The following reviews a few of the biggest names in the online photo scanning for such factors as price, turn-around,services, safety, and quality.

Photobin.com offers offers scans as low as $0.15 plus shipping per scan for their 'big' package (the real price ends up closer to $0.18per scan) and up to $0.23 per scan for the mini package. They also have frequent photo scanning deals where you can get scans for much less. What you will actuallypay will depend on how close to full you are able to cram your boxes. Scans aredone at 300 DPI and they are limited on additional scanning services. They do offer a number of unique services that they others did not including the ability to add a photo website, negative scanning and photo sharing. They also offer a number of photo gifts and canvases. Turn around appears to be pretty quick. Their facility is located in San Diego in the United States and they claim you will have your pictures in 3-5 business days from the time they receive them.

Scancafe.com seems to be the biggest company in the scanning industry. They claim to have over 250 scanning devices at their Bangalore India facility. Their pricing is set at $0.35 per scan. They also offer a value kit which says it starts at $0.22 per scan but omits many of their other features.The $0.35 price includes the option of selecting and if desired deleting up to50% of your scans. Scanning is done at 600 DPI and they have a number of additional options and services including, photo restoration, scratch removal, negative scanning, slide scanning, dvds and much more. With the scanning facility being located in India it would be expected that they may have a slow turnaround. According to their site they claim the turnaround is 38 days from the time that they receive the photos. From some of the reviews I have read I get the feeling that may be optimistic. They seem to take the safety of your photos very seriously and I did not read any significant tales of lost photos.

Digmypics.com offers automated scanning services for $0.19 per scan and manual scanning services for as low as $0.39 per scan for 300 DPI and $0.49 per scan for 600 DPI. Additional scanning services include: negative scanning, film scanning and video to dvd. They allow you to delete and not pay for up to 35% of your scans if you do not wish to accept them. According to their website their shipping time is 5-15+ days depending on the number ofphotos you are having scanned and the facility is located in the United States in Gilbert Arizona.

Analysis

It appears from my research that in terms of pricing Photobin.com seems to have the best rates on scanning. They are limited on additional services however and Scancafe seems to offer the most additional services. In terms of safety, all three appear to be pretty safe and I have not been able to find any tales of significant lost photos from any of my big three photo scanning companies. However I did come across an article about how Digmypics facility actually burnt down back in 2008. That is a horrible tragedy on its own and hopefully not a significant number of memories were lost along with it. When considering that Scancafe is located in India I think I would be most comfortable shipping my photos to Photobin in California. In terms of shipping time the edge goes to Photobin.com in a landslide. 3-5 business daysis light years better than 5-15+ and Scancafe is not even in the competition on this one.

My final recommendation

It really depends on what you need. Photobin seems to have the best prices and the quickest turn around but lags behind onnumber of services. Scancafe offers a number of services at a reasonable price if you are willing to wait a month or two for your results. I could see myself selecting any of the three depending on my needs at any given time.