I haven't read all of this but I read plenty on my email and on the blog. So disappointed. I'm a creature of habit and I'm not happy about having to go elsewhere. I don't think I've even sold $50 worth of product on my Smugmug and don't believe I'll be able to justify another $100. I have a question though. How do I find out what my renewal date is? I know it's in October but I can't remember what date in October. I am trying to decide if I need to frantically find someone else to go to before my renewal or if I have a little time. I believe my renewal is before October 15th which would mean I should still just be charged the same $150 until next renewal. That would give me plenty of time to get my stuff off of Smugmug and look elsewhere. Man this sucks so bad all around. :-S
Go to Account Settings/Me/Subscriptions and the renewal date is at the top of the screen.
If I had it to do again, instead of a big increase like we just made after 7 years, I would have increased prices slowly over the 7 years. It seems the competition that has lasted raised prices and the ones who didn't fell into irrelevance or went away.
Lesson learned and we're really sorry for the big increase.
I'm one of 67% price increase recipient for when my subscription expires in Mar-2013. Please explain:
Will have the pay the extra $50 on the following year to $300 or will I stay at $250?
Since you will be more expensive than Zenfolio and almost the same price as PhotoShelter, I need some kind of roadmap with some kind of time frame, for example:
"Proper" tablet/smart phone support by Spring 2013
HTML 5 support by Summer 2013. (It only works for very specific browser version/computer/os combinations)
Go to Account Settings/Me/Subscriptions and the renewal date is at the top of the screen.
Thank you so much. My renewal date is October 6th, 2012. Does that mean I won't see the increase this renewal or that I will? I'm a little confused by all of the conflicting info I've read.
Thank you so much. My renewal date is October 6th, 2012. Does that mean I won't see the increase this renewal or that I will? I'm a little confused by all of the conflicting info I've read.
The way it's been explained to me, the price increase is effective Oct. 15th so your account will renew before the price increase and you won't see the higher price until the renewal next year after this one. If you want to be absolutely sure, you could email the helpdesk.
The way it's been explained to me, the price increase is effective Oct. 15th so your account will renew before the price increase and you won't see the higher price until the renewal next year after this one. If you want to be absolutely sure, you could email the helpdesk.
Thank you so much John. That's the way I was reading it but wanted to see if anyone else thought the same thing. At least that will give me a year to think on whether I want to transition elsewhere.
At least that's my thought. I think those of us who shoot youth sports would sell a lot more if parents didn't have to pay $2-3 in postage for one $2.00 print.
$2-3 in postage--what would you have them do differently? Not protect the photo from bending? You choose to sell prints for $2? (Hard to imagine how your business can be profitable considering overhead, unless you somehow don't have the expenses the rest of us do.) Maybe you should promote packages instead, 8 for $xx, then the shipping is cost effective. Your model is very different than mine, where a 4x6 is $15, or 8 for $100. Over 3K items sold from 2006 on, once I stopped doing self-fulfillment. Not huge, but not bad either, and at the top of my niche market.
I have been active on the smug blog with replies. I agree that they should have crafted a better hobbyist/semi pro package, the new portfolio package seems like it is self-fulfillment oriented, like for fine artists. It is hard for me to imagine that people don't cull nor limit the pixel dimensions before they upload. I guess in this age of super-fast broadband, they feel as if they don't have to. I'd imagine the power users are space hogs, but not development hogs. Noisy pros like me are, who want those full event features. When I started with Smuggy in 2004, it was a photo sharing site oriented towards hobbyists and transformed itself--as opposed to Exposure Manager, PrintRoom, which started out as event-centric.
My shots get culled in Expression Media (now Media Pro, a POS), picks made, only those go into Lightroom for proof prep. They go up to SmugMug at 2200 px on the long side, so web files from my cam are about 500 KB each. So while I shoot events, my files aren't space hogs at 54 GB since 2004.
The other surprising thing is how so many on the blog feel that SmugMug (without Filevault) is their **archive**, to whom they've "trusted" their photo repository for all time. That is anathema to me, I am the one responsible for my own archive, in duplicate.
I disagree with the people who feel this move is indicative of company trouble, or of future malfeasance. My perception is that this wrongly delayed move is perceived as betrayal by a company who has striven to have a friendly, family face on their enterprise.
The other surprising thing is how so many on the blog feel that SmugMug (without Filevault) is their **archive**, to whom they've "trusted" their photo repository for all time. That is anathema to me, I am the one responsible for my own archive, in duplicate.
I suspect this type of usage is partly ruining Smugmug for those of us who actually use it only for photo display. That's why I think that ultimately, Smugmug has to align what the charge with what drives their costs. If events and packages are costly support, then it's logical that those that use them might pay more. Any, I think ultimately, customers are going to take advantage of the unlimited storage until Smugmug creates some storage tiers that folks have to pay for. The $300 top tier can stay unlimited, but I think ultimately the lower levels are going to have storage limits/fees. I have no doubt that Smugmug would lose some customers if they did this, but if they do this, the customers they will lose are the ones storing the most images that Smugmug is already losing money on.
