If you have VHS tapes, film reels, paper photos, and other analog formats that you want to digitize, then you’ve probably come across ScanCafe. While you probably care about quality conversion of digital images and videos as well as security, turnaround time, and more, price is also a major concern. 

With over 20 years of experience converting memories for 12 million customers, Capture knows all about saving money while getting the best results for your most precious memories. That’s why we put together this guide to ScanCafe prices.

Read on to learn about ScanCafe services and pricing structure as well as a comparison with Capture, ScanCafe reviews, and more information so you can make the best decision for your family memories. 

Jump to:

• ScanCafe Services Overview
• Pricing Structure
• Comparisons with Capture
• Customer Reviews and Testimonials

ScanCafe Services Overview

ScanCafe is a digitizing service that offers a wide variety of services that can turn your analog memories into digital files. 

Photo Scanning

ScanCafe bulk photo scanning services can accept old photos up to 8x10, 35mm color slides, 110/126/127 slides and negatives, and 35mm and APS B&W and color negatives. Their scanning process produces 3000 DPI results for slides, medium format, large format, and negatives and 600 DPI resolutions for paper photos. 

Video Conversion

ScanCafe also offers conversion services for a wide variety of videotape formats including VHS, VHS-C, S-VHS, Hi8, Digital 8, MiniDV, Betamax, Umatic, PAL, and Betacam. 

Film Transfer

ScanCafe.com can convert Super 8, 8mm, 16mm, Super 16, and 35mm movie film reels into SD or HD resolution, creating long-lasting digital copies that you can upload to a hard drive.  

 Photo Restoration

ScanCafe offers photo preservation and enhancement for an additional cost, providing color correction, scratch removal, red-eye removal, enlargements, writing removal, and restoring photos with creases, water damage, fire damage, and more. 

Additional Services

ScanCafe can also convert audio cassettes to digital and digitize reel-to-reel audio. Plus, they offer gift cards and gift boxes that make great 50th anniversary gifts or birthday presents. Their value kit works similarly to how Legacybox works as well. 

Pricing Structure

Image Source: Screenshot from www.scancafe.com/pricing

As you can see, ScanCafe offers a lot of different services that can help you preserve your most priceless memories, but is it worth the price? Let’s examine their pricing structure for each format type. 

Photo Scanning Price

ScanCafe scanning costs 48 cents per photo for their standard 3000 DPI negative and slide scanning and 600 DI print scanning. However, they offer Value Kit pricing for bulk orders, which decreases the price per photo cost to 34 cents, but you do have to spend a minimum of $230 for their value kit. 

Additionally, you can have them scan larger photos up to 11x14 for $1.48 per image, medium format photos for $2.48 per image, and large format photos of 4x5 or larger for $5.48 per digital image. 

Video Conversion Pricing

ScanCafe video conversion is priced a la carte by the number of videotapes, with a flat rate of $28 per tape no matter how much footage it contains. They don’t offer bulk discounts for larger orders of videotapes. 

Film Transfer Pricing 

ScanCafe prices for old film reels are based on the length of the film, starting at 34 cents per foot. Like video pricing, they do not seem to offer any discounts for larger orders as they do with photos. 

Photo Restoration Pricing

ScanCafe photo restoration prices depend on the level of damage, services required, and complexity of the restoration. However, they state that their price starts at $3 per photo and they offer free quotes as well. 

Additional Services and Their Costs

ScanCafe service rates for extra services include:

• Files Saved in TIFF file format: 30 cents per photo scanned added to standard pricing.
• Pro Resolution of 4000 DPI for film and 1200 DPI for print: 20 cents extra for each scan.
• Pro Library includes TIFF raw scan, no processing, and JPEG processed image: 44 cents extra per scan.
• USB Drive version: $19 per drive.
• Audio Cassette transfer: $28 per cassette.
• Reel-to-reel audio: 34 cents per foot.
• Digital Download: $10.

Comparisons with Capture

To see whether ScanCafe video conversion, film transfer, and digital photo conversion pricing is a good deal, we’ll do a head-to-head ScanCafe vs Capture comparison. Then, we’ll compare the services as well to give you a full picture of the value and ScanCafe pricing comparison. 

Pricing vs Other Factors

While it might seem like ScanCafe pricing is extremely good, especially when Capture offers more affordable pricing than almost everyone else, there are other factors to consider including quality, turnaround time, and security. 

Even without considering those factors, you have to consider the $10 add-on charge for a digital download with ScanCafe, but it’s the other factors that give a clear picture of the value that each company brings. 

While ScanCafe is known for high quality, Capture has been around longer as the trusted partner of Walmart, Google Photos, CVS Pharmacy, and Costco. Plus, Capture offers a 100% satisfaction guarantee, or we’ll reprocess your entire order for free. 

ScanCafe does offer a Safe Handling Guarantee that’s quite reassuring that they’ll reimburse you for any lost media, but it’s much preferred not to lose your memories in the first place. So, when it comes to quality and high-resolution results, you can hardly go wrong. 

However, Capture also offers a faster turnaround time of less than 30 days compared with a vague 4 to 6 weeks with ScanCafe. This might be due to the fact that even though ScanCafe is located in Indianapolis, they send your memories to India for processing. 

That brings us to security. Sending your priceless family photos, videos, and film reels across the world is risky. Capture processes all orders in the United States and also offers an unparalleled multi-million-dollar tracking security system that monitors your order every step of the way. ScanCafe can’t compare, but neither can anyone else. 

When you consider the very small difference in pricing that could save you a few bucks, compared with the enormous difference in value with Capture offering guarantees, better security, faster turnaround, and more, the choice becomes more obvious. 

However, it’s also important to consider customer feedback, which gives an unbiased view of ScanCafe. 

Customer Reviews and Testimonials

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Image Source: www.scancafe.com/testimonials

ScanCafe reviews are mostly a mixed bag. While positive reviews often praise customer service, quality of services, and their easy-to-navigate website, there are also plenty of ScanCafe complaints. 

Common complaints include slower-than-promised turnaround time, poor customer service, and even hidden fees. This is alarming, but not as alarming as the recurring issue of lost media. This might be attributed to the fact that they send orders to India for processing, increasing the risk of delayed or even lost memories. 

ScanCafe has a 15-year history of providing great service, but if you look at the reviews on Trustpilot and Sitejabber, you’ll notice an overwhelming negative trend over the past few years. In fact, almost every recent review is negative, with most of the positive reviews coming from 2019 or before. 

While we are unsure of what caused this change and used to believe in ScanCafe as a dedicated company on the same mission as Capture, to preserve memories, we admit that this sudden drop off in satisfaction should be concerning to anyone who wants to protect their family memories forever.  

Conclusion

ScanCafe has been a trusted provider for conversion of a wide variety of media types for over 15 years, offering above and beyond photo restoration services and Scan Cafe prices are quite good. However, with a closer look, you’ll see that with their affordable pricing, you’re also sacrificing security, turnaround time, and peace of mind. 

For the perfect balance of price, quality, security, and guaranteed satisfaction, choose Capture. Click here to see how we stack up against ScanCafe and other popular competitors.