Review: CanvasPop Print Services

CanvasPop offers great photo print options at reasonable prices. In our experience, they helped save us while we were in a bind and needed quick turnarounds on custom prints for a client.

As professional photographers, we have been seriously exposed to a large number of print services available online. We’ve come across many in our personal research. We’ve tried a good handful of them, too. These days, we even occasionally receive requests from smaller print companies offering us free credit to try out their services.

CanvasPop is a print service we simply stumbled upon, not one that was previously recommended to us. Our experience with them was only influenced by our own research. And, the special printing needs we had that couldn’t be filled elsewhere from what we were seeing.

Today, our review of CanvasPop will help you decide whether ordering prints from them is right for you.

About CanvasPop

CanvasPop offers quality canvas prints. They are an online print service for photographers that enables you to have prints made of your own images. The service is used by many professionals and consumers to print for any particular need.

On the surface, CanvasPop offers what many other print services do.

The areas where they exceed our expectations were in some of their product offerings being distinctly different than most other print shops we’ve looked through – both online and some local ones, too.

The average person looking to have prints made will likely not need the deep dive of specialized products and custom print sizes like we have. Where CanvasPop shines for “most people” will be in the print quality, speed, and cost. Not to mention, the ease of ordering through their sleek and responsive website.

CanvasPop Print Quality

Print quality is one of the most important things we look at in a print service.

It’s especially important to us because these prints, at times, are a reflection of our photography business such as when we sell prints to our clients.

The quality is one of the first noticeable differentiators between one print company and the next.

No doubt, if they were all the same, we wouldn’t have to have conversations like this. If we could all just head to Wal-Mart’s print lab and be blown away each and every time, these services would cease to exist. The problem is…we can’t…

On the 3 canvas prints we received from CanvasPop, the print quality was stunning.

These were massive 58″ x 29″ canvases.

One of our concerns when placing our order was how our images would translate to this size – as poor quality printing would result in image blurring, pixelation, and so on.

After receiving our prints, you can bet we inspected them thoroughly. Up, down, side-to-side – we went through them with a fine tooth comb. There were no problems. Nothing that misrepresented our work. They were legitimately perfect.

CanvasPop Production & Shipping Speed

On the whole, the production and shipping process was simple. Shipping speeds are in line with what you would expect, with standard and expedited options available. Our prints arrived within the specified timeframe.

The only area we wish that could be improved on is the turnaround time of their print service review. This is an optional component of ordering prints through CanvasPop (and most other online print shops actually) where your order will be reviewed by an actual person. You are provided a proof of your print to review before submitting the final approval. This service takes 1-3 days according to their website. Our experience was a 2 day turnaround.

Of course, it’s not something we can fault them for considering they are transparent of how long this process takes, but when ordering a high priced item (our 3 custom canvases were over $500) and with a deadline to meet, it would be nice to just have the option to expedite this process – even at an added cost.

CanvasPop Prices

At first glance, CanvasPop’s assortment of products are in the mid-to-high price range for print services. This is based on comparisons with other platforms out there that we have used including ZNO, Nations Photo Lab, UPrinting, and so on.

After initially setting up our 3 large canvas prints, our total was just under $1,000. As you might imagine, this is a staggeringly high cost and something we only stomached because we would pass the expense to our client.

Through some digging, we were able to find a 50% off promo code right on their website. Having checked the site on a few occasions, this seems to be a permanent fixture available to anyone looking for a discounted rate. You can check this for yourself on CanvasPop’s Coupons and Deals section.

It’s a strange thing to have a virtually unending 50% discount on products, but it does ultimately impact the overall costs. As we said already, we ended up spending closer to $500. Compared to $1,000 – this is cheap.

Looking at smaller prints that your average person might be buying – prices are competitive as they are set. With this discount, you are looking at costs actually being in the low-to-mid range.

As cost is another huge factor we look at with print shops, these perpetually discounted rates help bring CanvasPop to the top of the line for us. You may still end up paying a little more than some competitors, but given the high quality – there is still a significantly good cost-to-quality ratio here.

Ordering Through CanvasPop

Ordering a canvas print through CanvasPop is a straightforward process. You begin by uploading your image.

This can be a file on your computer, or you can upload from Instagram or Facebook. One of CanvasPop’s unique selling points is enabling you to print images from these social media platforms with quality. This is actually something we have not personally tested. As a rule, any prints we order we will only use a high resolution image for. We would recommend the same for you as the overall print quality will be better with a higher quality image.

After your image is uploaded, you can select your canvas size, frame & edge options, edge type, whether or not you want a digital proof, and even add a filter to the image if you would like.

Our Experience Using CanvasPop

Now that we’ve taken the time to share with you a good amount of information about CanvasPop in general, we’d like to go more in depth about our experience having prints produced by them.

We had 3 large custom sized canvas prints created through CanvasPop.

Our usual online print lab didn’t have the ability to print at the custom size we needed. Some other print shops had them available – but the costs were staggeringly prohibitive.

We were in a bind as we were producing these canvases for a corporate client – The Movie Tavern – who we had shot some landmark scenes in our local area for. These prints would be incorporated into the bar area of the theater, and were needed in a pretty tight time window.

As seen in the above screenshot, our order came out to $609 after our 50% CanvasPop discount coupon code. We, of course, sent an invoice to our client to cover the expenses associated here – but they were happy to hear we were able to decrease the cost significantly compared to our original quote.

The next steps just involved some waiting around. The digital proofs verified that our images would look good in the print. We had the prints within a few weeks. After careful inspection, they checked out with us – and we went ahead and mounted them to the frames we had.

Our CanvasPop Canvas Prints

We wanted to share some photos of the end result of our CanvasPop print order.

Sorry for the low resolution – these were taken on our cell phones.

Conclusion

CanvasPop is an excellent online print lab. We experienced what their products had to offer in a pretty stressful time. We rushed to find a printer that would create large custom sized canvas prints for us, while maintaining quality that would be expected from us and our corporate client.

Based on the quality we have seen with our own eyes, we are comfortable recommending CanvasPop for any of your printing needs. Whether you just want some new artwork to hang in your house, or are placing orders on behalf of clients, CanvasPop has our seal of approval.