SmugMug Price Increase

<p>I just got word from Smugmug of their big price increase. For my Pro-Business account it jumps $100.00 a year. Like many members this is a shock. Fellow customers are sounding off at their blog. http://news.smugmug.com/2012/08/31/smugmugs-pro-pricing-change-what-why-and-how/?utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Price+Change+-TO+YEARLY+150+PROS+WHO+SET+PRICES&utm_content=Price+Change+-TO+YEARLY+150+PROS+WHO+SET+PRICES+CID_8082df1b02131ff52301d36b29493aec&utm_source=Campaign+Monitor&utm_term=SmugMug+Blog</p>

 

<p>That's a pretty big percentage jump.</p>

<p>How does that compare to the difficulty of selling more goods/year in order to break-even? </p>

<p>if you are a pro selling a good number of prints, this price increase may not hurt much. If your business is more marginal, or if you are a non-professional who gets the occasional sale, then this may not be acceptable. And there is no easy way to grow into a profitable professional account; only at the top-tier $300/year level are you allowed to set custom prices on your prints (the default prices are more or less at cost, if I recall correctly), which basically means that you can't earn any money off your online portfolio with a less-expensive account and then move up to the top-tier account when the income justifies it. This strikes me as poor planning on SmugMug's part.</p>

<p>The one thing that would really irritate me about leaving SmugMug is all the pictures hosted there that I have used in forum posts here on PN and elsewhere. All those threads will lose their images if I don't keep that account up. Unfortunately PN gives us no way to edit old posts. It's understandable, because PN doesn't want us rewriting history, but I wish there were some way to have PN copy all those images (at the small forum-post sizes) and update the URLs in the PN archives.</p>

<p>In the past I was shooting a lot of public events and selling enough prints to pay for my annual $150.00 fee and have a decent profit. I think a gradual increase would not sting as bad as hitting SM members with nearly double the cost. I am grandfathered in at $250.00 a year. New members will have to pay $300.00 for the Pro-Account. Mainly, I use Smugmug for folks to review their family beach portraits, but I also sell some photo art now and then. The BP oil spill really threw my business for a loop (picked up some tar balls today while checking out the damage from Hurricane Isaac) and I am still dealing with my claim.<br>

I include the CD with X amount of photos when I do a family shoot, but also plug my SM website for buying prints, but almost all the families get their prints done elsewhere. I don't think my print prices are unreasonable, but I guess my clientele are looking for the best price they can get, even though I warn them about quality ink, paper etc:)<br>

<strong>My gosh..</strong>. I posted on the blog (see link in my original post) and asked to receive additional comments from other members. The comments are coming in like machine gun fire. My message alert is going ding ding ding..... The majority of members are not happy at all. A lot of folks comparing it to the Netflix fiasco. You gotta read some of the backlash at the blog.<br>

<strong>Example comments:</strong><br>

Are you in self destruct mode?</p>

<p>Zenfolio looks better and better after seeing this crap...Netflix revisited....</p>

<p>Your slogan includes "Millions of passionate customers." Maybe it was hyperbole before, but those customers are sure passionate now! I'm out of here. I always thought highly of you guys, but it seems to me that you have destroyed your business. Since I used the service very lightly, my account was nothing but profit. And there are so many more like me than those heavy uploaders that you used as an excuse for this price doubling. If the issue was really the massive increase in storage, you could have instituted a data cap like a cell phone provider. Isn't it nice to know that the NetFlik VP for customer service found a job at SmugMug?</p>

<p>Your message begins "for the first time in 7 years..." Well that's just poor business planning on your part. If your costs have been increasing and margins falling, a sensible approach would be gradually implement price increases or find other ways to tier your service offerings so revenues are better aligned with costs. Instead, with one month's notice, you implement a 75% price increase (67% on annual payments)? I would venture to guess that many of the customers you'll lose from this are those with the smallest space and bandwidth requirements (in other words, your highest margin accounts). Personally, the price increase alone won't encourage me to seek out alternatives, simply due to the time and costs involved in changing providers. I'll continue to be your customer even if it means paying $100 more. In exchange for my $100, you'll lose the dozens of recommendations I give for SmugMug both online and at photo workshops each year. But you could have had both -- an extra $100 and a happy customer that praises your service -- if you had simply handled the price increase in a professional manner.</p>

