Mixbook vs Skoma

Mixbook is one of the best-known general photo-book makers. Its editor is good enough that Skoma’s own drag-and-drop studio is modelled on it. The difference isn’t the editing. It’s what you start from.

With Mixbook you begin with a blank canvas or a template and lay in your own photos. With Skoma you begin with a finished draft of your whole training block, compiled from Strava. Weekly volume, training calendars, route maps, splits and race day are laid out before you touch a thing.

How they compare

The same marathon, made in each

Take a 16-week build to an autumn marathon. In Mixbook you pick a size and a theme, upload your race photos and place them page by page. The numbers are up to you. If you want a weekly mileage chart or your splits, you make them elsewhere and import them as images, or type them into text boxes.

In Skoma you connect Strava and choose the 16 weeks and the race. The draft already has monthly training calendars, weekly distances, the race course on a map, your race splits and the photos you attached to those activities. You then move, swap and delete pages the way you would in Mixbook.

The Mixbook version takes longer, and you control every pixel from the start. The Skoma version is quicker to a first draft, and the data pages are only as complete as your Strava log.

Where the hours go differs too. In Mixbook most of the time is layout: picking a template for each page and placing photos. In Skoma most of it is editing: deleting the pages you don’t want, swapping photos, and writing a few captions about the runs that mattered.

What Mixbook does better

Choice of format. Mixbook offers many sizes and cover types, while Skoma prints hardcovers in three shapes: A4 landscape, A4 portrait and square.

Range. Mixbook’s template library covers weddings, travel, baby books and yearbooks. Skoma has nothing to offer a wedding album.

Entry price. Mixbook’s smallest books start well below a Skoma hardcover. If you only want twenty photos from race day printed, that is the cheaper route.

Where Skoma is the better fit

When the training is the story. The weeks of easy runs, the long runs and the taper are hard to show with photos alone. Skoma draws them from the data you already logged.

When you want to know the price before you start: $49.99 for 50 pages, $0.99 for each extra page, shipping included.

Where the photos come from

Mixbook works from the photos you upload, from your computer or phone. Everything on the page is something you chose.

Skoma starts with the photos you attached to your Strava activities. Those land next to the run they belong to: the long run in the rain sits next to its route map. You can add more photos from your own library in the editor, and remove any you don’t want.

If you rarely add photos to Strava, the Skoma draft will be mostly maps and numbers at first. Plan an evening to add pictures, the same as you would in Mixbook.

What Skoma can’t do

Softcovers, layflat spreads or very small books. A general album with no training in it. A mix of three years of family holidays.

For any of those, Mixbook is the better tool, and it is worth knowing before you start.

Skoma also can’t fill gaps in your log. Runs you never recorded won’t appear, though you can add activities by hand.

And the data pages show what your watch recorded. If the GPS line cut through buildings on race day, the map shows that too. A Mixbook page only shows what you put on it.

Which should you choose?

Details reflect each provider’s publicly available information and may change; brand names are trademarks of their respective owners.