- An account is initially free, but you must spend $10.00 every six months to keep it active
- It is also possible to extend your account for:
- 6 months: $9.95
- 12 months: $15.95
- Or by sending in a 35mm film for developing and transferring to your account
- Online photo sharing from the well known department store
- Quickly share photos with your friends and family
- Have professional portraits taken and added to your online account
- Automatically send out emails to your friends to show them your photos
- Send your camera film off to have the photos added to your online account
- Share single or multiple albums as you choose
- Easy to use web based upload form
- Free downloadable tool for uploading multiple photos
- Order prints of your favourite photos in a variety of sizes
- Create personalized photo gifts for any occasion
- Add unique borders to your photos before ordering prints
- Works on almost any device that can run a browser
Sears Photos is the online photo sharing branch of the well known U.S department store. It provides the quality service and products you would expect from Sears, but isn't the cheapest or most exciting web site around. It has the unique feature of being able to offer professional portrait sessions in store and providing the results online for you to order.
Uploading photos to your Sears Photos account isn't exactly the most intuitive experience we have ever seen, but it works well enough. The recommended way is to use the web based uploader form, which is easy to use, but can be slow. Sears also provide a tool called Smile Uploader which can be used to upload batches of photos at once to your account. However, there isn't much in the way of support provided for it and it is only available on Windows based PCs. One feature we did particularly like was that you can send in your 35mm films and Sears will transfer the pictures to your online account. It's good to see some people haven't forgotten traditional film still exists!
There really isn't much you can do with your photos once you have them on your account. However, it is possible to send out links to your albums to your friends and family by filling out a simple form, which is handy. The trouble is that anyone who follows the link will only be able to see small versions of all your photos without being a member of Sears Photos themselves. We think this is a bit of a sneaky way to try and get new customers signing up, but at least it's free to do so at first.
We say "at first" because Sears Photos requires that you renew your account at least every six months otherwise they will automatically delete all your photos. This seems a bit harsh, but there are three different ways to renew your account. You can either pay a fee for a 6 or 12 month extension, spend a set amount on products or send in (and pay) for a 35mm film to be transferred to your account. It doesn't make an account very expensive, but there are numerous other sites around that don't bully you into buying things by threatening to delete your photos!
Sears Photos is average in the features they offer as a photo sharing service. However, they do offer good customer service and the products you can order are good quality. If you are looking for a good photo sharing service instead of a good print ordering service we would recommend checking out some of the web sites in our top ten.
Click the button below to check out SearsPhotos.com for yourself...