<p>I didn't get the message yet, but I might have to switch to another Gallery hosting site or build my own. This is bad news since I just linked my SmugMug Gallery to my website and worked all last weekend to get the Prices to match on both. Luckilly I have only been on there for about 2 years so there are not a ton of pictures on there. Maybe if enough people switch they will revert their decision but I doubt it. </p>

<p>Zenfolio is $250 per year for their Premium hosting !</p>

<p>Shutterbug Storefront is about $120 per year actually $12 per month. The interface is not as slick as Smugmug, but there is plenty of customization as far as prices and sevices offered.</p>

<p>After I posted my last comment around 1:30 am I went to the beach and worked on moon shadow photos. Next thing I know the sun was coming up. What a beautiful day! When I checked my yahoo email there were 5 pages of comments from Smugmug members. I have never seen anything like this.<br /> Harry, As I mentioned on the SM blog, I looked at the Zenfolio website for the FIRST TIME last night. I read quite a few comments from SM members at the blog that are moving to Zenfolio. The Premium cost is $120.00. The Premium Business is $250.00. I am too tired from my all-night shoot to start comparing the plans.</p>

<p>I marked comment #380 by Anita that she made around 10 pm last night; "I’ve spent the last hour looking at Zenfolio and creating a free trial website. $120 per year for the same features I currently pay $150 for and will have to pay $250 for the next time I renew. So far its been an absolute breeze to start a website…. WAY easier than the customizing I had to go through on Smugmug. And they have an option to migrate your photos from Smugmug to Zenfolio using <a href="http://www.uploadjunction.com/" rel="nofollow">http://www.uploadjunction.com/</a>. It really can’t get much easier than that. I’m sure that by the time my subscription with Smugmug ends on October 10th… I’ll have all my photos at their new home on Zenfolio. Sorry Smugmug…. you just shot yourself in the foot. I’m outta here, you can kiss my money goodbye!" <br /> I pray that Smugmug will listen to its members and come up with some better options.</p>

<p>I am gonna try to do post a screen shot of what I see in my email. There are now over 525 comments from members at the blog.</p>

<p>Had a problem attaching the email screen shot to my last post.</p><div></div>

<p>Not a smart move on smugmug's part, but there must be some reason behind it. I went with zenfolio over smugmug some time ago for my website, but it was a very close decision for me at the time.</p>

<p>It's true that Zenfolio's top-tier account is $250/year, but the next level below that, at $120/year, gives you more than SmugMug gives you for $150/year. Most importantly, Zenfolio's $120/year account allows you to set prices for prints, whereas SmugMug only gives you that option at the $300/year level.</p>

<p>I've never really looked at what PN offers, even though I am a subscriber. (I just subscribe to support the site -- I figured $25/year was little enough to ask for such useful forums.) If PN offered print sales through professional labs in at least the USA and Europe, and supported custom pricing and automatic, customizable watermarking, then I'd consider dropping SmugMug and just doing everything here.</p>

<p>I remember back in the '80s a bank called First Interstate was acquired in a hostile takeover by Wells Fargo. A few days afterward, I saw a big banner across the front of another bank that read, "Welcome First Interstate Customers!" There is a similar opportunity here for other photo hosting sites to take advantage of SmugMug's mistakes. An introductory discount for people migrating from SmugMug could be very attractive when combined with better features at similar or lower prices.</p>

<p>"<em>Not a smart move on smugmug's part, but there must be some reason behind it."</em><br>

<br />Here is what smugmug CEO has to say concerning the price increase, hope I'm not too late.<br>

