pick 30–60 photos, it designs and ships | Minis $10; Monthbooks $15–$34; one-off Classic books from $26; free shipping | Low effort, low cost |
| Mixbook | Story Mode auto-designs a book, or design it yourself | From $14.99 softcover; $29.99 hardcover (20 pages) | Automatic layout you can then edit |
| Shutterfly | AI autofill, templates, and a free 24-hour designer service | From $24.98 list (8×8 softcover); promotions run year-round | Deal hunting |
| Popsa | Fast automatic layout, phone or web | From $22 booklet / $34 softcover / $44 hardcover | Quick books with no fiddling |
| Artifact Uprising | Autofill places every photo; premium materials | $19 softcover; layflat albums $159–$239 | Gifts and keepsakes |
The honest summary: Chatbooks is hard to beat on price for subscription books, but the old reason to stay — that everyone else made you do the layout — no longer holds. Mixbook's Story Mode, Artifact Uprising's Autofill, Popsa and Shutterfly's autofill all place the photos for you; what they will not do is turn up every month without being asked. Move to Mixbook or Artifact Uprising if you want control or quality for a particular book. Shutterfly's list prices are the highest here and there is almost always a promotion running, so buy on one.
If books were not really the point
A lot of people arrive at photo books via a different frustration: the photos are trapped on a phone and nobody sees them. A book is one answer, but it arrives monthly at best, every copy for another relative is another paid book, and none of it says anything about the weeks in between.
If the grandparents are the reason, the category you want is family sharing, not printing. Trove emails one curated edition every Sunday — the week's best photos, laid out, with a short written summary — to everyone on your list, with no app or account on their end. The app and the edition are free, with unlimited recipients. Worth knowing that Chatbooks has a partial answer too: a copy of any book can be sent to a relative's address, a subscription can be duplicated so they get their own every month, and its separate free Groupchat app shares photos and video between family.
For the relative who does not read email at all, there is the Paper Edition: a printed edition of the family's month, mailed on the 1st, covering the month that has just ended. It is a folded self-mailer, so it arrives folded with no envelope and a photograph already showing on the outside. Trove lays it out from photos already in your Trove — a cover photo and up to five more, captions and a short written summary. It costs $4.99 a month including one address, and $4 a month for each extra address on top of a subscription, paid by card in the app and cancellable any time. The recipient needs no app, no account, no screen and no wifi. US only for now.
That is a mailer, not a book — a folded leaflet that turns up monthly, not a bound volume for the shelf. The two are not substitutes, which is why Trove sells photo books as well: 8.3-inch softcover photo book $29.99, 8.3-inch hardcover photo book $39.99, 11.7-inch hardcover photo book $54.99, one at a time with free shipping, 20 pages included and $0.50 per extra page.
The common setup
The free weekly edition for everyone who reads email, a monthly mailer to the one relative who does not, and a printed book once a year for the shelf. Three jobs, and only the last two cost anything.
One thing print genuinely wins at
Print does not depend on a company still existing. Lifecake shut down in 2020 — considerately, with two months' notice and a full download, but it shut down. Anything already printed is immune to that: a Chatbooks Monthbook, one of ours, or a mailer stuck to a fridge door. That is a real argument for putting at least some of the year on paper regardless of what else you use. It applies to product lines as well as companies — Chatbooks' original auto-filling "Series" subscription was frozen in July 2024, and anyone relying on it had to migrate.
The short version
- You wanted family to read the photosTrove — a free weekly edition with no app or account for them, and a $4.99/mo monthly mailer for the relative with no screen.
- Cheapest subscription booksStay with Chatbooks. $10 a Mini, $15–$34 a Monthbook, free shipping.
- Automatic layout, one book at a timeMixbook's Story Mode from $14.99, or Artifact Uprising's Autofill from $19.
- Design controlMixbook, or Shutterfly — buy on a promotion, there is almost always one.
- Premium keepsakeArtifact Uprising — softcovers from $19, layflat albums $159–$239.
What is the cheapest automatic photo book service?+
Chatbooks subscription books — Monthly Minis at $10 and Monthbooks from $15 — are the cheapest bound books here, and standard shipping is free. You pick 30 to 60 photos a month and the layout, printing and posting are handled for you; Smart Select can pre-pick them if you subscribe. Note that the old "Series" subscription, which auto-filled from your iPhone Favorites with no monthly choosing, was frozen in July 2024 and cannot be started. For one-off books, Mixbook's Story Mode from $14.99 and Artifact Uprising's Autofill from $19 also design the book for you.
Is there a free alternative to Chatbooks?+
Not for anything printed. Printing and postage cost money, so no service gives them away, ours included: Trove photo books start at $29.99 and the Paper Edition mailer is $4.99 a month. What is free is the sharing — the Trove app and its weekly emailed edition cost nothing, with unlimited recipients. Chatbooks' own app is free to use too, and so is its separate Groupchat app, but nothing prints without paying.
Can I share photos and order books from the same app?+
Yes. Trove includes photo book ordering alongside its weekly edition — softcover or hardcover, from $29.99, bought one at a time rather than on a plan — and it can mail a monthly Paper Edition for $4.99 a month in the US. If bound books are your primary goal rather than one part of the picture, a dedicated printer will still give you more options and more sizes.
Is The Paper Edition the same as a photo book?+
No. It is a thin monthly self-mailer: a folded sheet with a cover photo and up to five more, captions and a short summary of the month. It arrives every month and is meant to be read and pinned up. A photo book is the bound object for the shelf, and it is still the right product for the year in one piece — Chatbooks is cheaper for that than we are.
The week by email. The month in the mail.
Trove is free: one curated edition of the week to your whole family every Sunday, unlimited recipients, no app or account for them. Photo books from $29.99, and a printed Paper Edition for $4.99 a month in the US.
Try Trove — FreePricing and features were checked on September 21, 2026. Competitors change their plans — if you spot something out of date, tell us and we will correct it.
