Club Benefits
One of life's greatest pleasures is crossing the days off calendars as you count down to a big event — and what better way to make it more personal than with a calendar filled with your own pictures.
We've spent the best part of a decade putting the best photo calendars to the test, checking out not only how easy they are to design but also the print quality and their production. Our top pick this year? It's still Mixbook, thanks to its easy-to-use design software and marvelously vibrant, well-made calendar.
We've also tested the other leading photo calendar brands, Shutterfly, Snapfish, Vistaprint and Printique, so that you can find the best option for you. After all, what's perfect for one person might fall in a key area — be that ease of use, image quality, or production quality.
Costco has shut down its own photo book and calendar printing service, but is now offering a similar service via Shutterfly. Costco members will receive 51% off regularly-priced Shutterfly orders, plus free shipping on orders over $30. There are some exceptions, and you must be a Costco member in order to take advantage of this offer.
The best photo calendar services today
Why you can trust Tom's Guide Our writers and editors spend hours analyzing and reviewing products, services, and apps to help find what's best for you. Find out more about how we test, analyze, and rate.
Best overall
Mixbook's calendars ranked among the best of all the photo calendar services we tested. Despite the flat finish on both the cover and pages, our photos stood out thanks to the accurate color rendering and good overall sharpness.
We tested with a range of images, including landscapes, cityscapes, and candid portraits from the Tuscany region of Italy. Mixbook's calendar quality matched that of its photo books, with both portraits and landscapes looking consistently vibrant and true to life. Additionally, the writing on the calendar grid was sharp and free of smudges.
For those who find designing a calendar daunting, Mixbook simplifies the process with intuitive, fun-to-use software. Plus, if you need assistance, it offers live chat support. We were also impressed with the range of customization options, which include 139 design templates and tools for adjusting borders, drop shadows, and image opacity.
While Mixbook’s calendars are priced slightly higher than some competitors—second only to Shutterfly—we found the quality and ease of use justified the extra cost.
- Read our full Mixbook review
Best photo quality
Printique's photo quality really stood out to us when we got our calendar in the mail. While the images are perhaps a little over-saturated, they are bright, colorful, and look excellent up on the wall. If you’re looking for the best image quality in a calendar, then Printique should be at the top of your list.
Alas, not everything is as bright and colorful as the images. When putting together our calendar, we found that Printique's editing software left a lot on the table: precisely positioning our photos was cumbersome, and the interface felt dated and sluggish. After becoming increasingly frustrated with the editing process, we opted for a built-in template. That’s a compromise that those who want more control might not be willing to make.
We didn’t like the pages or flimsy cover either, which made us concerned about longevity. Given that you're going to be thumbing through it to find out when Aunt Mabel's birthday is, you'd hope that the production quality matched the images — and it doesn't.
Still, despite some hiccups that keep it from the top of the list, Printique’s $25 starting price and truly spectacular image quality keep it in the running for best photo calendar. The images really are something else, and that’s the most important thing (in our eyes at least) when it comes to a good photo calendar. Premium image quality without the top-end price.
- Read our full Printique review
Best value
Vistaprint’s calendar exceeded our expectations, especially considering its affordability. The cover photo captured the colors of a street scene we shot in Italy perfectly, with the yellow of the girl's dress and the building behind her matching the original image with impressive accuracy.
The photos displayed above the monthly grids were consistently high quality, on a par with those from our top two picks, Mixbook and Printique. The only issue we noticed was that reds appeared oversaturated, giving some faces an unnatural, flushed look.
We also appreciated the solid build quality of the calendar. The spiral binding was simple yet sturdy, and both the cover and inside pages were satisfyingly thick. However, the shiny finish on the pages, while visually appealing, caused ink and markers to smear when we wrote on them.
A pleasant surprise was how well Vistaprint's calendar handled black and white imagery. A waterfall shot in the calendar came out beautifully, with rich contrast and plenty of detail—much better than how the same image appeared in their photo book, where it looked washed out.
- Read our full Vistaprint review
Best for customization options
Shutterfly provides one of the smoothest and least stressful experiences for creating a calendar, thanks to its powerful yet easy-to-use software. We appreciated how the platform strikes a balance between giving users full control over their calendar design without overwhelming them with too much information. However, the interface could be sluggish at times, especially when placing images into a layout, where there was often a noticeable delay of a few seconds before the picture appeared.
Unfortunately, the print and build quality of Shutterfly’s calendar was disappointing. Among the services we tested, it ranked second to last. The colors were mediocre, highlights appeared washed out, and the overall look was flat and faded. On the plus side, the detail and sharpness of our cover and calendar images were decent, despite some exposure issues.
The metal ring binding on the wall-hanging calendar felt flimsy, leaving us uncertain if it would last through the year. However, the actual monthly date grids were crisp and easy to read. We also liked the smooth matte finish of the grid pages, which allowed for easy writing without ink or marker bleed. In the end, while Shutterfly’s calendar isn’t particularly remarkable, it’s highly functional.
- Read our full Shutterfly review
Best software
Snapfish’s software was so user-friendly that we expected to like the service more than we ultimately did. The process of creating a calendar was enjoyable, and we hoped the final product would match that experience. Unfortunately, it did not. In terms of image quality and construction, Snapfish’s calendar ranked last in our tests.
Much like its photo book, which also placed last, the calendar’s colors were muted overall. We used images from a summer trip to Italy, but the calendar lacked the vibrancy we expected. The cover shot of a street scene, featuring a girl in a bright yellow dress, appeared washed out, with the colors looking more like pale pastels. This lack of vibrancy extended to the Italian streetscapes and landscapes throughout the calendar.
The build quality of the wall calendar was acceptable but nothing special. The pages were thin, and although the metal spiral binding was sturdier than Shutterfly’s flimsy version, it still didn’t feel particularly durable. Overall, the calendar reminded us of something you might receive for free from a bank—functional, but not visually impressive or noteworthy.
- Read our full Snapfish review
How we test photo calendar services
For this evaluation, we created similar centerfold wall calendars from the five services we tested, Mixbook, Printique, Shutterfly, Snapfish and Vistaprint. While creating our calendars, we picked layouts and designs that were similar across the five services as well. For four of the five, we used blank “build your own,” calendars. The only exception was Printique, where we picked the service’s Modern template because we had issues with the “build your own” interface.
For photos, I used my own portraits, landscapes, and cityscapes shot in natural light from a summer trip to Tuscany in Italy. The three main factors the services were judged on were software, image quality, and value. For the calendar-making software, we considered both the levels of customization offered and the ease-of-use.
For image quality, we compared photos across the selection of calendars, as well as against the original digital images displayed on a MacBook Air retina display. Criteria for judging included cover quality, paper quality, color, skin tones, contrast, and sharpness/detail. For value, we took into account both the price of the photo calendars and the level of quality of the finished product. So, for instance, a good quality calendar that cost a low price would get a higher value score than a poor quality calendar at a similar price. The same value scale was used for more expensive calendars in our testing.
