Visas are one of the main cost we underestimated in preparing for our trip. There are quite a few countries that require a visa or have entry or exit fees. Some of those visa fees can be as high as $140. There are also countries that require visas to be obtained prior to arrival. If you arrive without a visa they will immediately deport you. While the countries that require visas prior to arrival are in the minority, it would probably ruin your day and possibly your trip if you are traveling to one of them and show up without a visa. So do your research and be prepared and allow for visas in your budget. To find out what the entry/exit requirements are for the countries you will be visiting, go to the travel section of the department of state web site. They also give great information on the conditions abroad that may affect your safety and security.
There are three ways of obtaining visas. You may go in person to the particular country's embassy and wait in line for hours. You do usually get your visa in the same day. You can mail your application, along with your passport and other requirments, directly to the embassy. You avoid the lines but there is a processing time that can range from 4 to 12 days. However, some embassies have outsources their visa application process and require you to go through a third party service. You can go through a third party service for all of your visas even if the embassy still processes applications. The benefit to going through a third party for all of your visas is that if you need visas for multiple countries you can get them all at the same time. This allows you to save on shipping and save time if you're in a hurry. These third party services do charge extra processing fees and are usually around $20 to $55 for each visa. Going directly through the embassy will save you money on processing fees but if you are getting multiple visas you have to weigh the cost of shipping to each individual embassy versus the processing fees for each visa.
In our case we needed to get visas for India and China before we left. Both of these countries do not accept visa applications and require you to go through a third party.
India
Travisa outsourcing is the company outsourced by the Indian embassy, therefore they were the cheapest to use, with minimal fees. They processed our visa very quickly and were very helpful. They kept us updated through every step of the process, letting us know when they had recieved it, what stage of the application process they were in, and when it was being sent back. Since you have to send your passports in to get a visa it puts you at ease to know exactly where your passports are during the process. Travisa, which is a separate site (I believe they are affilated with one another but can't tell), is another great resource for visa requirements and services for other countries and offer passport services as well.
China
China also no longer processes their own visa applications. They did not seem to have a single company outsourced for their service, but you are required to go through a third party. After a lot of searching we found Express Visa 2 China that only charged a $23 processing fee. This was considerably less than other companies due to a special they are running. I don't know how long the special will last, but their original price of $39 was still less than most sites. They also processed our application quickly. They did let us know when they recieved our application and when our visas were on their way back. However, they were not quite as informative as Travisa Outsourcing.
There are quite a few sites that offer visa services. The fees do vary so do some shopping around before you decide on one. If you go to the department of state travel section as suggested above, you can link to any country's embassy and either go directly through them or find out if they have an outsourced company that offers little to no fees. This is my first step before searching the many third party sites.
