Zenfolio–The Self-Fulfillment Photographers Dream Hosting Site

http://ronmart.zenfolio.com

I have been a hard core Smugmug fan every since I did my web hosting series against some well respected photo hosting services and it turned out to be the clear winner for my needs. In May 2009 when that series ended Zenfolio was a nice service that had some basic offerings, but it simply wasn’t in the same league as the services featured in my reviews.

Fast-forward to 2011 and my how times have changed! My big complaint about Zenfolio that ultimately had it dropped from the web hosting series was its lack of support for customization. liveBooks had a wonderful editSuite solution, folioSnap and SiteWelder offered great templates to get you going quick, and Smugmug was the king of advanced customization. However, at that time Zenfolio allowed little more than some basic color and layout changes, so it wasn’t a solution for “real” photographers.

Video Tour of my Zenfolio Site

Click here to play in HD (RECOMMENDED)
Video Tour of http://ronmart.zenfolio.com

There’s so much goodness in this site after all of the customization I did, I decided to do a simple walkthrough video so you wouldn’t miss some of the goodies. It helps you to understand very quickly how powerful this product is, and web programmers will be amazed to see that it was done without writing a line of CSS or HTML!

Customization is the Name of the Game

Endless Customizations with No CSS or HTML Coding Required
are Zenfolio’s Greatest Strength

I was blown away as to how much could be modified
They literally have thought of everything!

I hold a patent in feature of Microsoft’s Internet Explorer and I have more patents pending. I know web technology and until now I’ve never found a visual system that has satisfied my desire to customize without having to resort to writing CSS or HTML code. I also have worked on user-interfaces for most of my last 20 years as a programmer, so I usually have a lot to complain about when I see a cutesy user-interface that tries to solve complex problems.

I’m please to report that Zenfolio has literally blown me away and left me with my jaw wide open. They have done something that I think every web hosting site in the industry should have done ages ago – they’ve encapsulated a lot of complex concepts into a simple to user interface that eliminates the need for custom code to get some wonder designs.

Layouts are okay, but customization here is what the hardcore web programmers
will have on their wish list

All isn’t perfect as there are a variety of places where you are forced to choose a layout template as shown above for galleries or here for the home page. I found something I can use and am very happy overall, but the tinkerer in me wishes I could do more than the template offers. Given all of the customization available everywhere else I can’t help/hope but think that this feature will come one day.

Search Engine Optimizations (SEO)

Built-in SEO Tools are very well done

Unless you are from another planet or a cave, you know that the key to success on the web is via search engine optimizations that help the major search engines find your site so your customers can too. There are some basic things you can do and Zenfolio does a nice job (much like SiteWelder did way back in 2008) of making it very easy to get started.

Text that will impact SEO is always highlighted with green SEO boxes
This is a brilliant and very nice touch!

There’s also great support for helping your clients to find your site as well as your social network pages.

iPhone Support

On my iPhone 4 there was no special “mobile” mode (which can be a blessing and a curse) for the normal views, but everything seemed to work well and the performance was good. As you can see from the screen shots above, it seemed to work quite nicely on the iPhone, but I did notice that the slideshows didn’t work very well. I presume the experience on the iPad would be as good as or better.

The iPhone App had a 4.5 star rating in the App Store and was smoking fast, so I loved it. It was pretty no frills, but it was just like viewing the photos in your camera roll. Here’s some screen shots:

The only gripe I had about the app was that I didn’t immediately see a way to let third parties view my site through this app without having an administrator user experience. Beyond that it was pretty cool because you can even take photos, upload pictures, set wallpaper and more.

Comparing Zenfolio to other Web Hosting Services for Photographers

folioSnap sample site is down (Last Reviewed May 2009) – Full Review – This service was decent and pure HTML which I liked, but of the four I reviewed for the series I felt it was the weakest of the bunch. Sadly the folioSnap team didn’t like hearing that too much so they shut the site down and bid me good riddance. From what I see today on their current sites it doesn’t appear that much has changed. It’s a decent service, but in a 1 to 5 stack ranking in this group it still would come in dead last. It’s also super expensive when you compare it to the value you get from Zenfolio.

