After 8 years I closed my smugmug account today

[Randy]

I thought some of you might find interest in the email exchange when I closed:

-----Original Message-----
From: SmugMug Support Heroes
Sent: Wednesday, August 07, 2013 5:32 AM
To: rimland@carolina.rr.com
Subject: [SmugMug] Account closed

This email confirms that your SmugMug account has been closed.

We hate to see you go! Your feedback (the good, the bad, and the ugly) is like gold to us. Reply to this email to let our Support Heroes know why you're moving on, and we'll thank you for it.

We'd be happy to have you back at any time in the future.

All the best,
The SmugMug Family
http://www.smugmug.com

My reply

Pros:
great customer service
great help and friendly staff

Cons:
subscription price and % of profits is no longer competitive in the industry.
Here's the BIG one, poor technology from day 1 followed by multiple attempts to modernize with each attempt causing disruption to existing accounts and websites. I was able to move 100GB of images and setup the galleries, pricing, etc in Zenfolio in less time than it took me to setup my SM website, not to mention the time it would have taken to fix the breakage caused by your recent attempt to modernize. Rule #1 in the IT business, always remain upward compatible.

 

[Kingfisher]

The sad reality is I really don't think they care if you or anyone else closed their accounts, if fact they expected a large percentage of people to jump ship. There's always ten people waiting to fill your spot.

 

[Tigris]

I cancelled my account the other day too. Still no reply when I asked if I get credit back for paying a year in advance. That was 5 days ago.

Now self hosting and all the happier for it.

 

[Anthony747]

Funny Randy I canceled the other day as well, I could not justify the $250 they wanted. I was only using it for my family to view/purchase (at cost) photos at family events which only happens a few times a year.

 

[Randy]

The sad reality is I really don't think they care if you or anyone else closed their accounts, if fact they expected a large percentage of people to jump ship. There's always ten people waiting to fill your spot.

When they raised their price to $250, knowing ZF was grandfathering in their existing customers at $100 and only raising their prices to $120 they had to have made a conscious decision to make more revenue from less customers, A huge mistake in the services business. The old saying is it costs more to get a new customer than to keep an existing one.

Having said that I have no hard feelings, SM is and was a great company to do business with. The problem was and is they have lousy technicians and after 40 years in the business, 24 writing UI intensive apps I feel qualified to say that.

 

[Randy]

Funny Randy I canceled the other day as well, I could not justify the $250 they wanted. I was only using it for my family to view/purchase (at cost) photos at family events which only happens a few times a year.

the money wasn't even what pushed me over, it was another attempt by them to modernize their UI that failed to protect the legacy customers. They are a very poor excuse for an ISV and I should know, I manage some of the best

 

[Randy]

I cancelled my account the other day too. Still no reply when I asked if I get credit back for paying a year in advance. That was 5 days ago.

Now self hosting and all the happier for it.

I do think they give prorated refunds. My rent was due on 8/23 and after the recent changes killed my site I furiously started running multiple uploadjunction jobs to move my 100gb and now life is so easy when I want to add a new sport or gallery, no more fooling with html and css code and begging for help

 

[Diggedy]

I moved form Smugmug some time ago as I prefer the gallery controls in Zenfolio anyway, Zenfolio only really lacks the templates and customisation options for me to use it as my main site, but I still use them for file hosting and client proofing.

 

[Randy]

I moved form Smugmug some time ago as I prefer the gallery controls in Zenfolio anyway, Zenfolio only really lacks the templates and customisation options for me to use it as my main site, but I still use them for file hosting and client proofing.

ZF's modern UI that allows for easy inheritance (things like security) and showing all the galleries on the left panel are very easy and fast to use

I only wanted a simple menu bar and screen show so the fancy stuff never interested me. My customers want simple and fast

 

[donski]

Do you need to have a Pro account to take advantage of the built-in blog in ZF?
If I don't need a Pro account in ZF, I might go over.

 

[Randy]

Do you need to have a Pro account to take advantage of the built-in blog in ZF?
If I don't need a Pro account in ZF, I might go over.

I don't know since I don't have a blog

 

[Counter]

To be honest I've never understood why a professional would choose Smugmug to host their site anyway. Surely a professional photographer would have a professional site designed for them by a specialist company rather than an off the shelf one size fits all (with a few self-modifications) website designed lets be honest, with amateurs in mind. If one is a mom and pop type business making a few bucks off of pretty sunset shots and the like then I can understand it but if I was a professional photographer with sales as my only source of income there is no way I would use Smugmug or Zenfolio as my main shop window as no matter how hard you try to disguise it your site will always look like a Smugmug or Zenfolio hosted site. From what I've seen of the 'unveiled sites' so far they really do all look instantly recognizable as 'Smugmug' now as will mine once I unveil. They did before more or less but now it's even more obvious. I know it's hugely more expensive but I would do it properly and make sure that my site was truly unique and worked exactly as I intended it to without having to fight with the hosting company for every little customization I wanted.

 

[Retief]

Do you need to have a Pro account to take advantage of the built-in blog in ZF?
If I don't need a Pro account in ZF, I might go over.

Here is the Zenfolio Features Page, the Blog shows up in all the columns. They are quite good in responding to questions, drop them a line if you need more specifics.

