Is smugmug right for me?

snapshot.photobooth

Hello,

I'm starting a new business, and I was hoping to get some feedback from people who use smugmug as to whether they think that it seems like a good fit for my needs.

First, my business is called Snapshot Photo Booth Rentals. As you could probably guess, we rent out digital photo booths for people to use at weddings, corporate events, parties, etc. After the event, we will upload the photos to a website where people could go and see every photo taken at the event and buy reprints, enlargements, or other products they may want.

Originally, we were thinking about using Shutterfly for this, but now that we have found smugmug, we are not so sure.

We are having a website designed and built right now. One of the pages of the site is going to be a galleries page. Essentially, this page will just be a list of links and thumbnails for each event. They click on the link to their chosen event, and it would take them to another website that hosts all the photos and handles the selling and fulfillment.

Is it possible to make these gallery pages look like they are a part of my own website? I know that smugmug says you can customize your galleries to look like your website, but all the examples it shows are of websites that are totally hosted by smugmug anyways which I imagine makes that fairly easy. My website is hosted somewhere else, so will I still be able to make the galleries appear as though they were just another page of my own website?

Would it be possible to have the url of the galleries to be www.mywebsite.com/galleries/whoeverswedding or is that only possible if the entire site is hosted by smugmug?

So, is smugmug the way to go even though I only need it to host my galleries, and not my entire website? Is the customization such that I could make the transition from my website to smugmug as small as possible?


Thanks in advance for any help and advice you can give me.

Brad

gluwater

snapshot.photobooth wrote:

Hello,

I'm starting a new business, and I was hoping to get some feedback from people who use smugmug as to whether they think that it seems like a good fit for my needs.

First, my business is called Snapshot Photo Booth Rentals. As you could probably guess, we rent out digital photo booths for people to use at weddings, corporate events, parties, etc. After the event, we will upload the photos to a website where people could go and see every photo taken at the event and buy reprints, enlargements, or other products they may want.

Originally, we were thinking about using Shutterfly for this, but now that we have found smugmug, we are not so sure.

We are having a website designed and built right now. One of the pages of the site is going to be a galleries page. Essentially, this page will just be a list of links and thumbnails for each event. They click on the link to their chosen event, and it would take them to another website that hosts all the photos and handles the selling and fulfillment.

Hey Brad it looks like SmugMug would fit your needs well. Depending on what you are having made on your current site you may not even need it. You may be able to have one SmugMug site do everything you need. We can definitely handle the galleries, selling and fulfillment.

Is it possible to make these gallery pages look like they are a part of my own website? I know that smugmug says you can customize your galleries to look like your website, but all the examples it shows are of websites that are totally hosted by smugmug anyways which I imagine makes that fairly easy. My website is hosted somewhere else, so will I still be able to make the galleries appear as though they were just another page of my own website?

Would it be possible to have the url of the galleries to be www.mywebsite.com/galleries/whoeverswedding or is that only possible if the entire site is hosted by smugmug?

Take a look at the SmugMug House Pro Andy's website. This is a 100% SmugMug website but he uses his own Domain. MoonRiverPhotography Here's a thread that tells you how to do this. It works with your Domain name.

So, is smugmug the way to go even though I only need it to host my galleries, and not my entire website? Is the customization such that I could make the transition from my website to smugmug as small as possible?

Thanks in advance for any help and advice you can give me.

Brad

Even if you keep your existing website and only use SmugMug for your galleries and ordering it is a great deal. You get unlimited storage, unlimited bandwidth, customization, print fulfillment, SmugVault which is a new feature where you can store just about anything even if it's not a photo, video, and much more. Sign up for a free 14 day trial and see for yourself, or have your web designer sign up for a trial and see if SmugMug is right for you. Click here to get your trial started. If you have any questions feel free to e-mail our help desk. You'll get a real live person respond to you, in most cases within an hour or less.

Nick
SmugMug Support Hero