Life after smugmug...other options

holzphoto · May 1, 2014

Been using smugmug for quite some time. For storage it's been great, as far as my business and making money, i am not quite as sure.

So as i am expanding my business this year, i am looking for something different.

The one thing that I like about smugmug that i hope my new place will have is the ability for the client to pick favorites (using the events feature). this really helps when having the client select images for their album.

Things i want:

1.some customization
2. Categories, Galleries and sub galleries.
3. Coupons would be nice.
4. Self fulfillment, this is huge. this is a big reason why smugmug is not going to work for me.
5. unlimited storage

I've looked at photocart and zenfolio and am looking for other suggestions.

On a side note, i will have some sort of smugmug account as i do like the backup, but for business it's time to find something different.

Thank you.

AceCo55 · May 1, 2014

So you are asking people with Smugmug accounts to make suggestions on other options?

I think you are in the wrong forum.

holzphoto · May 1, 2014

i figure there are people who have left or decided to travel down other roads that still hang out at dgrin. dgrin is still a pretty good community.

Sam · May 1, 2014

holzphoto wrote: »

Been using smugmug for quite some time. For storage it's been great, as far as my business and making money, i am not quite as sure.

So as i am expanding my business this year, i am looking for something different.

The one thing that I like about smugmug that i hope my new place will have is the ability for the client to pick favorites (using the events feature). this really helps when having the client select images for their album.

Things i want:

1.some customization
2. Categories, Galleries and sub galleries.
3. Coupons would be nice.
4. Self fulfillment, this is huge. this is a big reason why smugmug is not going to work for me.
5. unlimited storage

I've looked at photocart and zenfolio and am looking for other suggestions.

On a side note, i will have some sort of smugmug account as i do like the backup, but for business it's time to find something different.

Thank you.

It looks like the only thing SmugMug doesn't provide that you need is an order system that allows you to self fulfill the order.

I believe there are third party shopping carts that can be seamlessly integrated into your SmugMug site that would meet these needs.

Sam

Ferguson · May 1, 2014

AceCo55 wrote: »

So you are asking people with Smugmug accounts to make suggestions on other options?
I think you are in the wrong forum.

I think a lot of people here looked around last August during the rollout, I know I did. I ended up staying because I did not find, collectively, as good of setup. I found sites doing individual things better (and at the time chief on the list was stability and change management!), but in my opinion the sites with really good looking interfaces had too few features, and the sites with great feature sets (at least in the same price range) had awfully dated looking UI's.

So yes, maybe a bit rude to ask here, but I think there's potential for a lot of feedback.

I don't really have any, as I wasn't looking for self-fulfillment sites or the more commercial features, but I know a LOT of people looked.

PS. Since Smugmug has Delayed Fulfillment, one would think it would not be hard to add self fulfillment, it's somewhat like an early exit from the process.

holzphoto · May 1, 2014

thanks for the info. if i do move my business side of things somewhere else, i will be keeping some sort of paid smugmug account. just for backup alone it is worth it.

i am still looking, zenfolio has a 40% off until tonight and they have self fulfillment, i don't have time to sit down and figure out their stuff though...

Ferguson · May 1, 2014

holzphoto wrote: »

thanks for the info. if i do move my business side of things somewhere else, i will be keeping some sort of paid smugmug account. just for backup alone it is worth it.

i am still looking, zenfolio has a 40% off until tonight and they have self fulfillment, i don't have time to sit down and figure out their stuff though...

I spent a bit of time trialing zenfolio, and the main thing that turned me off was the user interface. After looking at the beautiful (if buggy) way you could work on Smugmug back last august, I found it just very old, static (not stretchy/dynamic). I also found they limited the depth of folder creation, I can't remember how much (one?) but that was a real problem with how I had been presenting content.

I was pretty pleased that everything I tried that was documented worked!

I really didn't spend much time once I found the limits of their customization being so poor. Maybe it's changed since then.

Caveat: I was not looking at selling features, but presentation features.

AceCo55 · May 2, 2014

AceCo55 wrote: »

So you are asking people with Smugmug accounts to make suggestions on other options?
I think you are in the wrong forum.