On the other hand, doing it the way they're doing now, they're just getting people with pro accounts now (and not selling a lot) to downgrade to power accounts. So, we just keep using as much storage as before, but now they collect even less money from us. That doesn't really help and means they're still going to keep having this problem in the long run. Meanwhile, the cheaper accounts just keep using as much storage as they always have.
The only long term solution here is to implement storage levels. If they do it right, the only customers they're likely to lose by doing this are the ones that aren't profitable in the first place (the ones looking for more storage than their business is worth). The way they're doing it now, they're going to keep the high storage users and lose many pro account users who don't sell enough to justify the $300. A low storage customer that was paying $150/yr was likely a very profitable customer. I think they've really messed up their study of both how to solve their problem long term, how to encourage the best customers to stay and how to align their fees with their costs.
FYI, I pay separately for a full online backup service (BackBlaze) because I wanted something that is completely automatic and backs up all my files, not just the JPEGs that I upload. I do not consider Smugmug as a backup service.
[QUOTE=pgman;1813205
Will have the pay the extra $50 on the following year to $300 or will I stay at $250?
[/QUOTE]
Hi pgman - You'll be grandfathered at the lower rate of $250 at your next renewal - until then, you're paid in full at the previous annual rate of $150.
And thanks for the input on features you'd like to see implemented. We hear ya!
Could you provide further details on your inquiry re HTML5? I'm unclear on how our current integration is not working for you...
Thank you so much. My renewal date is October 6th, 2012. Does that mean I won't see the increase this renewal or that I will? I'm a little confused by all of the conflicting info I've read.
Hi Kris - John's correct - you're account renewing on Oct 6th would do so at the old rate of $150.
I disagree with the people who feel this move is indicative of company trouble, or of future malfeasance. My perception is that this wrongly delayed move is perceived as betrayal by a company who has striven to have a friendly, family face on their enterprise.
Thanks so much for these sentiments, Lynne - that's pretty much the long and the short of it right there. Each year we'd look at our amazing growth on ALL fronts vs 'thinning profits,' and the 'should we raise prices?' question would start being passed about. Don and Baldy would think about it, and say, "No. We don't want to hit our customers with a price increase. We'll just tighten our belts.'
As they've both posted numerous times, in retrospect, a modest increase every 2-3 years would have been much easier to swallow, but it came to the point where this was a business 'must' for us in order to continue to grow, improve and of course, keep offering the world class support we're know for.
Amazing 'stuff' is in the works, and we're busting at the seams to get it out there for you all!
The only long term solution here is to implement storage levels. If they do it right, the only customers they're likely to lose by doing this are the ones that aren't profitable in the first place (the ones looking for more storage than their business is worth). The way they're doing it now, they're going to keep the high storage users and lose many pro account users who don't sell enough to justify the $300. A low storage customer that was paying $150/yr was likely a very profitable customer. I think they've really messed up their study of both how to solve their problem long term, how to encourage the best customers to stay and how to align their fees with their costs.
I agree with your thoughts. The "unlimited" is a blind spot. It's the equivalent of the "open road" for driving enthusiasts, eh? As an event pro, the idea of not having to prune galleries means I can have archives open for business for years. In my niche, my customers take advantage of that by ordering my "Instant Album" package, 8 for $100 (lustre) and enjoy trolling the archives. Some might argue that there's no sense of urgency, that they're treating my images as an online scrapbook--there is a subset that truly do that. But relatively speaking, 54 GB of culled proofs is not akin to the weekly sports shooters who dwarf everyone else. But if the price of keeping those galleries open and not having to watch the odometer is the top tier price, I'll pay that.
I hope they can get some surgery on that blind spot, and see more clearly--if they were willing to work with dGrinners to craft the new galleries, why oh why did they not choose some from various backgrounds to serve as a focus group (or not even as a group) for this monumental shift? Not monumental for me, I did the math, amortized it across the years without increases, and will keep my account. Compared to what it costs to create, host, protect a photo/e-commerce site let alone enhance it, the cost is very low and I'm not willing to feature-compare to shift elsewhere. My site is overdue for enhanced customization, and just like I'm no longer wiling to do my own auto repair, I'll use a customizer again for the work.
On the other hand, doing it the way they're doing now, they're just getting people with pro accounts now (and not selling a lot) to downgrade to power accounts.
It will be incredibly unfortunate if the power accounts end up hosed because of this. They are at about the right price point for the features provided.
It will be incredibly unfortunate if the power accounts end up hosed because of this. They are at about the right price point for the features provided.
