If you want to scan old photos into digital images or convert old film and home movies to digital format, choosing a reliable company is essential. One popular option is ScanCafe, but is it the best choice? There’s no better way to find out than to check out ScanCafe customer feedback. 

Capture has preserved memories for over 12 million families, so we understand the importance of customer satisfaction. That’s why we put together this guide to ScanCafe reviews so you can determine if they are the best choice for you. 

Keep reading to learn about ScanCafe services, evaluate reviews, compare them with alternatives, and ultimately decide if they are the best choice for your family photos, home movies, and film reels. 

Jump to:

• Understanding ScanCafe’s Offerings
• What Customers Are Saying: ScanCafe Reviews
• ScanCafe vs. Competitors
• Capture.com’s Take on ScanCafe

Understanding ScanCafe’s Offerings

ScanCafe is a digitization service with over 15 years of experience and claims to have scanned over 150 million memories. They offer photo, photo slide, APS negative, and 35mm negative scanning services as well as VHS, S-VHS, Hi8, MiniDV, and Betamax conversion and 8mm and Super 8 mm film transfer. 

They can also digitize reel-to-reel audio and convert audio cassettes to digital. In addition, they offer data extraction for memory cards, CDs and DVDs, and floppy discs. They charge $28 for videotapes and $0.30 per foot of film, but they tend to focus primarily on photo scanning. 

In fact, they also offer photo restoration services including color correction, scratch removal, cropping, dust removal, and red-eye removal. They say they create high-resolution images with JPG and TIFF files that have a high 600 DPI resolution allowing for 2x enlargement. 

Their photo scanning pricing structure is $0.48 per photo up to 8” x 10” or a value kit is available starting at $0.34 per scan. Their value kit contains plastic bags to protect your memories during transit. However, these prices don’t include photo restoration, which is available for an additional charge. 

While their photo editing, scanning process, and digitization of family memories sounds fantastic, do their customers agree? 

What Customers Are Saying: ScanCafe Reviews

By looking at customer experiences with ScanCafe photo scanning services and other digitization and photo restoration options, you can learn more about their services and if they fulfill their promises. 

Starting with Yelp, you can see that ScanCafe has a 3.4 out of 5-star rating with 254 reviews. On SiteJabber, there are only 20 reviews, and they hold a low 2.4-star rating while their 1.25 star and F with the Better Business Bureau is also alarming.

Positive ScanCafe customer stories praise high-quality scans, easy-to-use services, and helpful customer service. Some customers even say that the quality and turnaround time were both excellent and use them over and over again. 

However, there are tons of negative reviews as well. Many indicate that the pricing structure was misleading and that their memories were sent all the way to India for processing. In fact, it seems that ScanCafe.com always, or almost always, uses a processing plant in India instead of simply scanning old photographs, negatives, and 35 mm slides in the USA. 

Several negative reviews say things like “do not use this company” and “too bad there are no negative stars” due to terrible ScanCafe experiences. Multiple ScanCafe complaints also mention horrible image quality, long turnaround time, and missed photos, portions of videos, or sections of film. 

As you can see, while some ScanCafe reviews mention great results for their photo and slide scanning or other services, the negative reviews are pretty bad. To see if they really are a bad choice to scan or restore pictures, home movies, and film reels, it’s a good idea to compare ScanCafe vs. the competition. 

ScanCafe vs. Competitors

To determine who does a better job between ScanCafe vs. Capture, LegacyBox, iMemories, and other digitization services, it’s important to compare different factors including reviews. 

Turnaround time is one of the biggest LegacyBox complaints, for example, but ScanCafe isn’t much better. While they claim a 4-to-6-week turnaround time, Capture and iMemories offer faster processing for your precious memories. 

Then when it comes to the best prices, ScanCafe doesn’t do much better, at least not without a discount or gift card. For videotapes and film, iMemories is more expensive while most other services are cheaper, but for photos ScanCafe has decent pricing that’s slightly lower than Capture and significantly lower than LegacyBox’s costs. 

However, you have to consider also that ScanCafe charges extra for a digital download while you get that free with Capture including a 60-day backup and upload to Google Photos. Furthermore, while ScanCafe has better security with video monitoring in their facility and weight upon arrival and prior to shipping, the fact that your precious memories have to travel all the way to India isn’t very comforting. 

When it comes to services, ScanCafe does offer audio digitization like LegacyBox. They also offer photo restoration services on their own, which is something that their competitors don’t offer. On the other hand, Capture offers touchless photo album scanning that’s unavailable with any of ScanCafe, iMemories, or LegacyBox competitors. 

That means that we scan each photo in your album to create a high-quality digital image without anyone ever having to remove or risk damaging the print or paper photo. Plus, Capture includes glare removal, cropping, and color correction with photo album scanning and photo scanning and it’s included in the price, unlike ScanCafe which charges separately for photo restoration. 

Finally, when it comes to ScanCafe, Capture, LegacyBox, and iMemories customer reviews, Capture has an A+ BBB rating, iMemories has a 4.74 on SiteJabber, and even LegacyBox reviews are better than ScanCafe despite common complaints. 

So, when it comes down to it, ScanCafe probably isn’t the best company to convert photos to digital or preserve your home movies and film reels. 

Capture.com’s Take on ScanCafe

Whether you choose Capture, ScanCafe, or another option, we want you to preserve and protect your memories. That’s why we think it’s important to provide you with objective information, including comparisons of ScanCafe vs. competitors. 

If you want to know how to digitize old photos, videotapes, and films, then ScanCafe is only one of many options. In our opinion, they claim to offer some fantastic photo scanning and restoration services, but ScanCafe ratings and reviews tell another story with common complaints about quality, turnaround time, customer service, and pricing. 

As an alternative to ScanCafe digitizing, Capture offers complete protection for your memories including a 100% satisfaction guarantee and a state-of-the-art tracking and security system. Plus, we get your memories back to you in less than 30 days. 

While we think that ScanCafe’s facilities are good for offering video monitoring, we know that most customers would prefer sending their memories to our facility in Georgia or even where LegacyBox is located in Tennessee instead of across the world to India. 

Plus, whether you want to convert movie film, color slides, or old video camera footage, Capture offers high-quality digital file results. We do our best to preserve every scanned image, foot of film, or second of home movie footage in the highest possible quality, for every customer. 

Conclusion

Whether you plan on digitizing your own memories or getting someone a gift box that includes preserved photos, home movies, and film reels, it’s important to choose a company that will not only produce great results, but also protect your analog media. ScanCafe reviews are quite alarming in this respect with many customers pointing out poor quality results, expensive pricing, and awful customer service. 

So what option is better than ScanCafe services? Capture offers high quality results that have been trusted for over 20 years. Click here to see how we compare with competitors including ScanCafe, LegacyBox, and iMemories.