Well, I’ve taken the jump into the realm of paid photo service sites and after hmming and hawing on Flickr Pro and playing with SmugMug for only a couple of days, I’ve decided to go SmugMug (and I promise not to be smug about it… ok that was bad). Why? Well many of the ideas that I was tossing around are oddly similar to Robert Nymann – who also seems to have recently gone to SmugMug.
So what made my choice? Well, first I wanted a system that would allow me to easily upload images – and comparing my own site, Flickr and SmugMug, SmugMug was faster and was easy enough for a guest user to use as well. On my own site, I would have to explain the many steps involved in setting up a Coppermine gallery, in Flickr, the guest would need a Flickr account (and would not be able to contribute directly to my stream) but on SmugMug – just a password.
Second, I wanted to be able to secure by gallery. I can do that on my own site with Coppermine, but again, it is a process, on Flickr, the security is all or nothing unless the other people have an account. SmugMug on the other hand – per gallery security.
Thirdly, I wanted to be able to sell/buy print products easily, with access to metallic printing if at all possible. Here there was no competition to SmugMug at all, especially with a kicker that they allow custom domains (look for Patient Man Productions soon – I was going to point photos.boora.ca there, but I figured that it would be better to have a new domain).To get this, I needed to sign up for a Pro account, but being unavailable on the others, it is somewhat mute.
Finally there was video – Flickr allows 90 seconds, SmugMug up to 10 minutes of SD/5 HD (again with the Pro account that I’ve signed up for) and Coppermine/Piclens as much as I want.
So the final tally came up with SmugMug coming out on top with all but one category and the reality is that with the longest video that I would want to share being no longer than 5min, SmugMug goes undefeated. I do however have to pay for my choice though – $150/year* for a SmugMug Pro account vs $25/year for Flickr Pro, but the features for myself and for those who might be contrinuting to and viewing my galleries, the cost is certainly justified.
If you want to see if SmugMug is a match for what you might need – you can do a free trial for 14 days and when you decide (of you do), use this coupon code op2OGo3L0ouqk to get $5 off.There are also other ways to get a better deal, but you’ll have to dig for that on your own.
All this being said, I’m still going to be using Flickr for it’s superior Web2.0ness and community, but there I’ll only be a regular Joe.
*It is less if you are fleeing other services.
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