S3 storage at the largest usage tier gets you 90GB for $60/yr ($0.055 per GB/mo). Figure Smugmug has many more costs than just storage including all their other server infrastructure, their own storage outside of Amazon, support, development, etc... and it's easy to imagine that they lose money on any power user who has more than 25-45GB of storage. Right now those customers are being subsidized by users who use a lot less storage than that. If the model of some users subsidizing other users breaks down and you need to fix it for the long term, then you're usually best off if you figure out how to get the users that cost the most relative to what they pay to pay more (or leave the service) rather than just trying to get other users to subsidize even more. Smugmug's current move is to make sure the pros pay for their own unlimited storage and to get them to help subsidize the other large users even more than they were.
Since this problem just continues to get worse over time when you have unlimited storage (users just continue to accumulate more and more storage over time and camera sensors get more and more MP), if you don't fix it structurally, you'll keep having the same problem over and over and eventually you'll be trying to tax some users so heavily for the subsidy to pay for the high disk usage users that the good customers will leave and you'll only be left with the bad customers which could easily put your business in a bad spiral.
If, on the other hand, they align what they charge with what drives costs in the service, then users will either mange their own storage to a level that works financially for Smugmug or the high (unprofitable) users will leave and the low users (profitable ones) will stay. This gives you a much better future. Certainly any change will cause tumult in the user base, but Smugmug needs to look at where they will be 12-36 months from now and make sure they make a change that puts them in a good spot for the future even if some (mostly unprofitable) users leave now.
Zenfolio is a younger company so they may not yet be feeling the weight of the accumulated storage that Smugmug is just quite yet, but sooner or later, it will hit everyone with unlimited storage and no incentives for customers to manage their own storage. The older your customers are, the more they've probably accumulated.
After being away all weekend and opening up my email to find that my Pro subscription is going up by $100 got me a bit pissed at first. Instead of posting right away ( I do this sometimes), I sat down and thought about it for a while.
Does it suck that they raised my subscription by $100? Hell yeah. Did I think my Pro account was under priced for what I was getting? Yep. Sure, if they raised the price by say $25 a year for the past 4 years would we be bitching right now? Probably not.
After reading this thread, it is clear that people have some issues that need to be addressed. For those who decide to move on, I hope you find the greener grass you seek. For me, I am staying right here. It took my 3 years to build what I have now and I feel that the strong customer support of Smugmug helped me get here. I am not going to "jump ship" and risk losing what it took me so long to build.
I do hope that the extra money will allow for faster introduction to upgrades we were promised. We'll just have to see. So instead of complaining about things, just move on. I don't see the point of getting pissed off or aggravated when you feel you have found a solution by switching to another hosting site. Switch and concentrate on what you love...photography.
Amazing 'stuff' is in the works, and we're busting at the seams to get it out there for you all!
So we keep hearing. If we are to stick our hand into our pocket, it is only fair that you guys give us something less vague about what we will get in return. The video I saw said you have 40 developers, you can't tell me there isn't a plan for what they are doing.
Amazing 'stuff' is in the works, and we're busting at the seams to get it out there for you all!
It absolutely boggles my mind why you'd do the big price increase before releasing "amazing stuff". Basic psychology or understanding of human emotions should know that throwing out a big price increase when new features are long, long overdue is way more likely to create dissatisfaction than doing so AFTER amazing stuff has been introduced. Simply boggles my mind!
John... Boggles my mind too, but we know better than most that Smugmug never announce new features or release dates.
They wish they had a better answer for us, they really do.
Cheers - N
I didn't say they should pre-announce new features. I said they should have waited to increase prices until after the new features were released. That was totally within their control.
I didn't say they should pre-announce new features. I said they should have waited to increase prices until after the new features were released. That was totally within their control.
Fair point, but when was the last major feature released? One that wasn't half assed in the implementation?
I'd say, despite the issues with it, probably 'packages'... Foreign currency support was a joke - I mean it took over 7 years from the howling requests and at least 18 months from when it leaked that they were working on it, PLUS it only supports a small subset of currencies.
My point is that Smugmug seem to have lost the capability to execute, probably because their back end systems simply can't scale in a logical sense.
I hope the 40 developers have been rewriting it from the ground up, and in fact that's the only thing that would make sense given the trickle of features over the last 5 years.
However, if that is the case, then yes, I agree, a simple 100% price rise should have been aligned with a major capability announcement - that would have defused most of the outrage and given a logical, tangible reason for the increase.
As it is, a 100% increase with a "Trust us, we're doing stuff" is a hollow and disingenuous statement to me. Smugmug has earnt my respect for support, but never have they demonstrated to me that they can deliver large features smoothly.
