Phanfare Reviews

(based on 16 reviews)

216 of 380 people found this review helpful

Try viewing the albums of someone who uses Phanfare and then leave some comments on their photos - NOT! You will have to enter your name & email for each and every comment you leave. This apparently can't or won't be changed.

Some very basic things are not available - your albums for the year are listed in random order - there is no way to change it! The transition effect between slides is on or off and only pan and zoom are available (I think there are more options with higher level memberships).

When you invite people to see an albums they have access to ALL your albums - one password for everything. So if you have photos of kids for example, and don't want them published far and wide, you just can't put them on the site. Apparently you can have individual passwords for individual albums - if you pay the higher fee. I guess my kids are not as important as those of the Premium or Pro members.

I give the prints and gifts a single star since there is no link to the store on the home page, or any page. As far as I know... (Read the full review)

In summary, I would not recommend Phanfare to a friend.

266 of 459 people found this review helpful

I hope Phanfare will continue to succeed because it is far and away the best service out there. They organize your photos well, permit selective sharing, provide optional display of exif information, the option of permitting downloads of full sized files, and a professional subscription package for pros. The albums are polished and attractive. I have customized albums alphabetically under the "timeless" category, and selectively shared them with genealogy groups to share original documentation with cousins. In addition, I share my online photography which is stored in albums chronologically and grouped by year, with titles and descriptions chosen by me. I can permit on line comments, and I can also enable a drop box for others to send images to me.

I would like it if Phanfare offered more variety in their calendars. But I think the company wisely decided to forgo a direct challenge to Shutterfly in this area, and has stuck with its core mission of photo storage and sharing. I have a quarterly subscription to backup my images on DVD to have a copy in case of a corporate disaster, and this service is in addition to my basic premium subscription. It is worthwhile.

I photograph in a higher... (Read the full review)

In summary, I would recommend Phanfare to a friend.

203 of 413 people found this review helpful

With Kodak closing, needed replacement to upload/share family pictures. Shutterfly was not appealing as it will not allow users to customize subject lines and messages when sharing albums (cells greyed out with rather juvenile content already there). So, we are trying Phanfare. I decided to write this review after finding out that, to be able to upload a list of contacts rather than entering each one manually, you must purchase a higher priced version - not the newer $29 basic version. This is fine if your list of contacts is short and once you enter the info, it is stored. The real issue for me is the lack of disclosure. To learn of this limitation, I had to contact customer support - they were very responsive - because there is no clarification within the help section of the account. The product itself seems to work well. Just be prepared to spend more or do some typing/pasting up front to get your contact list in place. If I were rating this product on usability, I would undoubtedly give it several more stars.

One more thing that is not made clear and could be a waste of time if you try the 14-day... (Read the full review)

In summary, I would recommend Phanfare to a friend.

266 of 478 people found this review helpful

I've been using Phanfare for 5 years and have a love / hate relationship with it.... Mostly I love it.

The good:
- Fantastic looking albums. No advertisements appear to the user or viewers
- Ability to create a personalized URL and sub-sites (i.e. xxx.com/family-photos or xxx.com/travel-photos) as well as providing a direct link to an isolated album
- OK editing tools online; Excellent desktop editor (download from Phanfare) that makes building an album and tweaking pictures (brightness, contrast, sharpen, crop, etc.) a breeze
- Ability to make very nice slideshows with multiple sections and music tracks (using tracks provided by Phanfare or by accessing MP3 files you own)
- Speed of uploads is quite good; Allows hi-res / very large images

The not so good:
- No ability to organize your overall website with anything other than Chronological grouping, i.e., groups albums by year as in 2011, 2010, 2009, etc. Within the albums from a specific year your choice is to store the albums oldest first or newest first, not alphabetical or any other user specified way. The only way to have a grouping of your choosing, e.g., "Family photos", or "Travel photos" is to create sub-sites (see above comment) but your viewers cannot... (Read the full review)

In summary, I would recommend Phanfare to a friend.

254 of 498 people found this review helpful

Two years ago my wife and I wanted to share our wedding photos with friends and family and wished we could create a beautiful, professional looking slide show with panning and zooming just like on her Mac. Phanfare did all of this and much more. It allowed us to build a slideshow with our own music and to this date no other photosharing site comes close to looking as professional.

Smugmug is the closest but the slideshows and quality of the service do not compare with Phanfare.

The price of the service has dropped to $29 and I'm surprised more people don't know about this service.

Now for the bad: Phanfare did attempt a large subscription price increase last year to $99. They said it was done cover the high cost of server space to archive original photos. A lot of pro photographers discovered this site. I wrote a long email to them protesting as did many other subscribers. Now, for $29 you get all the great photosharing but those who need photo archiving pay a bit more. I hope they succeed with this new business model because NOTHING comes close to this great photo site.

In summary, I would recommend Phanfare to a friend.

247 of 444 people found this review helpful

I have had my phanfare account since it first started up. It is very easy to upload photos either online or offline using the desktop engine.

There are plenty of themes so your albums will always look great.
You can upload music for slideshows. Extras include Johns background switcher.

Over the last couple of years the price has gone up considerably from about $25 when I first started to $99 now for the unlimited premium account. The only real downfall is that not many people know about it.

In summary, I would recommend Phanfare to a friend.