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| SmugMug Star Ratings |
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With an increase in digital picture quality and a decrease in digital camera prices, it's no wonder that online photo albums are becoming so popular. Simply snap a few shots during your next vacation or at your son's soccer game and then upload them to one of the many photo sharing services on the Web. One of the best photo sharing websites we encountered was SmugMug, a vibrant and visually-appealing website. Continue on for our findings below.
What's New with SmugMug Photo Sharing?- HD video uploads
- Critique photos in the SmugMug community.
- iPhone app
Star Reviews' Favorite SmugMug Feature:
We really liked that SmugMug offers password protection functionality, which means you can prevent unauthorized eyes from viewing your images.
About SmugMug:
SmugMug touts itself as being the "little guy on the block" and because their revenue comes solely from membership fees, free accounts are not available. They truly are a small company, with less than two dozen employees and about 315,000 members worldwide. Don't let the size fool you though ... even though SmugMug isn't one of the giants, they host more than 175 million photos and offer customer service that's second-to-none.
Free vs. Paid Photo Sharing:
Unlike almost all of the other photo sharing services on the Web, SmugMug does not offer a free package. They offer three different levels of membership, all of them with a price attached.
Photo Sharing Prices:- Standard accounts are $39.95 per year with unlimited photos and unlimited traffic.
- Power User accounts are $59.95 a year with the ability to design your own themes and replace the SmugMug logo at the top of your photo pages with your own logo. Power Users can also upload videos to their accounts.
- Pro accounts cost $149.95 a year. A Pro accounts allows a member to use their own domain name, issue passwords to different users, create watermarks and set prices for prints and gift items, creating a profit potential.
The SmugMug Experience:
Signing up for SmugMug was quick and easy and we ran into no problems at all when uploading our photos. The drag and drop functionality made it a breeze to upload online photos to the site and the fact that we could see the upload progress of each individual file was a plus.
We found the control panel to be rather busy and convoluted and although the site offers you the ability to "customize" your "theme" all it really came down to was changing the colors of our interface and we weren't really impressed.
We did like the fact that we could organize our photos into different galleries and sending invitations to our friends and family to view those galleries was very easy.
Selling Your Photos:
Only Pro Members can sell prints and gifts featuring their uploaded pictures.
Customer Support:
SmugMug offers customer support via email and an online help database. When we emailed customer support, we received a response in just a few hours and the question we had asked was addressed in a friendly and competent fashion.
Upside:
Great customer service, pros can sell prints and gifts for profit, no limit on the number of photos you can upload.
Downside:
No free memberships and only pro members can sell prints and gifts with their uploaded pictures.
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Member Rating
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(Based on 7 Review) |
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By Guest
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| Summary:
Smugmug is the best online sharing photo tool I ever used.
Beside the fact that it stores your photos in full size and that it offers really unlimited storage, it can be upgraded with tons of community tools (upload from right click, ...).
It starts at 39.95$/year for non professional accounts, but even at 39.95 it is really unlimited storage.
Living 6000km from my family, smugmug is a must have to share moments in pictures, also as a part time professional photographer smugmug has been very useful sharing and promoting my work.
You can even use this coupon on the smugmug coupon field in the sign up form to get 5$ off the price : 7Ppmk1PbRiBVQ
Strengths:
- Full size pictures
- Really unlimited storage
- Great themes
- Easy to use
- Nice interface
- Community creating addons (upload from right click, screensavers...)
Weaknesses:
- It is not a photo backup tool as you cannot bulk restore photos from galleries, you have to order DVDs from smugmug. |
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I have been using the free Flickr account to host my photos. After reaching the 200 photos limit to the free account, it was time to consider a paid account to host my increasing number of photos.
The 2 photo sharing sites that i mainly considered at the end was choosing between Flickr and SmugMug. After much deliberation, as well as going through reviews and sample sites, I finally chose SmugMug.
The feature that I like best about SmugMug is the ability to control the access of different galleries. With password protection enables the user to allow certain individuals to view certain galleries. For example, the password for the family album can be given to only family members and not for public view. The best part is that they do not need an account to access the protected photos.
The ability to change the layout with different backgrounds made the site look more professional as compared to the white background of the other site.
The other great features had been outlined above and does not need repeating here.
The downside is only the community aspect of it. Flickr has a much more active community. I do not want to pay for 2 separate accounts, therefore i am only maintaning the free account with Flickr to take part in the community aspect of it. However only 200 photos can be shared at one time.
There is also a generous referral programme in which discounts can be obtained by new and current users.
Take your time, use the 14 day trial period before committing yourself, then you would not regret it. |
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By Guest
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I had to log in 2 to 3 times each time. usually the second try worked NEVER hte first. took 5 months till it was fixed. they said it was my PC - I used 4 PC at work & home. then they said it was my browser (I tried multiple). Then months later it just started working.
But every issue I had their response was always "YOU DID SOMETHING WRONG"
Try someone else. |
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SmugMug Photo Sharing Website Review | Best Photo Sharing Websites | Compare Online Photo Sharing
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