BlueMelon sample site (Novemeber 2010) – Full Review – This site is like the Zenfolio of old where there are bits and pieces that suggest it will be great one day, but currently it is lagging behind the remainder of the sites in this section that I’ll discuss. There’s actually a pretty powerful shopping cart and Smugmug like customization support, so in the right hands it can be very powerful, but the non-programmer will struggle to get a look that they are happy with. However, of all the other sites mentioned in this article I think it is the only one that has the potential to be the next Zenfolio as the core pieces are in place.

SiteWelder sample site (May 2009) – Full Review – As far as template sites go, SiteWelder was a pretty solid performer so I liked it when I reviewed it. These days it has mostly the same back end look and feel with some improvements made for mobile and minor updates here and there. Overall I think my review is still accurate (bugs have been addressed though) so Zenfolio blows it away in terms of the control you have over the look and feel, and the ease of use of Zenfolio is as good as or better in every way.

liveBooks sample site (May 2009) – Full Review – It’s added support for vimeo video, it’s much less expensive now and apparently there’s much better template options available at a cheaper cost but behind the scenes it looks very similar to my review. I liked the editSuite tool which was quite good when it came out, but compared to Zenfolio it feels very ridged and lacks the flexibility that you get spoiled with in Zenfolio.

Smugmug sample site (My Current Portfolio Site) – Full Review – If you are a HTML/CSS guru there’s little you can’t do to this site, but once you go down that path the Easy Customizer feature becomes less useful. Easy Customizer is great, but it’s like comparing a Tonka toy to a Ferrari when discussing what Zenfolio has to offer now. Unless you are a web programmer, you won’t be able to get the level of customization out of smugmug that is possible with Zenfolio.

Conclusion

I was so excited doing this review that I ended up taking 56 screenshots all of which are posted at http://ronmart.zenfolio.com/screenshots for your enjoyment. I’d love to talk about every one of them in depth, but I simply don’t have the time. I do encourage you to scan through them (slideshow feature is great) to see some of the customizations I did (don’t forget to pause or use the arrow keys to go back if you missed something).

If you do your own order fulfillment (i.e., you are a print master or work directly with a print master) then honestly I can’t say that there is anything else out there that I have seen that can compete with Zenfolio. From great Coupon, PayPal, and custom product support to custom shipping delivery methods it really does have it all!

For those that will rely on the partner labs like MPix.com, you have a much better system for setting your own prices using the pricing formula feature, much needed custom packages, great control over product choices, and brilliant price list design. Really there is so much here for those who sell their work even if you use a third party service that Zenfolio really seems to be the working photographers best solution for ecommerce.

Smugmug, liveBooks and others still have the advantage of doing video which is very important today. Currently Zenfolio doesn’t support video (which actually surprises me quite a bit) so that is going to be a show stopper for some people. If you fall into that camp then Smugmug is back at the top of my recommendation list again. However, if you are just doing photography – especially if you intend to sell your work – Zenfolio is the way to go right now.

I’d like to commend Alex Peyzner, founder of Zenfolio, for hanging in there and giving the customers what they really wanted and need. I urge Zenfolio to get on the video bandwagon and hopefully add custom layout support as those are the only flaws I could find in the service right now. The premium service is a steal for what you get, and the Premium Business account is still a great bargain for the features offered – especially when you consider what you’d have to pay a web programmer to get this level of customization and ecommerce on most other services. Click here to learn more about pricing and be sure to visit my link below to save 10% (as of the time of this article).

Special Offer

Save 10% off when you follow the instructions in this article.

Disclosure

I’ve had a free account on Zenfolio since my original web hosting series in 2009. Alex Peyzner the founder was kind enough to keep it open the entire time so I could stay abreast of their improvements as well as do another comprehensive review now. I may get a commission if you sign up for an account with some of the services listed in this article (currently Smugmug and Zenfolio at the time this article was written).

