Qeepsake vs. The Short Years vs. Baby Notebook: Pick Your Perfect Memory Book App

Most people think of a baby book as a handwritten scrapbook, but Baby Book apps are much more convenient in today's digital world. What can sound like a fun scrapbooking project before your baby is born can become overwhelming. Who has time to print, cut, and paste photos, let alone scroll through your phone's endless camera roll? If you're a busy mom looking for a convenient way to document your baby's first year a baby book app is the perfect solution for you. In this post, we compare Qeepsake, The Short Years, and Baby Notebook. Take a look at our comparison and pick the perfect app to preserve your family's memories.

Comparing Qeepsake, the Short Years, and Baby Notebook

This chart gives you a side-by-side comparison of Qeepsake, The Short Years, and Baby Notebook. We'll dive into the details in the following section.

Digging into the Details of Each Memory Book App

1. Convenience

Convenience is probably a major reason you're interested in a memory book app. Each of these apps allows you to create a baby book on the convenience of your phone. Let's dive right into how these three apps compare.

Qeepsake

Qeepsake's main appeal is that they text you questions to answer about your baby. You can choose to receive 2+ text messages a day, depending on your subscription plan. You can respond with an answer and a photo, which gets added to your book. This text message format sets it apart from the other apps. The downside of this feature is that if you plan to print your book, it lacks the ability to change the page layout. What you see in your book preview is what you get.

The Short Years

The Short Years sends notifications once a week reminding you to answer ‘This week's questions' in the app. In the Short Years app, you'll answer questions without viewing your book. However, you can navigate to specific chapters of your book to preview your pages.

Baby Notebook

Baby Notebook sends specific reminders to upload photos and answer writing prompts relevant to baby's age via weekly notifications. You'll schedule your notifications in the app for a day and time you can actually sit down and have a minute to upload recent photos or answer a writing prompt. (Naptime, bedtime, or while you're pumping at work are always good options.)

Preview the first three chapters of each Baby Notebook book when you download the app for free!

2. Flexibility and Inclusivity

When you're choosing a memory book app, you want to make sure that you can tailor it to your family's unique story.

Qeepsake

While Qeepsake is convenient, the program's design doesn't allow for customizations, such as choosing page layouts. The overall photo journal records your answers to pre-made questions and you can choose to answer those questions or choose to “pass” on a question. If you don't answer a text message, that question will not appear in your book. Qeepsake does allow you to free write. 

The Short Years

This app offers customizations such as editing or deleting prompts and additional pages to document infertility or NICU journey. In addition, you can choose from 12 different photo collage pages.  

Baby Notebook

Baby Notebook offers the highest level of customization, making it a great option for all families.  Hear it from Ashley Hasty on our guest blog post:

"What I particularly loved about Baby Notebook is that I could delete or change pages that didn't apply to our unique family. For example, my son came six weeks early so I didn't have a bump photo for the last six weeks of a typical pregnancy, but I was easily able to change the bump photo dates that made sense for my pregnancy journey." - Ashley Hasty

We don't offer NICU pages, yet, but the book is flexible enough for parents to be able to swap out pages from the Pregnancy chapter for ones that can better tell their NICU story, adoption story and more. 

Baby Notebook also offers 20 photo pages to choose from, 15 photo and text pages, 6 colorful quote pages, 5 photo and title pages, single-parent family tree and a twin page group to add a second baby to your book for twin mamas. These pages can either replace a page in your book or added to your book at an additional cost

Baby Notebook's flexible features make it work for twin families, adoptive families, LGBTQIA+ families and single-parent families. 

3. Quality and Design

You're putting a lot of effort into preserving your family's memories. Why not do so with coffee table-worthy design?

Qeepsake

Of the three memory book apps explored here, Qeepsake has the least to offer in terms of page layout design. It's a fairly conventional photo album. 

The Short Years

If you're familiar with Artifact Uprising's binder, you'll have a good sense of what to expect from The Short Years.  After purchasing your binder upfront, you can order your pages, which are printed on cardstock. The downside is that the cardstock pages are clipped into a 3-ring binder and this can be difficult for a child to flip through. They do offer 12 colored cloth covers to choose from and a printed insert for baby's name. This gives The Short Years a more visual appeal than Qeepsake, but your photos are printed on cardstock paper instead of in a high-quality print photo book. 

Baby Notebook

You've probably picked up by now that we're big on design over here. Baby Notebook co-founder Davia has a 15-year design background. The app's user interface is intuitive. You view each page of your book as you fill it out. Baby Notebook is designed in true baby book format. We also include many writing prompt ideas and it comes with all the flexibility you need as a modern parent. 

The printed book is modern, clean, and timeless, which Davia craved for her children's baby books. The book is substantial in size. It is a 115-page 12x12 hardbound book with high-quality print. The book showcases your baby's photo and name (if you choose) on the cover. Our customers rave about our quality.  

