On the hunt to discover more about photo sharing, I fell into some late night research and eventually found Smugmug, who describe themselves simply as “The ultimate in photo sharing.” This is VERY cool if you want to do stuff like create online photo albums, and share, store, organize and print your photos, photo uploads, etc.
If you take a quick peek at their site (see link below) you’ll notice the black background works well – especially when presenting photography. By the way, they have an impressive little photo slideshow on their intro page too. One stunning image in particular stands out – look for the lone yellow tree bathed in it’s own magical light by David Beatson.
Click here for your SmugMug photo sharing FREE trial
In summary: You pay a yearly fee ($40 – works out to about $3-4 a month) and for that get unlimited photo storage and bandwidth, photo sharing and photo upload, great photo based galleries where you can sell your photo creations and photo calendars etc. There’s no advertising (ie. nothing to distract viewers away from your photos!) and you can take a free 14 day trial too, as a taster. (See link above).
Here’s what some other SmugMug users said:
“I have been using smugmug since they launched. They are hands down the best photo sharing site I have come across for those who care about their photos. Since they charge a fee, there is no advertising or gimmicks, just great display and organization of photos. They allow viewers to download the full file size so it is easy to do photo transfer. It is worth $40 for me to have solid photo storage and great UI.”
Things I love about Smugmug and why I chose it over other competing services:
- They allow you to try the service free for 14 days. You can try EVERY feature they offer without any restrictions
- Your photos are safe and secure. They keep 4 backup copies of each photo in 3 states so you’ll always have access to them
- You can lock galleries with passwords to keep them private
- Smugmug doesn’t send you SPAM and there are NO ADS on the site
- You can share your photos with friends & family without them having to register with Smugmug
- A+ customer service. It’s fast, friendly, and professional
- Basic account offers UNLIMITED storage
- Prints can be ordered right from Smugmug. No need to get them ordered with a different company
- Comments, tags, keywords, and compatibility with blogs and forums – very convenient!
- Video clips are allowed with a Power User account
- Very helpful and friendly forum called “Digital Grin” who can answer just about any photo related question you can think of
- The company is FAMILY OWNED and not run by some internet conglomerate like Yahoo or Kodak
NB. Hey, on that last point… I emailed one of the team from SmugMug and received a friendly reply within a day. I don’t know about you but I certainly felt a real ‘family type’ feel to this site (think ‘accessible’). Maybe you’ll pick that up too. SmugMug keeps it nice and simple… “We dream of an independent company devoted to nothing but your priceless photos.” Way to go guys.
Need unlimited photo storage and photo sharing? Try this…
“SmugMug, a family-run business that will celebrate its fifth year anniversary this Friday, says it has over 450,000 paying customers and makes over $10M in revenue per year. There are no free accounts on SmugMug; users must pay a minimum of $40 per year, but they have access to unlimited photo storage and photo sharing. The company has yet to take any outside money, and seeing how well things are going, probably won’t.”
Quotes and user comments thanks to Techcrunch:
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