New Zenfolio Discount – 10% off

UPDATE: Read my review of Zenfolio

In anticipation of my future review / mini-update to my Web Hosting Series, I’m pleased to announce that I’ve teamed up with Zenfolio to offer my readers a 10% discount when you enter the code QNJ-ZJE-KXR in your personal info as shown here (usually seen when you upgrade to a paid account):

If you did everything properly you should see the 10% discount applied as shown in this example (actual values depend on which plan you choose and the currently running offer):

This offer is subject to change without notice, so check my Discount Coupon Code page for the latest offer details.

UPDATE: Read my review of Zenfolio

Disclaimer

I will get a commission if you use this discount, so we both win! Thanks for supporting this blog by using this code.

BlueMelon–Inexpensive Photo Hosting on the Web

The nice folks at BlueMelon.com contacted me recently about their neat photo hosting site that is an alternative to better known sites like flickr, smugmug, zenfolio, etc…

While I wouldn’t consider this site to be in the same category as those I featured in my pro web hosting series, I do think that it is a decent site that is usable by the small business photographer doing things like senior portraits, sports team photos, etc… much like one would use zenfolio.

Feature-wise it has most of the powerful features I love about Smugmug Pro, but it lacks the customization and polish of Smugmug Pro at this point.  It does allow for CSS, head tag customization so there’s a way to get better results than I was in my short testing I did with this site, so I’d encourage readers to take the tour to see what all is possible with this cool site.

Here’s a chart to compare the different account levels. As of 11/9/10, prices range from free to $89.95/year for the top of the line package, so it is a pretty good value for what you get and a much more secure than Flickr.

Click here or the image below to sign up or learn more at BlueMelon.com.

Special Offer

Use the coupon code B4739552 to save 20% when you sign up using this link.

Disclosure

BlueMelon provided me with an enterprise account to evaluate their site and I may get a commission if you use the coupon code.

Professional Photography Web Hosting Roundup: Conclusion (6 of 6)–RETIRED

 

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THIS ARTICLE HAS BECOME TOO OLD AND OUTDATED. I now use Zenfolio exclusively for my personal portfolio and http://ronmartinsen.com now only points to my Zenfolio site. Click here to read my Zenfolio review and learn why I feel it’s the best service available now.

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Through the end of May ‘09 when you mention this blog you can save $600 off the Unlimited Package and $300 off the Select Package when you sign up.

Extend your trial to 30 days

$75 off your setup fee - special code RMART

Discount: 20% off first year

After two months of evaluating the services featured in this series, I’ve reached my conclusion about which service is right for me. However, I encourage you to recognize that what is right for me may not necessarily be right for you. Read on to see what I recommend and how a different service might be just what you are looking for.

Article Recap

If you missed any of the articles in this series, I encourage you to go back and read them before you continue to read this article. Here’s a complete list of previous articles:

1. Professional Photography Web Hosting Roundup: Intro
2. liveBooks Review
3. FolioSnap Review
4. SiteWelder Review
5. Smugmug Review
6. Conclusion

Ron’s Opinion Of What Service Might Be Right For You

The cool thing about this series is that there’s no real loser, because all of these services are very good. There is something I really like about every one that I wish the other services offered, so you’re takeaway should be that you match your needs to the appropriate service that best suites those needs. With that in mind, here’s a quick rundown of each:

liveBooks – The Best in Presentation

If you want a site that looks like you are a world class photographer, then liveBooks will deliver on that. If you look at the sites of their top clients you see some unique and fantastic presentations, so I believe their design team is without equal. I also loved the level of control that editSuite offered as well as the way their thumbnails work. If you can afford it, I highly recommend liveBooks for a world class Internet presence. If I had the money to do it, I know I would. To help with the cost liveBooks has release a special offer through the end of May ‘09 - when you mention this blog you can save $600 off the Unlimited Package and $300 off the Select Package when you sign up.