S3 storage at the largest usage tier gets you 90GB for $60/yr ($0.055 per GB/mo). Figure Smugmug has many more costs than just storage including all their other server infrastructure, their own storage outside of Amazon, support, development, etc... and it's easy to imagine that they lose money on any power user who has more than 25-45GB of storage. Right now those customers are being subsidized by users who use a lot less storage than that. If the model of some users subsidizing other users breaks down and you need to fix it for the long term, then you're usually best off if you figure out how to get the users that cost the most relative to what they pay to pay more (or leave the service) rather than just trying to get other users to subsidize even more. Smugmug's current move is to make sure the pros pay for their own unlimited storage and to get them to help subsidize the other large users even more than they were.
Since this problem just continues to get worse over time when you have unlimited storage (users just continue to accumulate more and more storage over time and camera sensors get more and more MP), if you don't fix it structurally, you'll keep having the same problem over and over and eventually you'll be trying to tax some users so heavily for the subsidy to pay for the high disk usage users that the good customers will leave and you'll only be left with the bad customers which could easily put your business in a bad spiral.
If, on the other hand, they align what they charge with what drives costs in the service, then users will either mange their own storage to a level that works financially for Smugmug or the high (unprofitable) users will leave and the low users (profitable ones) will stay. This gives you a much better future. Certainly any change will cause tumult in the user base, but Smugmug needs to look at where they will be 12-36 months from now and make sure they make a change that puts them in a good spot for the future even if some (mostly unprofitable) users leave now.
Zenfolio is a younger company so they may not yet be feeling the weight of the accumulated storage that Smugmug is just quite yet, but sooner or later, it will hit everyone with unlimited storage and no incentives for customers to manage their own storage. The older your customers are, the more they've probably accumulated.
Right, I get that, the math isn't hard. My point is, Power accounts are basically Standard accounts + customization. If smugmug effs up (and it appears that they already have) and all the pros cut down to power, and they have to start restricting power accounts, then I'm going to be pissed off. A bunch of pros who can't come up with a spare $10 a month for their incredibly generous hosting service ruin a good thing for everyday users who want to be able to customize the appearance of their site. $300 a year is dirt cheap for big data hosting, and pros relying on hosting to share their product should expect to pay big for that.
If storage is killing them, then they need to fire their customers that abuse the unlimited service, not hose the rest of us. There was that one guy that wanted to upload some absurd number of photos (like 22TB or something?) and smugmug was bending over backwards for him. Gotta be smarter than that.
To be honest, I never bought it when Don was so gung-ho to switch over to Amazon for the storage. He complained that disks were sunk cost, but the advantage was that when they bought them on their own, and if they filled for now and ever, then (minus failures) the cost was already taken care of. Renewals pay for new disks for new uploads. In retrospect, if storage costs are indeed the issue, S3 is going to be a huge mistake.
Fair point, but when was the last major feature released?
IMO, Coupons and Packages, 2010.
As it is, a 100% increase with a "Trust us, we're doing stuff" is a hollow and disingenuous statement to me.
I agree they should have timed the price increase announcement after the new "stuff" announcement.
Smugmug has earnt my respect for support, but never have they demonstrated to me that they can deliver large features smoothly.
Wrong. Coupons and Packages were large, flawless, and smooth, as long as you know how to RTFM. I realize they confused a lot of liberal arts majors, but that's not SM's fault.
-Jack
An "accurate" reproduction of a scene and a good photograph are often two different things.
If storage is killing them, then they need to fire their customers that abuse the unlimited service, not hose the rest of us. There was that one guy that wanted to upload some absurd number of photos (like 22TB or something?) and smugmug was bending over backwards for him. Gotta be smarter than that.
Ever since I heard about this and the complaints about rising storage costs I thought back to this very episode.
My renewal is at the end of the month so I'll get a relatively free ride to see what wondrous new features will be brought forth but part of me wants to just jump ship. Been hearing about great new features for years and have really received nothing. What exactly is coming up?
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It seems simple to me. Leave the existing structure in place and charge a premium for exceeding a certain GB level of storage. Basic gets 100GB, Power gets 500GB and pros get a TB for example.
If you go past your limit you pay a premium. Same model as the cell phone companies use. Unlimited is a crazy unsustainable business model. We are seeing the results of this now.
What this would do is make users manage their accounts better and remove all the old images from 5 year old weddings etc. An easy fix.
Unless of course this is really about something else, which is entirely possible because this storage and bandwidth thing seems way to easy to get under control.
It seems simple to me. Leave the existing structure in place and charge a premium for exceeding a certain GB level of storage. Basic gets 100GB, Power gets 500GB and pros get a TB for example.
If you go past your limit you pay a premium. Same model as the cell phone companies use. Unlimited is a crazy unsustainable business model. We are seeing the results of this now.
What this would do is make users manage their accounts better and remove all the old images from 5 year old weddings etc. An easy fix.
Unless of course this is really about something else, which is entirely possible because this storage and bandwidth thing seems way to easy to get under control.