“The book itself is large and honestly, stunning. I guess I didn't pay attention to how big it would be because when it arrived I was taken aback at how large it was. Gorgeous!”

See the quality of our books in this video. 

As parents themselves, the co-founder and sisters, Davia and Suzanne, drew on their own experiences to create prompts for all four of our books in the moment as their babies grew. 

4. Options to Continue Memory Keeping

Your family doesn't stop making memories the moment your child turns one. Learn which memory book apps give you the best options for continuing to tell your story.

Qeepsake

Because Qeepsake isn't dedicated to one stage of your family's life like a baby book is, you can continue to work on one book or do a new book every year. 

The Short Years

The Short Years offers a Toddler Years Upgrade. It gives you an additional five chapters to document your child's toddler years through age 5. You'll also receive a larger binder to hold all your pages in one book. The downside of the larger binder is, the more difficult it can be to flip the pages of your book. 

Baby Notebook

Baby Notebook goes further in offering four separate books for each unique stage of your family's life: Baby Book (pregnancy to baby's first birthday), Toddler Book (12 to 24 months), the Magic Years Book (24 to 36 months), and our Family Yearbook (January to December) for all the years that follow. Each comes with journaling prompts tailored to your child's age and milestones, with our Family Yearbook prompting you based on the calendar year. The books look incredible as a set and are fun to look back on. Since the early years are so busy, you'll enjoy spending quality time looking through each one with your child(ren) as they grow.

5. Pricing

Qeepsake

The price of a Qeepsake book depends on the number of pages you print in addition to the subscription you choose; a Plus subscription costs $47.88/ year and Premium costs $95.88/year. Since the cost of the book depends on how many pages you complete, you won't know the final cost of your book until you finish. Similar to Baby Notebook's Premium subscription plan Qeepsake also offers a larger discount when it comes time to print with their Premium subscription. You can download Qeepsake free with 1 texted question per week, however you are unable to print a book with the lite version of their app.

The Short Years

The Short Years doesn't require a subscription. However, the Baby Book (binder) starts at $129, which you have to pay upfront if you want the pages to be shipped to you throughout the year.

Baby Notebook

Baby Notebook is free to download with access to the first three chapters of all four books (Baby, Toddler, the Magic Years, and the Family Yearbook). Our baby book includes your Pregnancy, Family, and Home Chapters, all the chapters you need during pregnancy. You can subscribe after your little one arrives. You'll find our  Premium subscription at $49.99/year offers the best value. You'll receive a 40% discount on the book. That's $99 per book, normally $165 full price. 

Compare that to photo album sites like Shutterfly. Baby Notebook is priced very reasonably considering the size, quality and amount of pages, which would run at least $215.94 with a 51% Costco discount on Shutterfly. 

For those who've received their books, they're impressed with the quality and price. Hear it from Olivia:

"Wow! I just received my baby book yesterday and I'm so impressed! The quality of the photos and the sturdiness of the book are just gorgeous... The book itself is not overpriced and the cost is very reasonable for the amount of pages. It's a substantial book... I will tell you that other sites charge double to triple this amount and the quality is not even close." 

Baby Notebook's Premium subscription allows us to offer you a better book price. We've found  that our subscription model holds our customers accountable, helping them *actually* complete their baby book. Our customers agree:

“The model of the subscription REALLY holds you accountable to finish the book. I put weekly reminders on my phone to work on it and by the time my baby was 13.5 months old, I had the book in my hands. Considering my wedding was 4 years ago and I STILL haven't made our wedding album…. That's saying something.

Launching Your Memory Book Journey

If you want to create a beautiful, high-quality print, hardbound baby book that you can share with your little one as they grow, with the option to continue documenting in a cohesive yearly memory book, then the Baby Notebook app is for you.

Qeepsake and The Short Years bring different strengths to your memory keeping journey, that you might consider. Once you experience Baby Notebook's intuitive design, weekly reminders that meet you at your baby's age and stage, and the simplicity of customizing your book to tell your baby's unique story, we think you'll find that Baby Notebook brings an added layer of ease and quality to your experience. For convenience, flexibility, and in-app and book design, the Baby Notebook consistently receives a lot of love from customers. One described her experience this way:

“I absolutely love my stunning baby book! I will definitely be using this app again for my next baby. The process was so smooth and helped me stay organized and not overwhelmed with creating my book. I love how clean, neat, and gorgeous it looks! A million thank yous!!” - Kim

Download the Baby Notebook app and start your memory book today!

Thank you to Erin Nti-Addae for these beautiful photos of the Baby Notebook 

This post is intended as a business promotional content for Baby Notebook. The comparisons are based on available information and personal experiences with the featured memory book apps. Please consider your specific needs and preferences when selecting a memory book app.