Resources - Written by Josh on Wednesday, July 23, 2008 8:00 - 5 Comments
8 Website Thumbnail Generation Services Compared
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Over the past couple of years, the need for showing a thumbnail for a site has increased pretty dramatically. The large surge in web applications hasn’t hurt the situation either.
So whenever there is a need, there is a business. Multiple web services have popped up for generating thumbnails of varying sizes and it can be a tad overwhelming trying to sift through them all.
Hopefully this list will help you narrow down which service best fits your needs.
| Free Version? | Commercial Cost | Sizes | Speed | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Thmbnl |  |
$19.95/mo (20,000 views) - $149.95/mo (900,000 views) | 60, 100, 160, 320, and 800px wide | < 10 seconds |
| Websnapr | |
Custom service costs for special cases, otherwise completely free for commercial use | 92×70, 202×152, 400×300, 600×480 | < 10 seconds |
| ShrinkTheWeb | |
Starts at $9.95/month | 120×90, 200×150, 320×240; Commercial users get custom sizes | < 5 seconds |
| Bluga.net WebThumb | |
$1.75 per 1000 credits | 75×75 to 1280×2048 | Anywhere from 10-60 seconds |
| Thumbalizr | |
Starts at ~$15/month | Up to 1280px wide | < 30 seconds |
| Super Screenshot! | |
No for-pay version | Up to 1280px wide | Could take many minutes depending on size of queue |
| Alexa Site Thumbnail |  |
$0.0002 per thumbnail | 82×111, 147×201 | < 5 seconds |
| SnapCasa | |
No for-pay version | 100×75, 140×105, 200×150, 280×210 | < 10 seconds |
5 Comments
Thanks for the comment Todd. Your guys service is definitely my personal favorite out of these. Keep up the great work!
Hi Josh,
Thanks for taking a look at our service as well. I should mention that the 250,000 high limit is good for public or commercial use as well. We also have full-length, inside pages, and other PRO features as well.
Best regards,
Brandon
http://www.shrinktheweb.com
Fabio
Nice article. I prepared this webpage http://www.4icu.org/ws.htm to see the results of some of the above services for 2 different URLs.
For some reasons I was not able to make work both Snapcasa.com and MyThumbnail.net. Not sure if there is something wrong in the code I included or in their service.
I personally like the flexibility and outcome of ArtViper.com despite being a bit slower compare to others.
What I do not like of most free services are the standard (and really ugly) images when error are encountered or URLs are queing. I would prefer a transparent image or a customised one prepared by the owner of the site. I guess being free services I should not complain.
(alecs) » Blog Archive » SnapCasa: website thumbnail generator
Thanks for taking a look at thmbnl in your service comparison, Josh. I’d like to add that our developer focus allows us to quickly add enhancements to the API in response to how customers are using the service, often within a week or less, so we like to say ‘what you see is what you start with.’ Where we take thmbnl will depend on the neat things customers want to with the applications that use it.