Sell me on SmugMug!

Kralizec!

Hello! After being an Ofoto / KodakGallery user for four years, I have finally decided to move on to a bigger, better, more feature-rich photo sharing service. In doing some research, Flickr and SmugMug appear to be the top two contenders. My primary reason for using the service will be to share photos with our family and friends. (While many of our friends and family members have cameras, I seam to be the de facto photographer who chronicles our gatherings.) Currently I have about 7800 photos on-line with KodakGallery.

So ... sell me on the benefits of SmugMug (especially its advantages over Flickr)! Thanks! :

Andy

hi Kralizec welcome to Dgrin!

I'm your House Pro, I'll standby and watch for a bit and see what other folks have to say, and then chime in as needed. In the meantime, here's a cool page for you to look at: http://themes.smugmug.com available to all users these themes are and here are some customized sites that you can go for, if you are power or pro user: http://www.dgrin.com/showthread.php?t=27713

The main info page is here: http://www.smugmug.com/price/

I'll be here to answer any specific questions you might have.

Thanks for considering SmugMug!

dragon300zx

You just got your answer there with Andy. Smugmug beats the crap out of flickr for alot of reasons. Mainly the super fast, friendly, and real live human support that is available. Not to mention that many people complain flickr is slower and has more problem's with reliability than smug (things I have read online). But honestly why even consider flickr when smug offers everything you need, great pricing, amazing support, and actually listens to and cares about their customers.

Plus I can even give ya a $5.00 off coupon. bcWu1dNyCbJNU

ginger_55

hi, ginger here! I can't compare flickr as I have never used it nor seen it. And I don't know people who have.

I have used Ofoto, yrs ago, but I may still have photos there. I have used just about all the free sites, Shutterfly and Webshots........still have photos at those two. Just don't want to move the photos. Tomorrow, always tomorrow.

I would guess that smugmug is older, been around longer than flickr, so they have corrected more bugs that flickr might have yet to correct.

More importantly to me, my people are here..........as I see it!

As I kind of wanted to say in comparison (in jest), the advantage to smugmug is that "we" are here! Specifically, I am here.

That may be in jest, but it is true for me! A family, not always in harmony, but that is what home is, the place you go to, IMO.

If you just want to store your photos, heck, I don't know. I have mine stored all over the place!

This is my family site........where the print prices are at my cost. It is for family and friends........the type sharing you want to do. It is the basic service. I also have a pro acct. I do not expect to make money just because I have a pro acct. If that were my aim, I would be disappointed. I do not market my site well. I have seen a few people leave because sales did not magically materialize.

I have seen others just tire of photography, get annoyed at things here, but those people stay, in the long run, because, as I said, we are a family!

www.upacreek.smugmug.com

It may seem like I am talking about dGrin more than smugmug, but to me they go together. And right now I am using smugmug's communities more than I am using dGrin.

Smugmug is not only good, it is getting better all the time.

And don't forget:

I am here!
Won't do much for you, but I am here!

Now, Andy, he will help you with your site, etc, to a degree. Lots of people will. Some people will spend hours bending your brain into a pretzel, if that is what you want. If you don't want, they will leave you alone. They will always answer your questions.

ginger

Crazy Creek Woman in the SC lowcountry.
Spend some time, drink some tea, check out the creeks,
love to talk of time and tide.........and tropical storms.
Pray them hurricanes away!

MotoKat

all the cool kids use it. :cool

dmc

best reasons for using smugmug:

• view any size pics (small to original), lots of different ways (My #1)
• no space limitation
• cheap (try hosting your own site with unlimited disk space and GB's of download quota per month... for 40 bucks a year!)
• Customizable
• This forum

claudermilk

That pretty well sums it up. How can you beat unlimited storage, near instant response from the head decision makers of the company, and a strong, helpful community? Tough act to follow.

snapapple

Well....... For a very small price you get unlimited storage. They won't delete your photos after a month of non-use like some other sites. Your site is yours for as long as you want. A perfect back-up, off-site storage place. (you can even order backup cds)

They have lots of cool "themes". So you can pick a look for your whole site or just a particular gallery. I picked the Fall look for a gallery of Thanksgiving family pictures. Then there's the Christmas look or the "new baby" look. So cool.

You can chose lots of styles for displaying your galleries, like the journal style, which I like for a nice travelogue of my trips. Or a slideshow style and more.

You can share your photos with everyone or make some galleries private.

I tried Ophoto and Shutterfly, but they seem like everyone is putting their stuff in a public place. They delete your stuff if you don't use it enough.

Smugmug feels like I have my own individual site. I have my own domain with GoDaddy and link to my Smugmug site. I don't even have to set up a new site of my own. But I can link to another site of my own if I want. I have a pro site, but I think the basic site has all you need, really. I even gave one to my daughter in law so she would have no excuse to not share baby pictures with me. She just needs to get the time to upload them.

