FreePrints

Review by eFreeware

Most of us carry years of photos around in a phone and never do anything with them. Printing a handful usually means a trip to a store, a kiosk that refuses to read your files, or a website that wants an account before it shows you a price. FreePrints, from the developer PlanetArt, is built around a simple answer to that: order prints from your phone and let them arrive in the mail, with the 4x6 prints themselves costing nothing.

The app has been on Google Play since May 2013 and has more than 10 million installs, with a 4.8 average across a very large number of ratings. It is a free download with no ads and no in-app purchases, which is unusual for a photo service. Money changes hands at one point only: shipping, plus anything you order beyond the free prints.

What you get free is up to 85 4x6 prints a month, or roughly 1,000 in a year, with the limit of one free print per photo. Larger sizes and extra copies of the same shot are paid. That structure shapes everything about how the app is used, and it is the first thing to understand before you start filling a cart.

Turning a phone gallery into a stack of prints

The core job is straightforward. You open the app, pick photos, choose quantities, and place the order. Photos can come from the phone itself or from Facebook, Dropbox, Google Photos and Microsoft OneDrive, so an old album that lives in cloud storage is just as usable as something you shot this morning. For anyone who has moved between phones over the years, that range of sources matters more than it first appears.

The monthly allowance of 85 prints is generous enough that you do not have to ration it. Someone who takes a lot of pictures of family, pets or travel could order a decent batch every few weeks and still stay inside the free tier. The one-print-per-photo rule is the catch worth planning around: if you want three copies of the same picture, one is free and the other two are charged.

Delivery is by mail, with prints arriving within a few days according to the developer. That turns the app into something you use in batches rather than on impulse. Rather than printing a single picture the moment you take it, it makes more sense to let a set accumulate and order them together, which also keeps the shipping charge spread across more prints.

Sizes, paper and what an order really costs

Beyond the free 4x6 prints, the app handles enlargements in 5x5, 5x7, 8x10, 11x14, 12x18, 16x20 and 20x30. That covers the usual range of frames and wall displays, so a photo you particularly like can be ordered small for an album and large for a wall without leaving the app. Additional 4x6 prints beyond the monthly allowance are also a paid item.

You choose between deluxe glossy and premium matte paper when ordering. Glossy tends to suit snapshots and anything with strong color, while matte is often the better choice for a framed print where reflections are a nuisance. Having the choice at the point of ordering, rather than as a separate product line, keeps the process simple.

The cost that matters is shipping and handling. Shipping begins at $1.99, and the developer caps it at $9.99 however big the order. That cap is the detail that makes the model work: a big order of free prints does not turn into an expensive one at checkout, so the sensible approach is to order in larger batches less often rather than a few prints at a time.

The developer describes the prints as having vivid color, brilliant whites and fade resistance, and says only high-quality papers are used. Those are marketing claims rather than things I can verify from a listing, but they are the standards any print service should be judged against, and the paper options at least suggest the app is not treating prints as an afterthought.

What you need before the first order

Setup is minimal. The app is a free download, with no subscription to start and no commitment of any kind. You install it, open it, and begin selecting photos from whichever source you keep them in.

The practical requirement is a delivery address and a way to pay the shipping charge, since that is the only mandatory cost. If you plan to order enlargements or extra copies, those are added to the same order and paid for at the same time. The app also states that photos are stored, in line with its terms of use, so they can be used again for later orders, and that only you have access to them, with security measures in place to protect them.

One thing worth knowing before you start: the free allowance is per month, so it is not a pool you can spend all at once. If you have a large backlog of photos, the sensible approach is to work through it over several months, ordering the free prints in batches and paying only for the sizes or duplicates you actually want.

Where FreePrints fits and where it does not

This suits people who want physical photos without paying per print. Families documenting children growing up, anyone who has just come back from a trip with hundreds of pictures on a phone, and people who want to fill a few frames without a trip to a store are all obvious candidates. The cloud sources also make it useful for anyone whose older photos live in Facebook or Dropbox rather than on the device itself.

It is less suited to anyone who needs a print in hand today. Orders arrive by mail over a few days, so a same-day print for a card, a school project or a last-minute gift is not what this is for. The monthly allowance and the shipping charge both reward planning ahead rather than urgency.

It is also worth being realistic about the free tier. The 4x6 prints are free, but larger sizes, extra copies and shipping are not, so a person who mainly wants big framed enlargements is paying for most of what they order. The app is at its most attractive when the bulk of an order is standard 4x6 prints, which is exactly what the monthly allowance covers.

If you already use another product from PlanetArt, the same photos can be reused for orders there, since the developer also makes FreePrints Photobooks, FreePrints Photo Tiles and FreePrints Gifts. That is a convenience rather than a reason to install this one, but it does mean a photo library built up here is not stranded.

A free service with a real shipping bill

The obvious caveat is that free prints are not a free order. Shipping starts at $1.99 and can reach $9.99, so a small order of a few prints carries a proportionally high cost. Ordering 85 prints at once for the same shipping charge is a far better deal than ordering ten, and that is the habit the pricing quietly encourages.

The one-free-print-per-photo limit is the other thing to plan around. Weddings, team photos and anything where several people want the same shot will push you into paid territory quickly, since only the first copy is free. The app is designed around breadth of photos rather than multiples of the same one.

Claims about being the quickest, simplest and cheapest option for phone printing, and about being the most trusted and best-rated printing app, are the kind of language every service in this category uses. The install and rating numbers suggest a lot of people have been satisfied, but the value on any given order still comes down to how many prints you batch together and how much of the order falls outside the free 4x6 allowance.

A sensible choice for building a print habit

FreePrints is worth installing if you want to turn phone photos into physical ones without paying for each print. The monthly allowance of 85 4x6 prints is large enough to build a real habit, the cloud sources cover where most people's photos actually live, and the shipping cap means a big order never becomes an expensive one. With a 4.8 average across more than 350,000 ratings and no ads or in-app purchases, it is a low-risk app to try.

The people who will get the most from it are those who order in batches, mostly in the standard 4x6 size, and who can wait a few days for delivery. If your needs run to large framed enlargements or several copies of the same picture, you will be paying for a good share of each order, and the free element matters less. For everyone else, it is a straightforward way to stop leaving photos stranded on a phone.

What's new in version 4.48.0

Get 85 FREE 4x6 photo prints every month! • This release includes bug fixes and improvements. Your suggestions and comments help make FreePrints even better, and we truly appreciate them! Keep sending your feedback to [email protected]. It’s because of people like you that we can do what we do. If you had a great experience with FreePrints, please consider giving us a review.