Years ago I was deciding between SmugMug and Zenfolio. My main reasons for going the Zenfolio route were that they understood the nature of infrastructure much better than SM, I think this as must a consequence of SM starting as a Photo Sharing operation where ZF started from the business side. As well as what I felt was a better approach to proofing and self-fulfillment. Yes, the customizations are more restrictive, I really want multi-level flyout menus, but when changes are made, UI bits added, they just work.

I was seriously looking at SM with the new changes, but seeing the higher cost as well as all the issues people are having, I don't see any change in my future plans.

 

[RKnecht]

To be honest I've never understood why a professional would choose Smugmug to host their site anyway. Surely a professional photographer would have a professional site designed for them by a specialist company rather than an off the shelf one size fits all (with a few self-modifications) website designed lets be honest, with amateurs in mind. If one is a mom and pop type business making a few bucks off of pretty sunset shots and the like then I can understand it but if I was a professional photographer with sales as my only source of income there is no way I would use Smugmug or Zenfolio as my main shop window as no matter how hard you try to disguise it your site will always look like a Smugmug or Zenfolio hosted site. I know it's hugely more expensive but I would do it properly and make sure that my site was truly unique and worked exactly as I intended it to without having to fight with the hosting company for every little customization I wanted.

I do make my living from my site and have sold over 10K prints. If I could change one thing about Smugmug, it would be the shopping cart. I'd love to have my branding, or just a generic cart, throughout the whole checkout process. Other than self-hosting, there are limiting factors no matter who you host with.

 

[Randy]

To be honest I've never understood why a professional would choose Smugmug to host their site anyway. Surely a professional photographer would have a professional site designed for them by a specialist company rather than an off the shelf one size fits all (with a few self-modifications) website designed lets be honest, with amateurs in mind. If one is a mom and pop type business making a few bucks off of pretty sunset shots and the like then I can understand it but if I was a professional photographer with sales as my only source of income there is no way I would use Smugmug or Zenfolio as my main shop window as no matter how hard you try to disguise it your site will always look like a Smugmug or Zenfolio hosted site. From what I've seen of the 'unveiled sites' so far they really do all look instantly recognizable as 'Smugmug' now as will mine once I unveil. They did before more or less but now it's even more obvious. I know it's hugely more expensive but I would do it properly and make sure that my site was truly unique and worked exactly as I intended it to without having to fight with the hosting company for every little customization I wanted.

I am a professional photographer but I would never want to make it my day job. I am sure it would ruin the passion for me. Anything that I love and do too much I end up resenting or taking for granted so ZF is fine for what I need. And my customers are just regular parents w/o a lot of money who want a simple interface to find and buy pics of their kids.....but I sorta understand your point although I think someone shopping for a wedding photographer would be very happy with SM or ZF as long as the images were good......I think it's way more about the images than a fancy website

 

[Retief]

To be honest I've never understood why a professional would choose Smugmug to host their site anyway. Surely a professional photographer would have a professional site designed for them by a specialist company rather than an off the shelf one size fits all (with a few self-modifications) website designed lets be honest, with amateurs in mind.

Can you show me some examples of these "specialty desgined" sites which:

1) look "better"
2) work "better"
3) are easier for the photographer to manage

than equivalent SM or ZF sites?

Especially for those of us doing event type photography where we may have hundreds of images to upload at a time.

On a daily basis, my day job is Enterprise Level Intranets, I see how businesses and IT groups struggle with "custom" portals vs. those built on too platforms, and I have to tell you, my experience has shown me that while on occasion a "custom built" may look a bit fancier, they are by no means any easier to navigate and they are generally much more difficult to maintain.

 

[Uncle Frank]

Funny Randy I canceled the other day as well, I could not justify the $250 they wanted. I was only using it for my family to view/purchase (at cost) photos at family events which only happens a few times a year.

That's my profile, too. When they raised the rate for the business account, I just switched to a power account. It's only $60/yr., and I didn't lose any important features. For the occasional pay job, I just disable printing, and fulfill the orders myself.

 

[RKnecht]

I think someone shopping for a wedding photographer would be very happy with SM or ZF as long as the images were good......I think it's way more about the images than a fancy website

Well said Randy. It should always be about the quality of the product, whether it's a picture or not, than how fancy a website is.

 

[donski]

Here is the Zenfolio Features Page, the Blog shows up in all the columns. They are quite good in responding to questions, drop them a line if you need more specifics.

Years ago I was deciding between SmugMug and Zenfolio. My main reasons for going the Zenfolio route were that they understood the nature of infrastructure much better than SM, I think this as must a consequence of SM starting as a Photo Sharing operation where ZF started from the business side. As well as what I felt was a better approach to proofing and self-fulfillment. Yes, the customizations are more restrictive, I really want multi-level flyout menus, but when changes are made, UI bits added, they just work.

I was seriously looking at SM with the new changes, but seeing the higher cost as well as all the issues people are having, I don't see any change in my future plans.

Thanks, Bill.

 

[barphoto]

Tested out Zenfolio over the weekend and signed up with a 20% off coupon and closed my SmugMug on Monday, after 4 years. The increase in price was one factor, but the fact that they come out with an updated release that does not support javascript, was the deal breaker for me. On the plus side I can now offer a mixed bag of products, item that I self-fulfill and other items like coffee mugs etc.. on on the same shopping cart....