Of course that's no excuse. The uploaders are so easy to use. You can upload huge directories of pictures at once. Just set it and go to bed.

So - cheap, user friendly, lots of live support, customizable, permanent storage. What's not to like? :

dogwood

one more reason
About a month ago, I had a customer who purchased some prints off my site and she choose the crop option accidentally. She wasn't happy with the prints, she e-mailed smugmug, Andy responded, refunded her money and exchanged a couple e-mails with her explaining what happened-- all before I had even gotten up in the morning (I'm on the west coast, Andy and the customer were on the east coast).

I already liked smugmug before that, but that kind of service (and taking care of one of my customers while I slept) was truly above and beyond what I expected. And it wasn't a big print order-- something like three prints with smugmugs take only a couple of bucks. In other words, small or big, smugmug seems to go out of their way to be helpful.

aktse

Kralizec! wrote:

So ... sell me on the benefits of SmugMug (especially its advantages over Flickr)! Thanks! :

I have a smugmug and a flickr account; I use them for different reasons. Both offer a high bandwidth, unlimited storage (flickr has some upload limits), stable, etc.

Others have posted benefits of smugmug and there are many and I'll try and not to go over them.

I love that once I upload pictures on flickr, it shows up on my friend's contact pages when they log in, and I get to see their latest pictures when I login in. I love it when they post new pictures, I can easily spot them. The comments are easily spotted, etc., and I have had conversations with the comments. Flickr is wonderful if everyone who views your pictures are members. It's a great photo social network.....

At the same note, I tend to be very careful in the images that I place on flickr and tend not to include any pictures of people's faces unless I received their permissions. I know that I can change permissions (friends, family, etc), but then, all my friends have to join and be added to my network in order to see the pictures. I just don't think eveyone wants to do that... It's easier for me to leave everything public, but at times, I don't even know who's looking at the pictures. Some of my friends people are very private and I'm just not comfortable with putting pictures of children and babies. I only have a handful of "sets" on flickr and I it's only one level deep (maybe changed?). Everyone that I know only has about two dozen "sets" or less.

I upload mostly everything on smugmug and change the permissions as needed. If necessary, I make galleries private and give people the specific URLs. Smugmug also gives me options in the gallery layout. I can go a few layers deeper in my organziation structure. (i.e. events --> game nights -->> bob's house: June 12 2006). Even though I like the cleanness of flickr, I can't really change the order of my photostream (only sets). I'm stuck with the order that I uploaded (maybe that changed recently). What you see is what you're going to get in flickr. I have no control over the layout, theme, etc.

Smugmug isn't perfect, but it's gives me options. Both were developed with different missions and I don't think smugmug can (or wants to) replace flickr. I will keep both accounts because they serve difference purposes for me.

It seems that you want a place to store/show photos for group events. For this, I would suggest smugmug unless you don't care about organization and privacy.

macaddict

I use both - and like both a lot. With my Flickr I enjoy the comments, and ease of use. It has a nice clean interface - plus it has a great iPhoto plugin. My smugmug allows me customization, but less social interaction. For example, in Flickr it is common to bookmark someone's photos by adding them as a contact (and they usually reciprocate). In smugmug, you can only choose family or friend - adding someone as a friend out of the blue can be a little unsettling to some users - they might think you odd for doing it and not recipricate. However, the smugmug community is very socialable on this forum!

These days there are many options - I like to experiment and get the best of what's out there. There is a newer service worth checking out called Tabloo. My advice: try them all!

I Simonius

Friendliness
Friendliness sums it up for me

Features will come and go, and I didn't decide on features alone; but you very quickly get an impression of the PEOPLE behind the scenes and whether they're GENUINE in the way they deal with you or not

athos

i have a free flickr account. but even with the paid one you only get 2gb upload a month. other bandwidth is unlimited. for me that upload bandwidth could run into problems, especially if i want to have originals on hand at some point for nice prints, in private or public galleries - if i become in demand (wishful thinking)

smugmug just seems to have a more professional and smoother interface. what is also nice is while flickr seems to have a more social community via the user pages, you have to create an account to comment - smugmug lets guests comment which i like.

there are some advantages to each one, but i prefer the look and interface of smugmug, even though i have had a couple problems right away, such as stats down and my java uploader not working. i still prefer it here, cause it seems that customer support is good and responsive.

Jeffro

I used Ofoto/Kodak for awhile, but everytime I ordered a portrait shot they would stop my order, and ask for an authorization form. At first one form was enough, then everytime...like I was stealing someones shots. No trust there. Got old, so I moved on.

As everyone else said, unlimited storage, quick human responses, great support, the people here on dgrin. So far it's been great.

I joined in February, and I am only 6 races into my motocross season and have sold over 400 photos to date.....need I say more