SmugMug Default Print Cost VS Direct EZ Print Cost

ExposeTheMoment

Now my simple question is.

If I order a 20x30 from my smugmug account I pay 21.99
If I order a 20x30 from EZprints I pay 17.95 now I don't know the shipping difference, and I'll assume that the print quilty would be the same no matter what way I order, so why the price difference?

Andy

ExposeTheMoment wrote:

Now my simple question is.

If I order a 20x30 from my smugmug account I pay 21.99
If I order a 20x30 from EZprints I pay 17.95 now I don't know the shipping difference, and I'll assume that the print quilty would be the same no matter what way I order, so why the price difference?

Quite simply - Gary - we're in business. And providing world class quality, support, and service comes at a price.

Gary, it really seems that we can't work things out. I would list out all of the reasons why, but let's start with how many times EZPrints answers your phone calls on their home telephone line? Let's then go to how much help they'll give you on building, and maintaining your website? We also provide complete and total guarantee of satisfaction and service to you and your customers. This includes, but isn't limited to, color correction, mis-cropping, damaged goods, ordered the wrong print, anything. We handle these service items every day, day in, day out.

Gary, I think that we're just not the right service for you. You can have a complete and full refund for your pro account subscription. Just say the word.

bwg

step 1) create service
step 2) ???
step 3) profit!

now i'm not 100% sure what step 2 involves, but i'm gonna guess it has something to do with charging more money for said service than it costs to operate said service. i know, sounds complicated but there's some smart people involved.

ExposeTheMoment

Andy,

It was a simple question.

I have been with Smugmug for over one year now, and I never once bought prints from my own smugmug account, and I have never bought prints from EZprints either.

So I will add all the things you said about how good EZprints is I have never experienced so I would not now how they answer the phone etc

ExposeTheMoment

From Another Thread
Quote:
Originally Posted by dogwood
Do you know which Fuji Frontier model EZ Prints uses to print? Just curious. I've heard there are $200,000 pro-lab Frontiers and there are much cheaper drug-store type Frontiers for one-hour photo places.

Dr. Know - EZPrints wrote:

Hello Dogwood...

Great question...

I am a representative of EZ Prints and have the following data points for you.

We use Fuji Frontier 370's and 390's, and yes, many retail outlets and pro labs utilize these printers. They are extremely reliable and produce very high quality prints when utilized, maintained and QCed properly. This last piece is really where the pro and consumer alike see the real difference. With retail outlets usually the procedures for color and density calibration are just enough. At EZ Prints we calibrate our printers every time there is any type of change. All of our printers are considered "out of calibration" until we prove that they are at our standards. This is where our QC and Operations management staff can see any drifts or a requirement for maintenance. We use industry known standards and color spaces as our baseline. In fact, we developed our calibration print in conjuction with Smugmug to make sure we addressed the concrete concerns of the professional. From every type of skin tones to a Gretag MacBeth color chart, we make certain that everytime we touch the process of printing, we are on target. With a retail outlet I'm not sure I can say the same thing.

There is also the QC check after printing, or what we call post processing. This too is on a different level than what one would see in a retail outlet.

Although equipment may be similar, at the end of the day its in the operation and attention to what really matters (color, consistency) that makes the difference.

Let me know if this was helpful, and if you have any further questions...

Cheers,

Dr. Know

This is Why I will now order from my account, I was just wonder about the price difference no biggie.

Andy

ExposeTheMoment wrote:

Andy,

It was a simple question.

Allow me to answer fully then:

1) we provide you, the pro, to have custom pro pricing
2) we collect the money from your client, in a secure credit card transaction
3) we provide the infrastructure for cropping, and color choices (auto, true)
4) we constantly monitor and adapt our color correction technology, learning from the millions of prints we do
5) we handle your customer service. You'll never need to handle a reprint when a customer a) orders wrong; b) mis-crops c) the print gets lost d) you mess up on color corrrection or other post processing
6) we handle customer support emails 365 days a year, with courtesy, speed, and aplomb. We go above and beyond when it counts - I personally printed a complete customer's order on Christmas Eve day, and fedexed the prints to his mother's home, so that they'd have the prints by Christmas. This was after the customer had put in the wrong delivery information in the ship-to field.
7) we guarantee complete and total satisfaction to you and your customer

There's more, but you get the gist. I hope this helps!

Bodley

A simple answer:

It's called a value added markup.

Me thinks Gary has struck a nerve around here. Hang in there.

