Confirm downgrade consequences

jfriend

My pro account is set to renew on Sept. 17. Due to the unfortunate timing of a price increase RIGHT before my annual renewal, do I have to pick one of these choices in the next two weeks?

• Downgrade to Power and only pay $60.
• Switch to Portfolio and pay a $150 renewal (seems to make no sense to me given the minor feature difference from Power)
• Pay a $200 renewal to keep the features I currently have

If I downgrade to Power (the most likely choice), do my current photos or customizations change in any way? I understand the feature differences per this chart (no custom pricing, pro labs, etc...). I just want to confirm that my current photos and customizations don't change at all if I downgrade to Power.

TalkieT

jfriend wrote: »

If I downgrade to Power (the most likely choice), do my current photos or customizations change in any way? [snip]

Thanks John - this is a really important question for me too.

Looking forward to a straightforward, honest answer.

Cheers - N

ZBlack

For what it's worth, I've been a month to month person, and just downgraded to the power account. I plan to stick around just at the lower subscription level. So far, nothing has changed on my site. All of my photo's in listed and unlisted galleries are still in tact as far as I can tell. All my customizations still work. As a caveat, my site is under heavy reconstruction, so I don't think that makes any difference at all, but it's changing quite a bit every few days, and my changes thus far have not been altered as a result of downgrading.

HeroOfCanton

Hello all,

John, if your renewal is in Sept then you will renew at $150/yr as the price increase doesn't happen until October 15th. You won't see the new price until Sept of 2013.

Regarding the customizations, there will be no difference in your site, customization wise, that I can think of unless you have something tied into a feature that is not available at Power like Events, watermarking etc. All of the customization tools (i.e. Easy Customizer, Advanced Customizer) available to Power are the same available to Portfolio and Buisness. While the help page here hasn't been updated to provide the new account levels, the existing information here is very relevant and remains the same if you're going to Power.

With best regards,
Ryan W.

jfriend

HeroOfCanton wrote: »

Hello all,

John, if your renewal is in Sept then you will renew at $150/yr as the price increase doesn't happen until October 15th. You won't see the new price until Sept of 2013.

Regarding the customizations, there will be no difference in your site, customization wise, that I can think of unless you have something tied into a feature that is not available at Power like Events, watermarking etc. All of the customization tools (i.e. Easy Customizer, Advanced Customizer) available to Power are the same available to Portfolio and Buisness. While the help page here hasn't been updated to provide the new account levels, the existing information here is very relevant and remains the same if you're going to Power.

With best regards,
Ryan W.

OK, that's good news that I don't have to make a decision immediately - somehow I missed that obvious part of the email. My account was grandfathered to $100/yr so I assume that's what I'll pay on my Sept. renewal.

RyanS

I just downgraded from pro to power, as I too see little point in the portfolio option. Especially given the price of portfolio over power. All custom display settings stayed the same. The only thing to change was all the custom gallery pricing I had set up. My solution to the loss of features was to disable the shopping cart on all the galleries I had been trying to sell. From now on I'll just handle those on a case-by-case basis using traditional "non-smumgmug" methods.

For my work, I sell basically $0.00 annually in web sales. 100% of sales for me come from org submissions or actual prints. For the "family" photographer, the opposite would probably be true.

I honestly think this is a brilliant move by SM. While it may hurt short-term revenue, it will drive stronger innovation and sales across all account types. I'd love to know who is signing up for the "portfolio" account type, because so far I don't see any real reason to.

HeroOfCanton

jfriend wrote: »

OK, that's good news that I don't have to make a decision immediately - somehow I missed that obvious part of the email. My account was grandfathered to $100/yr so I assume that's what I'll pay on my Sept. renewal.

Yes, I'm sorry, I forgot what account you were on You will be billed at $100 in September and then $200 next September if you don't downgrade.

mr peas

Hey, I feel like I should give my input. Last renewal session, I downgraded from Pro to Power user; reason being, I rarely sold any prints via SM. The changes that I got from the downgrade were: no more custom watermarking, loss of the ability to sell prints to clients (but you can still order prints for yourself)... actually that's pretty much it. You still retain: the custom website, the custom domain, the ability to upload videos and photos (unlimited!), and basically everything else.

For the $60 a year, I think this is still a great deal. I learned to cope with the watermarking by using Photo Mechanic for batch watermarking and I simply make a different gallery for originals, and another gallery for images with watermarks (for display).

If you look closely at the differences in features and prices on SM's website, you'll see that the differences in features (difference in $90) between the Pro and Power tiers are really small; the benefit of retaining unlimited image uploading is what keeps the service worthwhile in keeping. If that changes, I'll change accordingly.

I still enjoy using SM for clients to view galleries and as a storage haven for my jpegs and videos. The price increase sucks, but most business owners will adapt. For hobbyists, the downgrade is beneficial in 2 ways, you save $90 a year and you can still store and show-off your images online without having to code for your own gallery, while retaining a professional look.

I say, downgrade to Power user, and use that $90 savings on taking your family out to a nice dinner, because in the end of that night, your fully customized SM website will still look the same.