That's the right idea, but the storage numbers are way too high to be economical. Using the cheapest tier of Amazon S3 storage pricing, $50/yr buys 75GB of S3 standard storage for a year. Published Google cloud storage rates are higher.
That's the right idea, but the storage numbers are way too high to be economical. Using the cheapest tier of Amazon S3 storage pricing, $50/yr buys 75GB of S3 standard storage for a year. Published Google cloud storage rates are higher.
Well then considering these prices it is fairly obvious that this unlimited storage model is very flawed and must be restructured. Your earlier post above clearly explains the slippery slope it seems SM is way too far down to crawl back up from.
I think unlimited storage is a key feature not so much because you can push everything up to SmugMug, but because you can mindlessly push everything up to SmugMug. Managing your storage, i.e. moving things off SmugMug into you own local backup or whatever, is not only time consuming, it's easy to get wrong.
Without unlimited storage my guess is a lot, maybe most, people, even pros, will just loose their old images.
Why would anyone need old images? I don't know. I've got negatives that are 40 years old that I can't see any reason to keep... except that I recently went through them looking for something. And I just don't want to toss them.
So unlimited storage really means I get to keep my digital images just like I keep my negatives.
I think something like paying for the amount of storage that is available on the net, i.e. galleries that people can look at an line, combined with unlimited storage would over time would lower storage cost to about 1/10 of what they are now.
Once you hit your limit for on-line storage your oldest images would be moved into Glacier. You would still be able to retrieve them, but they wouldn't be in an on-line gallery. If you want to actively manage your images you could choose the ones to move to or from Glacier. And with improving storage technologies that might be enough to survive a life-times accumulation of images or at least defer the storage problem for a few more years.
Hi pgman - You'll be grandfathered at the lower rate of $250 at your next renewal - until then, you're paid in full at the previous annual rate of $150.-
Since you said: "Lesson Learned" there will be regular price increases. On a yearly basis? What about pre-payments?...
And thanks for the input on features you'd like to see implemented. We hear ya!-
It's not what I want in features. What I need to see is a clear sense of direction with a roadmap. What about coming up with a roadmap like: we are coming with 6 new themes for galleries per year.... It would start to give me more confidence.
Could you provide further details on your inquiry re HTML5? I'm unclear on how our current integration is not working for you...-
For example: Both Firefox 14 and 15: the HTML5 uploads work on Windows 7 but for the same versions HTML5 does not work on Linux/Ubuntu. Why? Because you are enabling HTML5 only for specific browsers/OS combinations. I thought the the Internet (remember the Information Super Highway created by Al Gore) was supposed to OS and browser independent.
I haven't read all of this but I read plenty on my email and on the blog. So disappointed. I'm a creature of habit and I'm not happy about having to go elsewhere.
You don't have to go elsewhere. You can drop to an appropriate level of service.
I don't think I've even sold $50 worth of product on my Smugmug and don't believe I'll be able to justify another $100.
Then why were you paying $150/yr for a Pro account in the first place?
Man this sucks so bad all around. :-S
I don't understand this sense of entitlement that is dripping all over this thread. Guess what, SmugMug is a business. In order to operate, they need to make a PROFIT. Contrary to popular ignorance, that is not a dirty word. If they do not make more money than it costs them to run the business, your SmugMug galleries are all going away. They should have done it differently, yes, but we have all been getting a free ride for several years. There is no reason to expect it to continue.
-Jack
An "accurate" reproduction of a scene and a good photograph are often two different things.
Then why were you paying $150/yr for a Pro account in the first place?
Please know I'm saying this in the kindest tone and with sincerity. Those that know me .. I know you know that
Ouch .. I think that question hurts a lot of us Pro account users. We're hobbyist, photographers tying to get a foot in the door or seeing if we can actually sell any of our photos. Testing the waters so to speak. So we're not selling a lot nor making a lot of money.
I didn't know that I had to be a Pro or event photographer to have that account. I thought I was able to look over the services they offered and chose which I would like to purchase based on what I wanted. Do I sell enough off my smug site to cover the $150 .. no I don't. But I make money elsewhere too with my photos. I do all my printing for those photos off my site with a lab that smug offers .. bayphoto. I've even had a company contact me personally when they saw my site .. saw particular photos and asked me if I make cards since they would like some of my photos on cards to sell. If I had had a site that didn't show my work as being up for sale .. would they of contacted me? I don't know. Maybe they would of seen me like a thousand others online just displaying their photos. *Card products were not an option on smug then when they contacted me.
To be honest I'm confused. Is this a storage issue or an issue of people like me taking up space using the smug service and not leaving enough space for the event photographer or wedding photographer?
As I've mentioned before. I love smug and am not going anywhere. They offer all I need/want with product and with service
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I'm one of 67% price increase recipient for when my subscription expires in Mar-2013. Please explain:
Will have the pay the extra $50 on the following year to $300 or will I stay at $250?
