I've known for awhile about the existence of PSD to XHTML cutting (slicing) services which can turn your website design straight from Photoshop into clean HTML/CSS in factory assembly line turnaround.  But I didn't realize there there were hundreds, perhaps thousands of little shops like this.  With so many options, a number of sites have sprung up to review these PSD2HTML clones.

If you don't want to read any further then just go with Psd2html.com.  They started the industry and are the most well known and most reviewed.  In general, the reviews are positive.  But there are many, many cheaper options.  If you, like me, always strive to get the best deal, then read on.

Reviewers reviewed

First of all, it's hard to find unbiased information about these companies.  They are generally all not only HTML guys, but SEO experts to boot.  Google is full of spam results in this space.

There are a number of sites dedicated to listing and reviewing PSD to HTML slicing companies.  First, I came across www.mostsliced.com, which reviews 39 sites but none of the ones on the low end of the price range for some reason.  You can't even sort by price, so this site is not very user friendly.

Next, I saw www.psdtohtmlreviews.com.  Only 10 sites reviewed. Consider this site abandoned.

www.reviewpsdtohtml.com is another site, except it's just a list of companies with no reviews.  There are a number of blog posts on other sites with similar lists and no reviews (or one review).  These don't list many companies and are useless to us.

Finally, I hit the motherload with www.psdtohtmlcompanies.com.

There are now 322 listed sites, with search and filter.  Unfortunately, a lot of them don't list their prices so even though searching for slicers under $50 turns up 89 results, many of them may be more than $50.  Still, there's too many to pick from.

If you do a bit of Googling, you'll also find a number of blog posts reviewing a slicing company, or providing a short list of html slicers, but they usually only provide basic information, a screenshot of the company's site, and no reviews.  But sometimes they have long, low signal-to-noise comment threads of people advertising their own slicing companies, and people telling you to avoid certain companies (example: http://vandelaydesign.com/blog/reviews/review-of-markup4u/).

Who to avoid

Summarizing comments I've read, these are companies to avoid:

Avoid HTMLBlender.com, which many customers have complained about.  For example, "HTMLBlender is truly horrible." or "htmlblender is, by far, the worst i’ve ever used. 8 hours, my butt. Try three weeks, crappy code, and a lot of broken promises."

"DO NOT USE HTMLBLENDER!!! THEY HAVE RIPPED OFF TWO PEOPLE I KNOW."

"Even though they are US-based, they farm out work overseas. The work came back sub-standard with many, many issues that they couldn’t rectify."

"Here’s another vote NOT to use http://www.htmlblender.com"

"They abandoned me in the middle of a project. Had to hire somebody else and made me look like a fool to my client."

Also, avoid cssrockstars, codemyconcept, yummycss, and rapidxhtml.

"Fuck cssrockstars." "CSSRockStars.com = AVOID".

"Stay away from YummyCSS. "

"Avoid RAPIDXHTML this company is a FRAUD. "

A lot of complaints about www.codemyconcept.com, perhaps the most complaints for any site.

PSD to ANY - Mixed reviews, enough negative reviews.

Who to try out

So now I'm looking at under-$100 options on psdtohtmlcompanies.com which people don't hate (as far as simple Googling shows) and which don't look too shady or unprofessional or lack add-on services.

I've whittled it down to:

http://www.seo-semantic-xhtml.com/ - $79, $159 for their "professional" package.

http://frontenders.com/ - $99, extras unknown.

http://www.xhtmlchop.com/ - $45, $29 inner pages.

http://www.slicingpsdtohtml.com/ - Hard to tell, but I think $79

http://www.csschopper.com/ - As low as $39 if you choose the 5-day waiting option. Unfortunately, their other services are quite expensive.

http://www.designingstudios.com/ - Indian company, good reviews, but when you go to their site there's no pricing.  Need to request a quote.  

Conclusion

At this point, xhtmlchop.com looks like a good option.  From what little I've read, they are reputable, and their prices are attractive.  But there are a number of other companies in the same price range which I may have passed over too quickly.

Since I'm in Vietnam, and these companies hail from all countries of the world, I found one Vietnamese company: http://5xhtml.com/. They are in Hanoi but aren't exactly cheap, plus their company looks unprofessional compared to the competition.  Too bad, if they were better I would like to give them business.

Extras

The sites above generally fall in the $50-$150 range for a home page, with extra pages half off.  A few sites convert to Drupal themes, but the starting prices are in the several hundred dollar range.  Wordpress is cheap.

Then there are even more companies that also offer html slicing services, but without the transparent fixed pricing.  Why bother getting a quote from them?

There is a free online service that turns .psd to html/css. It’s called psd2cssonline.com.  I've used it with decent results, but don't expect semantic markup where you're not providing it yourself.

You can always have photoshop export to html or use a plugin like SiteGrinder.