About Us

As of 2020, we have saved over 200 million memories and counting. All of our orders are processed at our state of the art facility in Indianapolis, IN. We are photography-minded people with diverse backgrounds who want to preserve the world's most important memories. At ScanCafe, we pride ourselves on our quality, convenience and trustworthiness.

Our Mission

Quality

quality What we do is breathe life into memories. Scanning is easy. Reviving images faded by time is not. On every scan we do, our experienced editors, not software, make the critical choices about color, tint, and shading that bring back a photo's original sparkle. After tens of millions of scanned and repaired images, we've learned one great thing: to do it right, it has to be done by hand. With our 3000 dpi enlargement resolution capabilities, you can enjoy crisp, vibrant digital photos on your large-screen TV, printed on a life-size canvas, or reproduced for a stunning large-scale photo album.

Convenience


Convenience We Make This Easy – In this fast-paced world, we’re all busy. That’s why we’ve created as simple of a process to get your memories digitized as possible. Life is full of complicated situations. This is not one of them! Fill out a quick online order form, print a prepaid UPS label, drop your photos in a sturdy box, and ship. Remember, you don't have to agonize over which photos to send. Our "pay only for what you want" feature lets you send everything, then decline up to 20% of the scans free of charge. And all of this comes at a very affordable price.

Trustworthy


trustworthy With a $1000 guarantee that you'll never need to use. We don't leave safety to chance, which is why we may have gone overboard:

  1. Cell Phone Updates: We are the only service that sends you prompt updates on your mobile phone with your order status.
  2. Barcode Tracking: Your box of memories is tracked at every step in the process. You can track the status online, in real-time.
  3. Video Monitoring: The contents of your order are visually recorded before and after they are scanned, as part of a security and verification process.
  4. Weighing: We accurately weigh your box before and after it is scanned as an additional safety measure.

We’ve built the world's best facility for digitizing your memory. It is manned around the clock with over 65 high definition security cameras watching your memories all the time. Every image is not only scanned by hand, but digitally retouched by our professional editing team.

Our Services

Around here, there's no memory we can't save! Learn more about ScanCafe's services and Why CNN Money ranked us #1

How ScanCafe Got Started

Many years ago, one of our co-founders, Laurent, had to travel back to Switzerland to attend the funeral of his grandfather. Every family seems to have a family archivist, and among his many gifts, Laurent's grandfather was an enthusiastic photographer, who left behind countless Agfacolor prints, slides and negatives.

As the engineer in the family, Laurent volunteered to scan in all those old photographs so that they could be shared with the extended family, who are scattered all over the world. Laurent promptly got home, spent $800 on equipment, and began his project. For the next 6 straight weekends, he had to wrestle with scanning, choosing resolutions, re-scanning, cropping, rotating, color correction, and all the other things that people who truly care about preserving memories need to wrestle with. And that was just for the first images — it turns out that he had 28,000 more to go! (We like to joke that it was at this point that he tore out all his hair).

Fortunately, Laurent was also attending business school at the time with our other co-founders, Sam Allen and Naren Dubey. He shared his frustrations with them and together they decided there had to be a better way. The essential problem: how to deliver the high quality that only craftsmanship and manual processing can bring to scanning, but at an affordable price. A solid year of work and planning later, the first order was completed, safely and accurately, by hand. Four years after that, we expanded to handle both video tapes and movie film, with the same attention to quality and safety.

Indianapolis Processing

In 2016, ScanCafe began processing orders in Indianapolis, IN. We recognized being located in the central U.S. allowed us to effectively serve all of our customers throughout the United States. Today, all orders are scanned in our Indianapolis facility - the world’s largest facility created just to handle our customers’ one-of-a-kind memories. We are constantly striving to improve our scanning technology and efficiency so that we can deliver that personal touch to each order.

And Laurent's grandfather's photos? We fixed those up just fine. But so far, we haven't figured out what to do about Laurent's hair.

Frequently Asked Questions

ScanCafe has a very robust and secure UPS shipping process integrated in its order entry system. Our automated shipment software generates the shipping label for you so that you only have to print it and tape it to your package. We strongly recommend that you use this shipping procedure. It will cost you less and will ensure that your package is monitored from the minute you drop it off to the minute it is received. If there is a reason why you can't use UPS to ship your images please call us: 1-866-234-3909.

The privacy and protection of your images is of paramount importance to us. Please refer to our privacy policy.

You may call us at: 1-866-234-3909 or send a fax: 1-866-400-7209. Alternatively, you can send us an email here: [email protected]

ScanCafe is the global leader in scanning with a single, central facility for processing in Indianapolis (IN, USA). All orders are processed in this facility. Previously we did have a scanning operation in India; however, as of June 2019, we decided to scan all orders in the United States.

We have developed a very innovative process that combines technology and a reliable fully owned and operated off-shore infrastructure. Our founders met while attending the Wharton School of Business and have leveraged their experience and global business expertise to build this company from the ground up to be affordable - the reason we started this was because we couldn't find an affordable solution ourselves! Try us out you won't be disappointed!

With express service and for about 1000 standard photo media (35mm Color Negatives. 35mm Color Slides & Paper Photos sized up to 8" X 10") without ANY scanning premiums (pro resolution, tiff or pro library), we need 8-10 business days to make the order online. For every additional 1000 standard photo media, you have to add 4 business days. For non-standard photo media or video/film media, please check the 3rd step of the order form to get to know the estimated turnaround time. With regular service and for about 5000 standard photo media, the order will take 3-5 weeks to go online. Once you review and complete final checkout, the order leaves our facility in 2-3 business days on average.

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