Since you will be more expensive than Zenfolio and almost the same price as PhotoShelter, I need some kind of roadmap with some kind of time frame, for example:
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Thank you so much. My renewal date is October 6th, 2012. Does that mean I won't see the increase this renewal or that I will? I'm a little confused by all of the conflicting info I've read.
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Thank you so much John. That's the way I was reading it but wanted to see if anyone else thought the same thing. At least that will give me a year to think on whether I want to transition elsewhere.
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$2-3 in postage--what would you have them do differently? Not protect the photo from bending? You choose to sell prints for $2? (Hard to imagine how your business can be profitable considering overhead, unless you somehow don't have the expenses the rest of us do.) Maybe you should promote packages instead, 8 for $xx, then the shipping is cost effective. Your model is very different than mine, where a 4x6 is $15, or 8 for $100. Over 3K items sold from 2006 on, once I stopped doing self-fulfillment. Not huge, but not bad either, and at the top of my niche market.
I have been active on the smug blog with replies. I agree that they should have crafted a better hobbyist/semi pro package, the new portfolio package seems like it is self-fulfillment oriented, like for fine artists. It is hard for me to imagine that people don't cull nor limit the pixel dimensions before they upload. I guess in this age of super-fast broadband, they feel as if they don't have to. I'd imagine the power users are space hogs, but not development hogs. Noisy pros like me are, who want those full event features. When I started with Smuggy in 2004, it was a photo sharing site oriented towards hobbyists and transformed itself--as opposed to Exposure Manager, PrintRoom, which started out as event-centric.
My shots get culled in Expression Media (now Media Pro, a POS), picks made, only those go into Lightroom for proof prep. They go up to SmugMug at 2200 px on the long side, so web files from my cam are about 500 KB each. So while I shoot events, my files aren't space hogs at 54 GB since 2004.
The other surprising thing is how so many on the blog feel that SmugMug (without Filevault) is their **archive**, to whom they've "trusted" their photo repository for all time. That is anathema to me, I am the one responsible for my own archive, in duplicate.
I disagree with the people who feel this move is indicative of company trouble, or of future malfeasance. My perception is that this wrongly delayed move is perceived as betrayal by a company who has striven to have a friendly, family face on their enterprise.
Galleries here Upcoming Ranch/Horse Workshop
On the other hand, doing it the way they're doing now, they're just getting people with pro accounts now (and not selling a lot) to downgrade to power accounts. So, we just keep using as much storage as before, but now they collect even less money from us. That doesn't really help and means they're still going to keep having this problem in the long run. Meanwhile, the cheaper accounts just keep using as much storage as they always have.
The only long term solution here is to implement storage levels. If they do it right, the only customers they're likely to lose by doing this are the ones that aren't profitable in the first place (the ones looking for more storage than their business is worth). The way they're doing it now, they're going to keep the high storage users and lose many pro account users who don't sell enough to justify the $300. A low storage customer that was paying $150/yr was likely a very profitable customer. I think they've really messed up their study of both how to solve their problem long term, how to encourage the best customers to stay and how to align their fees with their costs.
FYI, I pay separately for a full online backup service (BackBlaze) because I wanted something that is completely automatic and backs up all my files, not just the JPEGs that I upload. I do not consider Smugmug as a backup service.
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Will have the pay the extra $50 on the following year to $300 or will I stay at $250?
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Hi pgman - You'll be grandfathered at the lower rate of $250 at your next renewal - until then, you're paid in full at the previous annual rate of $150.
And thanks for the input on features you'd like to see implemented. We hear ya!
Could you provide further details on your inquiry re HTML5? I'm unclear on how our current integration is not working for you...
Thanks -
Hi Kris - John's correct - you're account renewing on Oct 6th would do so at the old rate of $150.
Thanks so much for these sentiments, Lynne - that's pretty much the long and the short of it right there. Each year we'd look at our amazing growth on ALL fronts vs 'thinning profits,' and the 'should we raise prices?' question would start being passed about. Don and Baldy would think about it, and say, "No. We don't want to hit our customers with a price increase. We'll just tighten our belts.'
As they've both posted numerous times, in retrospect, a modest increase every 2-3 years would have been much easier to swallow, but it came to the point where this was a business 'must' for us in order to continue to grow, improve and of course, keep offering the world class support we're know for.
Amazing 'stuff' is in the works, and we're busting at the seams to get it out there for you all!
Thanks again!
I agree with your thoughts. The "unlimited" is a blind spot. It's the equivalent of the "open road" for driving enthusiasts, eh? As an event pro, the idea of not having to prune galleries means I can have archives open for business for years. In my niche, my customers take advantage of that by ordering my "Instant Album" package, 8 for $100 (lustre) and enjoy trolling the archives. Some might argue that there's no sense of urgency, that they're treating my images as an online scrapbook--there is a subset that truly do that. But relatively speaking, 54 GB of culled proofs is not akin to the weekly sports shooters who dwarf everyone else. But if the price of keeping those galleries open and not having to watch the odometer is the top tier price, I'll pay that.
