Phanfare Reviews

(based on 16 reviews)

226 of 415 people found this review helpful

Phanfare management has decided to close down their Tech Support Call Center. You can now only contact them through e-mail. They do not offer "Chat". I sent them two e-mails over 24 hours ago and still no response. I am using their website to run a business and subscribe to their "Pro" service. No where on their website can you find a phone number to call - VERY DISAPPOINTED!

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

200 of 371 people found this review helpful

I have been using phanfare as my primary storage facility for over 5 years.
I have a PRO account and pay good money for it!
And while managing,sharing and storing capabilities are good/great.
If you want print anything in their website, dont..
Its not easy, if they make a mistake it will take you ages for them to ammend it..
I still have a 180usd album with a stranger's face as cover, from my Xmas shopping...
I recently got credit, not refunded, and when I tried to reprint my album and could not do it..
I got this customer support answer to my dumb query:
"While you are able to go back to a Photo Album you had not yet finished to continue it, you are unable to Reorder the exact same one if it has been ordered and sent and is outside the return date. Unfortunately you would have to recreate the album on the site.

Please let us know if you need additional assistance."

I am never printing with them again, once I have used up my credit.
I recommend Blurb to print albums, quality is awesome.
Or snapfish (same event happened in snapfish and was solved in days)quality of prints is Ok. (Read the full review)

In summary, I would recommend Phanfare to a friend.

215 of 378 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.

265 of 477 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.