Ferguson wrote: »

I think a lot of people here looked around last August during the rollout, I know I did. I ended up staying because I did not find, collectively, as good of setup. I found sites doing individual things better (and at the time chief on the list was stability and change management!), but in my opinion the sites with really good looking interfaces had too few features, and the sites with great feature sets (at least in the same price range) had awfully dated looking UI's.

So yes, maybe a bit rude to ask here, but I think there's potential for a lot of feedback.

I didn't say it was rude - I was trying to make the point that maybe Smugmug users weren't the best people to ask how good other businesses were. I would have thought going to the Zenfolio forums or Square space forums/users ... etc would yield more up to the minute information.

Glort · May 2, 2014

Have you looked at running Jalbum on your own site?

I ran it for years and it never faulted.

mercphoto · May 2, 2014

While I'm not with them now (I stopped shooting for profit almost 4 years ago), I left Smugmug way back about 2006 for nearly all the reasons you stated and went to http://www.exposuremanager.com/. In particular, coupons, unlimited gallery depth, and the big plus: self fulfillment options. And no, adding a second (third party) shopping cart onto the Smugmug shopping cart is not a good solution to the problem.

Sam · May 2, 2014

mercphoto wrote: »

While I'm not with them now (I stopped shooting for profit almost 4 years ago), I left Smugmug way back about 2006 for nearly all the reasons you stated and went to http://www.exposuremanager.com/. In particular, coupons, unlimited gallery depth, and the big plus: self fulfillment options. And no, adding a second (third party) shopping cart onto the Smugmug shopping cart is not a good solution to the problem.

Hi Bill,

I hope all is well with you. Can you explain why a third party shopping cart isn't a viable solution?

Sam

mercphoto · May 2, 2014

Its my understanding, Sam, that the customer purchases Smugmug options from one cart, and the self-fulfill items from a second cart. Is this not the case? If I buy a mixture of self fulfill and Smugmug items do I get charged one bill (for all products) or two bills?

denisegoldberg · May 2, 2014

Sam wrote: »

an you explain why a third party shopping cart isn't a viable solution?

It's not seamless, requires customization to set up. See link below.

mercphoto wrote: »

Its my understanding, Sam, that the customer purchases Smugmug options from one cart, and the self-fulfill items from a second cart. Is this not the case? If I buy a mixture of self fulfill and Smugmug items do I get charged one bill (for all products) or two bills?

Since Smug doesn't offer self-fulfill the customer would need to pay in two places - smugmug items from the built-in smug shopping cart, other items from whatever means the site owner has implemented. Right now I know that some folks are doing self-fulfillment and using PayPal as the mechanism to collect payment.

One of the customizations that is currently being used for this is here - http://www.sherlockphotography.org/Customisations/SmugMug-for-Chrome/PayPal.

--- Denise

Sam · May 2, 2014

denisegoldberg wrote: »

It's not seamless, requires customization to set up. See link below.

Since Smug doesn't offer self-fulfill the customer would need to pay in two places - smugmug items from the built-in smug shopping cart, other items from whatever means the site owner has implemented. Right now I know that some folks are doing self-fulfillment and using PayPal as the mechanism to collect payment.

One of the customizations that is currently being used for this is here - http://www.sherlockphotography.org/Customisations/SmugMug-for-Chrome/PayPal.

--- Denise

While I do have an interest in self fulfillment I have never really researched what is currently available.

It does appear this system is not as sophisticated as or as versatile as the SmugMug cart . For me the fact that it is a PayPal payment system is a deal breaker.

Oh well it was just a thought.

Sam

mercphoto · May 2, 2014

denisegoldberg wrote: »

Since Smug doesn't offer self-fulfill the customer would need to pay in two places - smugmug items from the built-in smug shopping cart, other items from whatever means the site owner has implemented.

As I thought. And that's not a customer friendly solution.

denisegoldberg · May 2, 2014

mercphoto wrote: »

As I thought. And that's not a customer friendly solution.

Not at all. If I needed or wanted to self-fulfill I would look elsewhere.

--- Denise

Life after smugmug...other options

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