I hope they can get some surgery on that blind spot, and see more clearly--if they were willing to work with dGrinners to craft the new galleries, why oh why did they not choose some from various backgrounds to serve as a focus group (or not even as a group) for this monumental shift? Not monumental for me, I did the math, amortized it across the years without increases, and will keep my account. Compared to what it costs to create, host, protect a photo/e-commerce site let alone enhance it, the cost is very low and I'm not willing to feature-compare to shift elsewhere. My site is overdue for enhanced customization, and just like I'm no longer wiling to do my own auto repair, I'll use a customizer again for the work.
Galleries here Upcoming Ranch/Horse Workshop
It will be incredibly unfortunate if the power accounts end up hosed because of this. They are at about the right price point for the features provided.
Since this problem just continues to get worse over time when you have unlimited storage (users just continue to accumulate more and more storage over time and camera sensors get more and more MP), if you don't fix it structurally, you'll keep having the same problem over and over and eventually you'll be trying to tax some users so heavily for the subsidy to pay for the high disk usage users that the good customers will leave and you'll only be left with the bad customers which could easily put your business in a bad spiral.
If, on the other hand, they align what they charge with what drives costs in the service, then users will either mange their own storage to a level that works financially for Smugmug or the high (unprofitable) users will leave and the low users (profitable ones) will stay. This gives you a much better future. Certainly any change will cause tumult in the user base, but Smugmug needs to look at where they will be 12-36 months from now and make sure they make a change that puts them in a good spot for the future even if some (mostly unprofitable) users leave now.
Zenfolio is a younger company so they may not yet be feeling the weight of the accumulated storage that Smugmug is just quite yet, but sooner or later, it will hit everyone with unlimited storage and no incentives for customers to manage their own storage. The older your customers are, the more they've probably accumulated.
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Does it suck that they raised my subscription by $100? Hell yeah. Did I think my Pro account was under priced for what I was getting? Yep. Sure, if they raised the price by say $25 a year for the past 4 years would we be bitching right now? Probably not.
After reading this thread, it is clear that people have some issues that need to be addressed. For those who decide to move on, I hope you find the greener grass you seek. For me, I am staying right here. It took my 3 years to build what I have now and I feel that the strong customer support of Smugmug helped me get here. I am not going to "jump ship" and risk losing what it took me so long to build.
I do hope that the extra money will allow for faster introduction to upgrades we were promised. We'll just have to see. So instead of complaining about things, just move on. I don't see the point of getting pissed off or aggravated when you feel you have found a solution by switching to another hosting site. Switch and concentrate on what you love...photography.
www.richknechtphotography.com
So we keep hearing. If we are to stick our hand into our pocket, it is only fair that you guys give us something less vague about what we will get in return. The video I saw said you have 40 developers, you can't tell me there isn't a plan for what they are doing.
Show us some respect, and tell us what it is.
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They wish they had a better answer for us, they really do.
Cheers - N
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Fair point, but when was the last major feature released? One that wasn't half assed in the implementation?
I'd say, despite the issues with it, probably 'packages'... Foreign currency support was a joke - I mean it took over 7 years from the howling requests and at least 18 months from when it leaked that they were working on it, PLUS it only supports a small subset of currencies.
My point is that Smugmug seem to have lost the capability to execute, probably because their back end systems simply can't scale in a logical sense.
I hope the 40 developers have been rewriting it from the ground up, and in fact that's the only thing that would make sense given the trickle of features over the last 5 years.
However, if that is the case, then yes, I agree, a simple 100% price rise should have been aligned with a major capability announcement - that would have defused most of the outrage and given a logical, tangible reason for the increase.
As it is, a 100% increase with a "Trust us, we're doing stuff" is a hollow and disingenuous statement to me. Smugmug has earnt my respect for support, but never have they demonstrated to me that they can deliver large features smoothly.
Cheers - N
http://www.nzsnaps.com (talkiet.smugmug.com)
Right, I get that, the math isn't hard. My point is, Power accounts are basically Standard accounts + customization. If smugmug effs up (and it appears that they already have) and all the pros cut down to power, and they have to start restricting power accounts, then I'm going to be pissed off. A bunch of pros who can't come up with a spare $10 a month for their incredibly generous hosting service ruin a good thing for everyday users who want to be able to customize the appearance of their site. $300 a year is dirt cheap for big data hosting, and pros relying on hosting to share their product should expect to pay big for that.
If storage is killing them, then they need to fire their customers that abuse the unlimited service, not hose the rest of us. There was that one guy that wanted to upload some absurd number of photos (like 22TB or something?) and smugmug was bending over backwards for him. Gotta be smarter than that.