 

FolioSnap – Fast Setup without Flash

Of the four sites I created, none was working faster than FolioSnap. I literally got it up and going in about 20 minutes. What’s more, it worked brilliantly with my iPhone using the same site design that non-mobile users would see. I liked that A LOT. If you are in a hurry to get your site online or you need a solution that avoids the use of flash, then I highly recommend FolioSnap. I encourage you to try it out and extend your trial to 30 days just by entering the promo code RONMART when you sign up.

SiteWelder – Excellent Template Layouts with a Can Do Attitude

Of the sites reviewed, nobody offered the volume of custom template layouts like SiteWelder. Once you choose your template layout you aren’t done because their “Can Do” attitude will serve you well to create a custom experience that goes beyond the initial template layout to create something unique from other SiteWelder users. I loved the fact that the template was only a starting point and that they were willing to make reasonable changes at no additional cost. In addition, they were the only site advertising that they would migrate your existing site from another service which could be useful for those stuck paying to much for their current solution. Get $75 off your setup fee when you use the special code RMART.

Smugmug Pro – The Value and Customization Leader with Best in Class Support

$59.95 to $149.95 per year for all of this??? – WOW! Smugmug Pro offers many features the others in this series haven’t even began to think about yet, and its customer support doesn’t seem to have the word “no” in its vocabulary. In addition, it offers access to its CSS which means you can do a tremendous amount of customization. However, the key word here is YOU. If you aren’t the type that can learn how to program for the web, then its Easy Customizer will give you nice results for local photographer work but not for the big leagues. It’s private gallery support is definitely the best – bar none – for wedding and portrait photographers, and if you don’t do your own printing then its shopping cart integration with third parties is the only game in town. Smugmug used to be compared to rival Zenfolio for general purpose to prosumer photo sharing, but its now in the big leagues and certainly competent enough for pro web hosting. Get a discount of 20% off first year when you use the coupon code SmugRon.

And the new hosting service for http://RonMartinsen.com is:

I chose Smugmug Pro because I’m comfortable doing web programming to tweak my site to get the exact results I want and because it offers a value that meets my current budget. I don’t do self-fulfillment, so the shopping carts integration with EzPrints and BayPhoto really met my order fulfillment needs. In addition, I love how quickly I can get my photos online and share them with clients. I wish it had a better thumbnail presentation like liveBooks, and I really wish it would take a cue from FolioSnap and do a non-Flash slideshow. However, Smugmug surprised me here and offered something that I never thought was possible at the beginning of this series.

Runner Up

I wish I could have gone through the entire design process and created a compelling site with liveBooks like a normal customer would do. I felt like this service offers a very professional presentation that results in a world class presentation, albeit for the highest cost in this series. It truly is the Porsche of professional photography web hosting services, so if you can afford it then I’m fairly confident you won’t be disappointed.

SEO Follow Up Article

As of May 16th, 2009 at 10:54 PM, the search results for the sites created in this article with the big three search engines were as follows:

Google.com	Live.com	Yahoo.com
SiteWelder Smugmug liveBooks – not found FolioSnap – not found	SiteWelder FolioSnap liveBooks – not found Smugmug – not found	No sites found

I continue to monitor this, and if the results change in a month I’ll be sure to post a follow up article that shows who is winning in search engine results. Right now it appears that SiteWelder is the big winner. This is something to consider when choosing your hosting service because your site is useless if nobody can find you!

UPDATE: Here’s the follow up article on SEO and Smugmug wins big again!

Thoughts from the Pros Follow Up

At the conclusion of this series I had hoped to include the opinions of some top photographers as to their thoughts of the sites created for this series. Unfortunately busy schedules precluded that from happening, so I will try to write a follow up article at some point should I get enough responses back. In the meantime, here’s what two pros had to say:

Scott Robinson

• Web Site Address: http://www.scottrobinsonphoto.com
• Years as Pro Photographer: 25
• Specialty: People on location for magazines and corporate clients
• Your Current Web Hosting Service: SiteWelder
• Your Favorite Site: http://ronmartinsen.com on Smugmug
• Your Least Favorite Site: http://www.ronmartinsen.com.temp.livebooks.com/ on liveBooks

