SmugMug?

[Trickyb107]

Has anyone used SmugMug? Is it worth it? User-friendly? Pros and cons please. Bonus points if you specialize in wedding / event photography. Thank you. 

[hjoseph7]

I use SmugMug as a storage place only. I'm not sure how intuitive it is as far as building a wedding website, but then again I never tried it. The good thing about SmugMug is the price and their customer service which usually gets back to you the same day if you run into problems. The site lets you import Full size RAW images into their Galleries. You can create different Galleries to serve different purposes. For example wedding-gallery-1, small.product-gallery-2 etc. . I'm not sure how many Galleries you can create, but SmugMug states that they never cap your storage.

I'm pretty sure there is a limit though, but what that is I don't really know ? Another great thing about SmugMug is that you get an automatic Web Store for any images you store. So if you have a Fine Art Gallery you can sell to viewers from there. Of course SmugMug gets a cut from the profits. I think it's 20%.  SmugMug also allows you to Edit your images after you store them which is pretty neat. They have some Edits that even Photoshop doesn't have, but I would not really call their editing extensive, mostly basic stuff such as sharpening, contrast, exposure also Water Marking.

The bad is like I said before the software does not seem intuitive enough to build wedding websites as far as I know. Although there has been some improvements in the last few years. Another thing is that although its is cheaper than most Hosting sites you have to pay the yearly amount in one shot. They give you plenty of warning though, about a month before they automatically debit yor account. 

 I use Wix to build my wedding site because of all the tools. Wix is really intuitive and you can practically build a Website in about a day if you know what you are doing. However, their Customer Service is nothing to write home about. It's not that they are incompetent, its more like they can take quite a while to get back to you and sometimes when they do, you are unavailable ! 

 Wix does give you your own domain, own business phone number, Automatic Web Store, SEO(search engine optimization), own email address, minor Edits, and plenty of customization. I mean they realy throw the kitchen sink at you. Of course some of this stuff you have to pay for separately, it is not included in the monthly fee. I'm paying about $35 per month and so far I'm pretty satisfied with their product. The thing is, a website can sit there forever without anybody noticing it. You have to drive people to your website by other means. Its not a magic wand that is going to automatcally draw business your way, not at all...  

[John Di Leo]

Smugmug user here also, though I do not use it commercially.

 

One advantage I think would be the ability to create a "gallery" for a specific wedding/event and send a secure link to that gallery to your client. This can be done in a way that limits the viewer solely to that gallery, and prevents any download of image unless you allow it.