DSLRUsers.com

Got an email this morning saying they are rising the fees, which may hurt some people so if you are with them and have not got an email yet you will!!!. To get a Pro account now it is like $300 a year, so mine is now $200. Maybe i should get out and not be slack and take some more pics to pay for it. nah but if you have been wondering what i have been doing as i have been slack on the Bike racing front and doing the occasional wedding etc.. just to fund my habits like GoPro camera's for my motorbike etc.. LOL

Cheers
John
BBJ

Ouch that is quite the sting if they are doubling their prices

OUCH!! I only pay about $35 at Pbase. Works for me.

The standard plan is increasing from $29.95 to $40. So it's a 50% increase not double. Based on what Matt says that's a little over 14% more than PBase. Have a look at PBase I find it pretty ugly and it has less features so I reckon Smugmug is worth the extra $5. And if your new to Smugnug you can get a $5 discount - see the codes HERE

This is the email i got from Smuggy as i have the Pro account.

Hi John Bonney,

The last time we raised pro prices, it was 2005 and we were able to grandfather your account at the old rate of $99.95/year. We wish we could continue that forever but alas, starting October 15, we’ll be raising pro subscription renewals for grandfathered accounts like yours to $200/year.

The price for new pros will be $300/year, so your new rate is $100/year less.

Still, if it were me and I was asked to pay $100/year more for a service, I'd want to hear from the person responsible for the decision. That's me, so I placed my dSLR on a tripod, and looked it right in the lens, imagining it was you. I tried to offer a peek inside SmugMug and our thinking

So it seems the price increase is not the same for all users. My email says my Pro account that was $150/year will become a Business account at $250/year. New users will pay $300/year for the same account. This 67% increase for me is on top of the 15% they make on my sales.

Note that if you have a Pro account, you have a choice of either Portfolio at $150 or Business for $300. If you had a Pro account and set prices, you can renew for $250. Check the feature of the two and see if you need the features of the business account.

For what you get, Smugmug is still a great choice, obviously my opinion only. However, I will evaluate a few and look at Zenfolio and Photoshelter as they both can print to Australian pro labs.

I read a few of the comments they got about the price increase, some pretty nasty ones on there. If you run a true pro photo website, then the extra $100 will be made up probably by one sale of a large print. I suspect what they really want is to weed out the users that had pro accounts but don't do any sales, some of them would be uploading heaps of photos, videos, etc but Smugmug would not make anything extra other then the yearly subscription. Bandwidth and storage costs, having unlimited storage is now biting them in the proverbial behind.

André

Andre, I reckon you have hit it on the mark.

Also, at the end of teh day 300 odd bucks for a website/host for a person doing photography business is dirt cheap, typically decent website hosting (read as space, database function etc) is around that amount per year before you even factor in a website design, payment gateway etc.

radar wrote:For what you get, Smugmug is still a great choice, obviously my opinion only. However, I will evaluate a few and look at Zenfolio and Photoshelter as they both can print to Australian pro labs.

While this is true, it's very painful to have sudden and steep price increases for any regular thang. YMMV. [depends on how much dough you have in your pants]

My biggest issue is that they would never have done this unless they were desperate, and hosting 50GB of images with a company in a desperate situation makes me nervous.

Kevin, hopefully you keep backups of your 50Gb. Can you backup the comments/ captions etc in case you need to jump ship?

Kevin, dont make me nervous as I have over 30,000 photos on Smuggy, yes they are all backed up!!!!!

surenj wrote:Kevin, hopefully you keep backups of your 50Gb. Can you backup the comments/ captions etc in case you need to jump ship?

I have the photos backed up, the built up goodwill of my clients is a little harder. Not to mention the total pain in the ass it would be to move.

If nothing else, it has prompted me to look around and see if they are the best fit for my business.

Well, it is still good but i will go with the Portfolio $150, so only 50 bucks more as i dont use there print services etc... as i only use the site to show my images. Still good value for that and well no point of me going to the $200 as i just want to protect my images and they are only low res shots.

Time's are getting hard for some.

Cheers
john
BBJ