Gary Parker

• Web Site Address: http://www.garyparker.com and http://catdogphotography.com
• Years as Pro Photographer: 30+
• Specialty: Dwarfism, Cats, Dogs, Kids, People & Advertising
• Your Current Web Hosting Service: SiteWelder
• Your Favorite Site: http://ronmartphoto.com on SiteWelder
• Your Least Favorite Site: http://ronmartinsen.com on Smugmug (but he still liked it and loved the click for large images feature)

FolioSnap Review Update

I’d like to issue an open apology to FolioSnap for an error I had made in my review. I had mistakenly said they only offered one layout when in fact they offer three. I had gone to the Choose Theme portion of their site when I was writing the review (late at night) and naturally only saw one layout.

Shopping Cart Experience

In my review I also trashed the shopping cart experience because it simply didn’t work. The Add to Cart and View Cart buttons didn’t show up, but after some debugging on behalf of Founder, Josh Rencher, it was discovered that I hadn’t set a title for my image. This is required to make this feature work (which I believe should be addressed from a usability standpoint), so my test site now works as expected:

After you add the item your cart it' will take you to PayPal just like SiteWelder does, and you’ll see a page like this:

In addition there were a couple other minor errors. I would encourage my readers to re-read the updated version at Professional Photography Web Hosting Roundup- FolioSnap.

FolioSnap has also added a special offer for my blog readers where you can extend its normal 15 day trial to 30 days just by entering the promo code RONMART when you sign up for a free trail. This service was the fastest to get up and going in this series with a nice professional look, so I encourage you to try it out for yourself!

Professional Photography Web Hosting Roundup: SmugMug Pro Review

 

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THIS ARTICLE HAS BECOME TOO OLD AND OUTDATED. I now use Zenfolio exclusively for my personal portfolio and http://ronmartinsen.com now only points to my Zenfolio site. Click here to read my Zenfolio review and learn why I feel it’s the best service available now.

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Introduction

Before this series there was only one service I’d highly recommend for online photo management, and that was Smugmug. In fact, I had written an article entitled Where should I display my pictures online where I sang the praises of Smugmug and insisted that it was the place to store your photos. I’ve been a long-time customer of Smugmug and the great folks there have treated me like I was a big customer well before my blog even existed. So I’ll state up front, I’m biased, but this is the Smugmug review - not my series conclusion.

I’ve been a computer programmer now for about 20 years. I hold a patent on Internet technology that is used by major browsers today. I know HTML, CSS, the DOM, W3C standards, AJAX, etc… well – very well. However, it is no longer my day job so I don’t get to play with it as much as I would like to anymore. I also know it well enough that if I want to spend time being a photographer, then I don’t have time to be a web programmer – combined they are too much of a time sink. This is why I finally gave up developing my own site and went to Smugmug. I’ve never regretted that decision – it’s just too damn easy!

When I started to do this series I started to ask myself the question – why are these sites so expensive when the stuff they are doing is so trivial? How could someone charge $195 for a flash slideshow when it literally takes them as much effort as it takes to copy and paste and replace a word? I just couldn’t understand why some very trivial web features were costing so much money when it was (and really should be) included in my inexpensive Smugmug site. With that in mind, I approached one of my pro photographer mentors and suggested Smugmug could do anything those expensive sites could do, and he scoffed at the idea. He said that Smugmug was a consumer site and that you can’t expect it to compete with pro sites, but I know the code behind the scenes. I know what is possible when someone like Smugmug opens the doors by creating its Advanced site-wide customization feature, so I smelled a challenge.

I decided to contact Markham Bennett (below left), VP of BizDev for Smugmug and I threw down a challenge to him –- I bet that Smugmug could build a site as good as or better than the big boys in this review. Well, since Markham is a superhero, he naturally took the challenge and enlisted his fellow caped crusader Barb Gates (below right) to join in the fun. As they used to do on Batman - KAPOW, BAM, BOOM! Now its time to kick some serious CSS ass!

