Chatbooks Review – With Free Book Code

Hi all, I’m back with another app review/recommendation. This time, it’s for an app that immediately shot to the top of my favorites list – Chatbooks. If you read my last post, you know I advocated for using Google Photos to back up all your photos free and easily. Today, I’m taking things to the logical next step and I’ll show you how to get your best photos into a physical book with Chatbooks that you can cherish forever. Read on to see why I love this product, or if you’re the ambitious type, simply head to Chatbooks to get your free book or use this code: MCNATER-M9NL.

What is Chatbooks?

Chatbooks is both a phone and web application that allows you to very easily create 60-page, 6×6 inch photo books from your digital photos. You can create custom books from photos directly off your phone or computer, or better yet make things super simple and use their Instagram feature to automatically print books for you with little intervention on your part. Photos only print one per page and you have the ability to choose the cover photo for each book, add captions, location information and more.

CLICK HERE TO GET THE APP:

Automatically print books, you say?

Yes, I said that. Originally Chatbooks allowed If you’re an Instagram user, you can really harness the power of Chatbooks to the fullest. Once you connect your Instagram account with Chatbooks – after you’ve posted 60 pictures – Chatbooks will automatically collect them into a book for you and send it to your house. One key feature of this is that it doesn’t have to be just you who contributes to the books. You can connect as many people as you want. So in our household, both my wife and I have our Instagram accounts linked with Chatbooks, which then combines the pictures for us into a book series creatively titled “Brunner Life” in the order they were taken, automatically applying the captions, locations and photo filters we used in the original Instagram photo. Again, once the magic number of 60 is hit, boom, another book is on the way!

But what if I don’t want ALL my Instagram photos to be made into a book?

I’m so glad you asked, because Chatbooks has thought of this already. You can handle this in one of two ways.

1. Once you’ve hit the magic number of 60, Chatbooks gives you a 3 day buffer to edit out any unwanted photos you don’t want included in your book. Once you’ve filtered out your one-too-many pictures of what you had to eat last night, Chatbooks will ship it out to you.
2. You know how hashtags are all the rage? Well, they come in super handy in Chatbooks because you can use them to simply tag or mark whatever photos you want printed. So in my example, I could simply tag all the photos I want made into a Chatbook with #BrunnerLife, and viola, only those photos will make it into print. Another AWESOME way to use this feature is to create custom books of whatever event, person or thing you might want made into its own book. So again, for example, we recently took a trip to Hawaii. If I wanted to quickly create a photo album book of our trip, I could create a new hashtag like #Hawaii2015 and simply tag all the photos from my vacation with that hashtag. Once I create a new series in Chatbooks and tell it to look for that hashtag, Chatbooks will automatically create a book for me with only those photos. I could also see this easily being used to create custom photo series of your kids if you’re so inclined. Just create a hashtag for any or all of your kids and again, you’ll have a physical book filled only with pictures of the kid you happened to tag. Pretty awesome, right?

What if I’m not on Instagram?

If you’re not on Instagram, you can still use Chatbooks – you’ll just have to do a little more legwork yourself by creating a “custom book”. Basically, this works more like your tradition photo book creation, where you’ll have to upload all your images to chatbooks or select the ones you want off your phone and assembly into a book of your liking.

Ok I’m intrigued. Obviously this must cost a lot?

Nope! Each book in an Instagram series costs only $10, including free shipping. You heard me right: $10. Not bad at all for a pretty automatic way to get your memories shipped regularly to your door. In addition, as of November 2015, Chatbooks now offers a Hardcover option for $5 more, so $15 total. I haven’t personally tried those out yet but from what I seen they look great.

If you’ve chosen the custom book route, a 30-60 page 6×6 book is $15.00 and then $0.25 for each additional page up to a maximum of 366 pages.

Wow, that sounds pretty great. But what about the hundreds of Instagram photos I’ve already posted? Any way I can get those?

Yep! In fact, this was exactly the case for me. Call me crazy, but I just took the plunge and ordered 26 books right off the bat. That’s right, the wife and I had over 1,500 pictures uploaded so far to Instagram. It cost me over $150, but I figure that’s a small price to pay for nearly five years of memories.

So far you sound pretty positive. Have you found any negatives with the service so far?

One thing to point out about the Instagram books is that, since you printing off photos uploaded to Instagram, their quality is not going to match what you would normally see when printing out the photos yourself (especially if you add filters to your photos in Instagram). Instagram compresses your images, so some of them might appear grainier than you might expect. I noticed this – especially in my older photos taken way back in time with my iPhone 3GS. Instagram has recently updated their site and now are allowing photos to be uploaded in 1080px resolution, so quality should only improve with time. By no means is the quality horrible or a deal breaker for me (especially with the value you’re getting at only $10 a book) but you should be aware of this.

I think you’ve sold me. How can I get that code for a FREE BOOK that you mentioned earlier?

Simple. You can follow this link here and the first Chatbook in your Instagram series will be free!

Thanks, I think that’s all the questions I have for now. Anything else you want to add?

Yes, actually. If you read my previous post, you know I advocated for making sure you’re backing up your photos so you don’t lose any memories. Well I’ve found Chatbooks to be an awesome way of guaranteeing I’m getting physical copies of my favorite memories with barely having to think. That’s the beauty of this setup. We all take photos with the intention of making an awesome book someday, or printing and framing our favorite ones, but how often does life get in the way and we just don’t? I’d venture to guess fairly often. It’s not news to any parents reading this that life can get pretty hectic with kids running around you all day. I say, why not take take one thing off your plate and just let Chatbooks do the work?

Has anyone else tried Chatbooks? Have any questions for me? Please let me know, as always, I’m here to help – nate@minnemamaadventures.com.

* This is NOT a sponsored post, and I did not receive any product or compensation for writing this post. If you sign up with the referral code above, you will get your free book and I will receive a $5 account credit.