Top notch site for anyone who wants a professional look at a cheapskate price.
Written: Jun 25 '05
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Pro's:
- Cheap UNLIMITED photo storage
- Very slick and configurable appearance
- Very easy to use
- Constantly being improved upon
- User's don't have to enter any data or login to view
- Full size originals can be downloaded (if you let them)
- Can link to images from anywhere (e.g. forum posts)
- Top notch customer service
- Great prints if you want them
- Get $5 of with coupon code: MtVjIvHFzdevY
Con's:
- You do have to pay for it, but its worth it (see below).
- Won't archive RAW formats from high end cameras.
So there are two business models for online photos. The first is to make image storage free and make money on printing as well as direct marketing to anyone who comes to look at the photos. These sites essentially hold your originals hostage (you can only view reduced resolution copies online and have to pay to print from the originals or have them burned to CD and mailed to you). Want your friends to come take a look? They have to register and give up their e-mails. These sites are convienent for getting pictures printed, but really not very friendly for sharing images.
The second model is a centered around sharing your photos online with printing as an after thought and charging a subscription price. Smugmug falls into this category (as does pbase).
Smugmug has gotten it nearly perfect. Unlike pbase which charges based on storage space, even though storage costs nothing these days (google gives you 2200MB for email for free and cheap pbase only gives you 300MB and you pay them money!!!), smugmug is unlimited. 10GB, no problem. The only limit is that each individual photo can only be 8MB in size (larger for their pro accounts).
Another limitation is that they will only store JPEGs. You can upload other formats, but they will convert them. This completely makes sense as far as file sharing, but for a pro it is a bit of a disadvantage as it would be nice to be able to safely archive RAW formats on their site.
There are numerous ways to upload files in batch, it's very easy to manage your account. Check out the help section on their website to get a feel for everything you can do.
Even though they don't make money on prints they do directly link to EZPrints, which makes top quality prints on Fuji Crystal Archive paper. A word to the wise, avoid anything with the name Kodak on it - their films and papers are garbage - most last less than 5 years. The Fuji stuff goes for at least 50. They also support full color control workflows if you are that type of control freak.
Customer service is top notch. They have an excellent help forum. In addition when I emailed a question to their help address I got a response from one of the site founders in less than an hour.
Prices:
$30/yr - Unlimited storage and basic configuration
$50/yr - Unlimited storage and full customization
$100/yr - Pro services, webstore type stuff, domain name
And you can get $5 off when you sign up by using the following coupon code:
MtVjIvHFzdevY
(By the way, that coupon code doesn't expire so use to your heart's content).
Recommended:
Yes
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Epinions.com ID:
kwalsh74
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Reviews written: 2
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