Multiple printhouses?

wellman

I have a question on printhouses. I love my SmugMug service, and I love the prints I get from Mpix. I'm not knocking EZPrints in any way - they give fantastic and accurate results at a reasonable price. I just happen to like Mpix a little bit more (maybe it's the paper - I dunno).

I'm a relatively new subscriber, so I don't know all the history, but I assume that when SmugMug first signed on with EZ Prints, the company had comparatively few users. Now that SmugMug has >100,000 users, would it make sense to offer prints from multiple vendors?

Thanks for your great service and support!
-Greg

Andy

Hi Greg, many thanks for posting and the suggestion.

wellman

Andy wrote:

Hi Greg, many thanks for posting and the suggestion.

You're quite welcome. I know the battle between choice and ease-of-use if a tricky balancing act. I just get warm fuzzies at the thought of direct Smugmug-to-Mpix ordering.

Have a good weekend.

Matthew Saville

wellman wrote:

You're quite welcome. I know the battle between choice and ease-of-use if a tricky balancing act. I just get warm fuzzies at the thought of direct Smugmug-to-Mpix ordering.

Have a good weekend.

My vote has always been for Smugmug to switch to WHCC, the ultimate in my opinion. They have a $12 minimum print order, which would force SM to send lesser orders to EZprints, but the biggest advantage of WHCC is their larger size prints: They offer more sizes, (and PANORAMAS!!!) they're cheaper across the board, and they ship flat instead of rolled and tubed. I had issues with damaged tubed prints from EZ prints; Smugmug say's the issue was solved but I can't confirm that because I've been printing at WHCC ever since. Free 2nd day shipping plus the fact that they don't "out-source" 24x36" prints (EZprints does, and a 24x36" takes weeks to arrive...) Oh and if I need to, I can have WHCC mount prints to foam core etc. for framing. I may know how to cut mat board, but I'm the world's worst mounter!

So, wellman, you and I both hope for a reformation of Smugmug's printing services. We may prefer different 3rd party labs, but our solution seems to be the same: Smugmug should offer / merge printing from multiple labs.

-Matt-

dogwood

this sounds pretty nice

Matthew Saville wrote:

Free 2nd day shipping

Free 2nd day shipping on all orders? Really? That definitely catches my attention-- and would be an incredible way to promote print sales on a smugmug site. Sure, people care about a quality guarantee but as a local furniture salesman used to say in his late-night commercials, "Free is a very good price."

Matthew Saville

dogwood wrote:

Free 2nd day shipping on all orders? Really? That definitely catches my attention-- and would be an incredible way to promote print sales on a smugmug site. Sure, people care about a quality guarantee but as a local furniture salesman used to say in his late-night commercials, "Free is a very good price."

Dogwood, suffice it to say that I could go on and on about how awesome WHCC is. I won't because this is not the place or time, but I'm definitely a customer for life.

I can say one thing: they also offer metallic prints like Mpix does; EZprints does not. And I cannot bear to print B&W from EZprints at all, because they don't print true B&W prints so they have a nasty color cast when viewed in artificial light... Okay I'm done, I won't rag on them any more. It's up to Smugmug to decide what to do, and I'm sure they've got many other fish to fry right now.

-Matt-

DanielB

how does EZprints ship 4x6's? if its rolled isn't that kinda useless when you could just put them inbetween some cardboard?

Khaos

DanielB wrote:

how does EZprints ship 4x6's? if its rolled isn't that kinda useless when you could just put them inbetween some cardboard?

I've had 10x15 mailed flat from EZ. Anything larger than that got rolled.