No you don't have to use the built-in album designer of our shopping website.   In fact, we recommend you do not.  

Our New Direction (& why the website has changed)

Part of our recent directional change was to be more about providing great products (putting our time & attention there) and less about software (letting the experts do that instead).  To avhieve this, our website designer is very simplistic.  The reality is that there are several fantastic album design apps already on the market that are more affordable than what it would cost to upgrade the designer on our site to a similar level.  (to do this, we would have to charge a monthly fee in excess of their app costs and we did not want to do this)

How we are helping you & saving you money

As a result of this change and to encourage the use of these design apps, we have introduced a new design app rebate.  Each month, your first order of $150 or more will qualify for a $30 discount. This covers most of the monthly cost of our design app partners.  Currently, every customer can qualify for this discount 1x per month, regardless of the design app being used.

Our Design App Partners:

Please visit one of our partners to access great software that makes designing beautiful albums a snap. Our sizes and settings can be found inside each of these options.  Links are provided below.  

• Fundy Designer - downloadable, lots of tools, excellent support; easy to use drop zone and auto-build technology & a great proofing system; more features than the others (but that can get distracting) free trial available
• SmartAlbums by Pixellu - our favourite, very easy to use; fantastic built-in proofing option; truly intuitive and makes 5 min album design a reality; also includes a fantastic proofer for cloud use or old-school PDF proofing by email, free trial is available. We've used Pixellu for years and we cannot recommend it enough.
• AlbumWorks.co (web-based) - like a browser based pared down version of Fundy with a free trial to start; this is the cheapest option for those who run less volume and do not want or need all the bells and whistles of the more fully featured apps above