<br /><a href="http://news.smugmug.com/2012/08/31/smugmugs-pro-pricing-change-what-why-and-how/">http://news.smugmug.com/2012/08/31/smugmugs-pro-pricing-change-what-why-and-how/</a></p>

<p>"<em> If PN offered print sales through professional labs in at least the USA and Europe, and supported custom pricing and automatic, customizable watermarking, then I'd consider dropping SmugMug and just doing everything here</em>."</p>

<p>Well actually that would not work since PN only let's you upload images that are 700MB or less. The great thing about Smugmug is that you can dowload images at their native resolutions, meaning very large. If you have to download allot of LARGE images such as in a wedding, this can take 8 hours or more of download time but at least you don't lose any data from resizing. I use to turn my dowloader ON then leave and go to work and come back to find it still downloading pictures.</p>

<p>I'm not sure how Zenfolio works but Shutterbug Storefront automatically resizes the images you download down to maybe 800mb. What a client sees is actually a thumbnail of the original image. If the client decides to purchase that image then ShutterBug Storefront notifies you so that you can download the original again(in Native Resolution) then send it to the printer for printing or CD. This can become a huge PITA if you have allot of images to print.</p>

<p>I use them for my event photography mostly and if a client wants theirs posted. I sell enough every year to pay for the site and a little beer money. I like the features they offer for display and sales but I don't do enough in sales to warrant me paying that much more. I'll look around or maybe offer the photos through my studio like everything else.</p>

 

<p>Good point, Harry -- PN would have to support full-size uploads and generate smaller images automatically, as SmugMug does. It would be quite a substantial change; probably not feasible.</p>

<p>I'm surprised that <a href="http://www.fineartamerica.com">Fine Art America</a> has not been mentioned. Yes, it includes other forms of art, but the price is right ($30/yr) and it's becoming more popular.</p>

<p>How does a wedding or event photographer use Fine Art America?</p>

<p>I looked at SmugMug a while back, and decided that Instaproofs (<a href="http://www.instaproofs.com/">http://www.instaproofs.com</a>) was more suited for my business. I pay up to 15% on all sales, and that takes covers credit card processing and image hosting. If I sell nothing, then I'm not charged anything. On large orders, the fee is reduced.</p>

<p>Even better for my business model, is that all orders come to me for fulfillment. They offer an automated print fulfillment service, but I only want to finish and upload large files for those photos that are actually purchased. I don't want to spend time finishing a file that will not be bought.</p>

<p>If I raise my prices, then Instaproofs gets a raise, too. If I keep my prices level, then I pay the same amount. Seems like a very fair model.</p>

<p>Eric</p>

<p>Jeff, you would just need to create a separate gallery for each event ("Jones Wedding", etc). At the moment however, there is no option for a photo book.</p>

<p>Still a steady stream of Smugmug member comments coming in regarding the big price change. <strong>Over 1,300 (at least 90% negative) comments at just the blog.</strong> I have read most of them hoping to get some input from other members on the situation. http://news.smugmug.com/2012/08/31/smugmugs-pro-pricing-change-what-why-and-how/ I looked at their Facebook page and SM was taking heat there also.</p>

<p><strong>EDIT:</strong> Smugmug has just released a new post trying to answer some of the questions from members, but so far it is not going over well.....<strong>Chris & Don MacAskill answer questions about SmugMug’s pro price increase:</strong><br>

We’ve read thousands of your emails, tweets, and posts this week and planned on making a blog post with answers to your most common questions. Baldy, our President and co-founder, recently <a href="http://www.thisweekinphoto.com/2012/twip-271-smugmuggery/" target="_blank">spent some time with Frederick Van Johnson</a> from TWiP (This Week in Photography) addressing a lot of questions that the community has been asking about our pro price increase. Frederick suggested that, rather than a blog post, we do a follow-up video answering your most important questions.<br>

So that’s exactly what we did: http://news.smugmug.com/2012/09/07/chris-don-macaskill-answer-questions-about-smugmugs-price-increase/</p>

<p> </p>