To be honest, I never bought it when Don was so gung-ho to switch over to Amazon for the storage. He complained that disks were sunk cost, but the advantage was that when they bought them on their own, and if they filled for now and ever, then (minus failures) the cost was already taken care of. Renewals pay for new disks for new uploads. In retrospect, if storage costs are indeed the issue, S3 is going to be a huge mistake.
IMO, Coupons and Packages, 2010.
I agree they should have timed the price increase announcement after the new "stuff" announcement.
Wrong. Coupons and Packages were large, flawless, and smooth, as long as you know how to RTFM. I realize they confused a lot of liberal arts majors, but that's not SM's fault.
An "accurate" reproduction of a scene and a good photograph are often two different things.
Ever since I heard about this and the complaints about rising storage costs I thought back to this very episode.
My renewal is at the end of the month so I'll get a relatively free ride to see what wondrous new features will be brought forth but part of me wants to just jump ship. Been hearing about great new features for years and have really received nothing. What exactly is coming up?
I Reject Your Reality And Substitute My Own - Adam Savage
If you go past your limit you pay a premium. Same model as the cell phone companies use. Unlimited is a crazy unsustainable business model. We are seeing the results of this now.
What this would do is make users manage their accounts better and remove all the old images from 5 year old weddings etc. An easy fix.
Unless of course this is really about something else, which is entirely possible because this storage and bandwidth thing seems way to easy to get under control.
Monte
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Well then considering these prices it is fairly obvious that this unlimited storage model is very flawed and must be restructured. Your earlier post above clearly explains the slippery slope it seems SM is way too far down to crawl back up from.
This may not end pretty
Monte
Without unlimited storage my guess is a lot, maybe most, people, even pros, will just loose their old images.
Why would anyone need old images? I don't know. I've got negatives that are 40 years old that I can't see any reason to keep... except that I recently went through them looking for something. And I just don't want to toss them.
So unlimited storage really means I get to keep my digital images just like I keep my negatives.
I think something like paying for the amount of storage that is available on the net, i.e. galleries that people can look at an line, combined with unlimited storage would over time would lower storage cost to about 1/10 of what they are now.
Once you hit your limit for on-line storage your oldest images would be moved into Glacier. You would still be able to retrieve them, but they wouldn't be in an on-line gallery. If you want to actively manage your images you could choose the ones to move to or from Glacier. And with improving storage technologies that might be enough to survive a life-times accumulation of images or at least defer the storage problem for a few more years.
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It's not what I want in features. What I need to see is a clear sense of direction with a roadmap. What about coming up with a roadmap like: we are coming with 6 new themes for galleries per year.... It would start to give me more confidence.
For example: Both Firefox 14 and 15: the HTML5 uploads work on Windows 7 but for the same versions HTML5 does not work on Linux/Ubuntu. Why? Because you are enabling HTML5 only for specific browsers/OS combinations. I thought the the Internet (remember the Information Super Highway created by Al Gore) was supposed to OS and browser independent.
Thanks
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Best way to sum it up...
You don't have to go elsewhere. You can drop to an appropriate level of service.
Then why were you paying $150/yr for a Pro account in the first place?
I don't understand this sense of entitlement that is dripping all over this thread. Guess what, SmugMug is a business. In order to operate, they need to make a PROFIT. Contrary to popular ignorance, that is not a dirty word. If they do not make more money than it costs them to run the business, your SmugMug galleries are all going away. They should have done it differently, yes, but we have all been getting a free ride for several years. There is no reason to expect it to continue.
An "accurate" reproduction of a scene and a good photograph are often two different things.
Please know I'm saying this in the kindest tone and with sincerity. Those that know me .. I know you know that
Ouch .. I think that question hurts a lot of us Pro account users. We're hobbyist, photographers tying to get a foot in the door or seeing if we can actually sell any of our photos. Testing the waters so to speak. So we're not selling a lot nor making a lot of money.
I didn't know that I had to be a Pro or event photographer to have that account. I thought I was able to look over the services they offered and chose which I would like to purchase based on what I wanted. Do I sell enough off my smug site to cover the $150 .. no I don't. But I make money elsewhere too with my photos. I do all my printing for those photos off my site with a lab that smug offers .. bayphoto. I've even had a company contact me personally when they saw my site .. saw particular photos and asked me if I make cards since they would like some of my photos on cards to sell. If I had had a site that didn't show my work as being up for sale .. would they of contacted me? I don't know. Maybe they would of seen me like a thousand others online just displaying their photos. *Card products were not an option on smug then when they contacted me.
To be honest I'm confused. Is this a storage issue or an issue of people like me taking up space using the smug service and not leaving enough space for the event photographer or wedding photographer?
As I've mentioned before. I love smug and am not going anywhere. They offer all I need/want with product and with service
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