ExposeTheMoment

Andy wrote:

Allow me to answer fully then:

1) we provide you, the pro, to have custom pro pricing
2) we collect the money from your client, in a secure credit card transaction
3) we provide the infrastructure for cropping, and color choices (auto, true)
4) we constantly monitor and adapt our color correction technology, learning from the millions of prints we do
5) we handle your customer service. You'll never need to handle a reprint when a customer a) orders wrong; b) mis-crops c) the print gets lost d) you mess up on color corrrection or other post processing
6) we handle customer support emails 365 days a year, with courtesy, speed, and aplomb. We go above and beyond when it counts - I personally printed a complete customer's order on Christmas Eve day, and fedexed the prints to his mother's home, so that they'd have the prints by Christmas. This was after the customer had put in the wrong delivery information in the ship-to field.
7) we guarantee complete and total satisfaction to you and your customer

There's more, but you get the gist. I hope this helps!

Thanks Andy, I knew most of that from reading your posts over the last year.

I was talking about the pricing when I make an order not my customer.
Of course I know smugmug makes a profit, and needs to to stay in biz.

I know recently the 4x6 prices were lowerd, Im not sure how that was done, but Im happy about it. I know my questions may seem like Im not happy with smugmug, but I truly am. When on FM forums and people ask about selling and images and stuff I always point them to SM, and I have referenced your site before show how one can use SM for a website.

DodgeV83

Seems like a simple question to me, hes already apologized for the Smugmug bashing...looks like he wants to start over with a clean slate around here

I've asked that question myself, and was satisfied at the answer.

Maybe we shouldn't translate all subsequent posts from him as "I Hate Smugmug"

marlinspike

Andy wrote:

Allow me to answer fully then:

1) we provide you, the pro, to have custom pro pricing
2) we collect the money from your client, in a secure credit card transaction
3) we provide the infrastructure for cropping, and color choices (auto, true)
4) we constantly monitor and adapt our color correction technology, learning from the millions of prints we do
5) we handle your customer service. You'll never need to handle a reprint when a customer a) orders wrong; b) mis-crops c) the print gets lost d) you mess up on color corrrection or other post processing
6) we handle customer support emails 365 days a year, with courtesy, speed, and aplomb. We go above and beyond when it counts - I personally printed a complete customer's order on Christmas Eve day, and fedexed the prints to his mother's home, so that they'd have the prints by Christmas. This was after the customer had put in the wrong delivery information in the ship-to field.
7) we guarantee complete and total satisfaction to you and your customer

There's more, but you get the gist. I hope this helps!

I still feel like 15% + $99/year would cover that (well, admittedly not the 15% from my account since that's what, enough to buy a warm soda?), but I guess if that's what it costs to run a business, that's what it costs. In the end, it's easier/worth it for me to just let you all handle it and charge your prices. I even went so far as to make a banner on my website offering a discount for orders directly through me (thus avoiding the 15% and the price difference in prints), but that went down after about a month. It just wasn't worth it. So what I'm saying is that I would like to see prices cut, but I understand why they haven't been.

Khaos

Here's how I see it.

Smug Mug offers unlimited space. While you might state that hard drives are cheap today, you're thinking about going down to Best Buy, getting a rebate and plunking it into your home system. That ain't how it happens in the business world.

I've designed and maintained IT infrastuctures and it isn't cheap.

To give us all this unlimited space, easy access, and customability, they will need this:

A huge server farm (read racks of servers).

A extremely large SAN (storage area network) running the no rebate, not cheap fast scsi drives.

Now they need redundancy. That means they can't have a single point of failure for the system, otherwise when something fails everything goes down as opposed to a failover that allows them to fix the problem.

So now they need double universal power supplies in the server racks that connect into double main universal power supplie units. Huge cost there. They also need double switches and routers to keep the whole network up.

All this stuff costs a ton of money and a ton of money to run. I haven't even added in the human resource cost to build and maintain this.

It gets better. You need huge air conditioning units to ensure stable temperture and humidity. If you think your central air costs you money in the summer, you haven't seen a real electric bill.

Bottom line, you may see a website that allows you to upload and store photos and then print them for cheap with some places being slightly cheaper, but in reality there is a large, expensive infrastructure running all this and running it very well.

Now we get to the business end. You can sell stuff and not have to deal with the accounting for a credit card company's yearly fee and their percentage of each sale. You get a satisfaction guarantee by smug mug that costs you nothing.

I see this as an excellent service for the cost.

StevenV

marlinspike wrote:

So what I'm saying is that I would like to see prices cut, but I understand why they haven't been.

that's a fair and honest statement there, one that I expect most of us could make not only about SmugMug but also every other service and product provider we use.

Andy

marlinspike wrote:

So what I'm saying is that I would like to see prices cut, but I understand why they haven't been.

