To Smugmug or not to Smugmug

[coolie21]

Don't see a link to your site
In your first post you said you didn't want SmugMug because it is based in the US - the site you have gone for doesn't seem to be Australian either. $480 a year is way more than a SmugMug Pro account, what factors influenced your decision? Just curious

[campo]

Don't see a link to your site
In your first post you said you didn't want SmugMug because it is based in the US - the site you have gone for doesn't seem to be Australian either. $480 a year is way more than a SmugMug Pro account, what factors influenced your decision? Just curious

I'm keen to hear too as $40/month is way more then the unlimited everything that SmugMug provides for less!

I suspect it could be the flexibility for printing...definitely not a strong point for SmugMug

[Keith]

In the end I have gone with www.onlinepictureproof.com

So far so good. No hidden costs. No commission. $40 per month. 10GB room. Easy to load photos. Easy to view. Full setup and EXTREMELY easy to use.

Have a look at mine... took me an hour to set everything up how I wanted it. Just need to put on final touches as per usual. Only problem I have is gallery issues.

I was with onlinepictureproof for a year or so, and have just recently (this week) moved over to smugmug. They are about the same to use, but for $480 a year was just too much for me, now I am paying less than $200, or without the need for ordering less than $100!

[kiwi]

Let's get some perspective I pay 5.35 AUD a month for an Australian host provider

I have my own website created with a dowloadable template and took maybe 2 days to develop with zero knowledge of HTML or websites. Mine is a simple site, but I think it works OK. No fuss.

FREE website content manager
FREE wordpress blog
FREE Gallery2 picture hosting that supports direct upload from lightroom, FREE ecommerce, FREE paypal.
FREE gallery security with password protected galleries etc

So, yeah, one click upload, as many pics as I want within reason (remember I am only storing 100K files there). Im up to close to 50000 pics onsite right now you can buy.

What I dont get is direct fulfillment. No big deal, I just have a manual process of converting orders and uploading those orders onto my online lab who send pics back to me or can direct to client for $7.50 extra. Unless the volume becomes ridiculous this works.

Unless you are doing wither big volumes or big sales (sport equates to neither of those) than $40 a month is a waste of $$$

[Wayne]

Kiwi, can you sell digital images directly from your site?

[kiwi]

sure, why not. all i do is take the order and the payment then seperately email the file

[Wayne]

So customers can't take delivery without you sending it manually.

Have you had any difficulty emailing 10+Mb files suitable for large format printing?

[kiwi]

ahh, sorry, I thought you were talking aboyt my "facebook" file option.

For large files I arrange a 3rd party drop box or I load the full res file in a special gallery and give them access to download it from there depending on the situation.

[MKemp]

Do you sell you images at full res or just at 72dpi?

[kiwi]

It depends really on what the client wants, my facebook files are only 72dpi, my digital files are 240 usually. If I supply to media typically it's via FTP at 300 dpi resized to 2048 x 2048. I haven't needed to do anything else to date




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[Wayne]

I too thought about the cheap hosting option, but having to manually "process" the order and either email (maybe too large for mail servers and mailboxes) or upload a Hi-res version to a gallery and password protect it, is what tipped me over the edge to use Smugmug. I thought you may have had an alternative that could deliver Hi-res to a client in real time....

[kiwi]

Maybe it depends on what you mainly supply, I mainly supply prints


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