Ahh but they have been
Oh and I look at your sig and see stuff you want us to engineer, that takes $$ too. Thanks for the valuable comments, Richard

marlinspike

Andy wrote:

Ahh but they have been
Oh and I look at your sig and see stuff you want us to engineer, that takes $$ too. Thanks for the valuable comments, Richard

You're being sarcastic right? I mean, my comment was that I want prices to be lower but I know they can't...which I think goes for everything in life...far from valuabl. But that 24x36 being a standard print would take what, like 5 minutes? I feel like it would be quick but you guys just disagree with me on it, which is why it's in my sig...subliminal advertising.

Andy

marlinspike wrote:

You're being sarcastic right? I mean, my comment was that I want prices to be lower but I know they can't...which I think goes for everything in life...far from valuabl. But that 24x36 being a standard print would take what, like 5 minutes? I feel like it would be quick but you guys just disagree with me on it, which is why it's in my sig...subliminal advertising.

No not sarcastic - sorry - been a long week here in Calif and I'm in the airport now waiting on a plane that is late... and I didn't type well.. I dig your sig - it's a good reminder and I see it and know that it's imporant! 5 minutes? Nah not 5 mins nothing is ever as easy as I our you think it is ---- but I see your point

dogwood

print costs
I know there are cheaper places for prints (Costco, Walmart, etc) but ironically, I can mark-up the costs of my prints on my smugmug page, smugmug takes their cut, EZ prints gets their cut, I get my cut-- and the cost is still cheaper than my local pro lab (Pro Photo Supply, Portland, Oregon)! And... customers get the prints mailed to them, something my local lab doesn't do.

Anyway, this is something I often point out to my customers-- yeah, the costs of prints on my smugmug site is higher than local major retail outlets but the prints are guaranteed and are still cheaper than a very respected local pro lab (if I price 'em right). Most pro labs post their price sheets for printing. I find it's very helpful to look these up and reference them when setting prices, and then I set my prices slightly lower than the local pro lab. Most customers are stoked-- even if it only means they save 50-cents a print.

Just my two cents thrown into this thread.

ExposeTheMoment

dogwood wrote:

I know there are cheaper places for prints (Costco, Walmart, etc) but ironically, I can mark-up the costs of my prints on my smugmug page, smugmug takes their cut, EZ prints gets their cut, I get my cut-- and the cost is still cheaper than my local pro lab (Pro Photo Supply, Portland, Oregon)! And... customers get the prints mailed to them, something my local lab doesn't do.

Anyway, this is something I often point out to my customers-- yeah, the costs of prints on my smugmug site is higher than local major retail outlets but the prints are guaranteed and are still cheaper than a very respected local pro lab (if I price 'em right). Most pro labs post their price sheets for printing. I find it's very helpful to look these up and reference them when setting prices, and then I set my prices slightly lower than the local pro lab. Most customers are stoked-- even if it only means they save 50-cents a print.

Just my two cents thrown into this thread.

Dogwood,

My question was for OUR print prices, in reguards to:

Why should I want to print say 5 8x10's thru smugmug, when and if I directly went thru Ezprints and saved money.

I bypass the middle man being Smugmug and save money and since its the same print company I should receive the same results.

Example:

5 8x10's with shipping bought thru Smugmug is 17.70
5 8x10's with shipping bought thru Ezprints is 11.90

Thats a difference of 5.80

But reading this thread I know and understand why going thru Smugmug costs more.

Khaos

ExposeTheMoment wrote:

Dogwood,

My question was for OUR print prices, in reguards to:

Why should I want to print say 5 8x10's thru smugmug, when and if I directly went thru Ezprints and saved money.

I bypass the middle man being Smugmug and save money and since its the same print company I should receive the same results.

I do that.

ExposeTheMoment

Khaos wrote:

I do that.

You do? So, I'm not the only one concerned about the prices then.

Khaos

ExposeTheMoment wrote:

You do? So, I'm not the only one concerned about the prices then.

I wouldn't call it a concern as much as normal business. My family and friends will order their prints through smug mug since I don't want to be bothered taking care of anything, and of course cutomers will use them, but for me, I'll always go with the best price.

I joined smug mug for a solution to display photos on line and allow customers to purchase and friends and family to see personal galleries and purchase if they want. I didn't join for a personal printing solution. Apples and oranges.

Of course if people don't want to be bothered buy setting up an EZ prints account and doing a seperate upload, they can allows pay a little more for the convenience and guarantee smug mug offers.

You have a choice. Pay for convenience and a guarantee, or do it your self.