Site Tour

In my article entitled Advanced Smugmug Customization by Barb Gates I showed how a default Smugmug site looks, and what a little love with Easy Customizer can do for it. However, Barb then goes on to build http://ronmartinsen.smugmug.com as you see it in this article (it’s a living site so it may evolve from what you see here – screenshots can be found here). If you’ve used Smugmug before then this will simply blow you away, as most users rarely go beyond the default view and have no idea that this level of customization is possible. This of course, is what the all new Smugmug Pro hosting is all about. This ain’t your father’s Smugmug (okay maybe that’s a bit overboard), but rather the new kick ass side of Smugmug you’ve never seen before called Smugmug Pro.

You’ll notice in the pictures throughout this article that the site is fairly similar to the Sitewelder and FolioSnap sites created during this series. It took a lot more work, but thanks to Barb we made it happen. Truth be told, Smugmug doesn’t have a good gallery style to match the offerings of the other sites in this series, so I had to settle for its Filmstrip view which is the bane of even the Smugmug team! It works, but it’s far from an ideal solution. Andy Wiliams, House Pro, says that something better is coming soon and I promise you that I’ll be the first in line to try it out! Here’s a sample view of my places gallery which features a shopping cart (a slideshow, but its hidden on my site), a lightbox view (shown in the smaller second image below) and more:

I’ll be the first to admit though, that this was the hardest site to build in this series. The other sites are great because you just pick a template and it works. Smugmug can do that too with its themes, but it won’t look as professional as its peers in this review. However, they cost three times (or more) as much so if you are willing to get your hands dirty you CAN match nearly anything done elsewhere!

In a way, Smugmug is currently like unfinished furniture – its just as good as the finished stuff, but for half the price. It’s also the same in that you’ll have to get a little dirty, and it might piss you off a bit, and even worse if you discover you can’t do it then you’ll need to pay to have someone finish it for you – and it won’t be cheap. This is why I created this article, so you could at least try to copy what was done on my site without too much effort.  You then only need to replace the colors and logos to your taste. In addition, you can just following along with the customization article on there forum, use Andy’s Fast Start (great) or if all else fails then contact help@smugmug.com to get steered in the right direction.

Shopping Cart

Where Smugmug shines above all others is in its incredibly well designed shopping cart experience as shown below (note: meaningless mock values entered):

You can add your own prices for 170 product offerings (as of the time if this review), and you can even choose between ezPrints or BayPhoto as your image provider. In the near future there will also be support for much needed custom packages and coupon codes. However, there’s still a big gap in that if you want to do your own fulfillment, there’s no built-in option for you. The other sites in this review all assume custom fulfillment, so this could be a major deciding factor for you based on your offerings and needs.

Uploading Images and Sharing Links

Uploading files on the other sites in this review was rather cumbersome because they want you to optimize your files for a specific size, and then your photos are stored in an art library where the files must then be moved over to a gallery. In Smugmug all of that hassle is simplified to a brilliant user-interface. You just create your gallery (and many of its settings – including pricing – can be done in ONE step) and then you just drag & drop (or select) the photos to upload. You can easily assign captions and the process goes by very quickly.

However, the best part of this process is that I only upload FULL size images (~24mb 5D Mark II images at JPEG 12 are fine) and Smugmug does the right thing to create 8 downsized images (complete with a sharpening option – scroll to the bottom) plus it maintains the original. I can choose which sizes I wish to display, but it can use the high res images for printing. This is how it should be done – period. No fooling around with “resize” checkboxes and manual optimizations. This just works and is brain dead simple – WELL DONE SMUGMUG!

Another cool thing is that you can save a lot of time exporting your photos directly from Lightroom to Smugmug using Jeffrey Fridel’s “Export to Smugmug” plug-in. This is a huge time saver, and it even supports creating new galleries!

In addition, I frequently I find myself wanting/needing to send or embed (in the case of my blog) a link of a specific size. Fortunately Smugmug also offers a nice “get a link” page where you can simply click to have the url sent to the clipboard for use elsewhere. Once again, this is brilliant and a huge time saver for me.

Video

I’m sure if you ask the other sites to give you video, they’ll accommodate you. But Smugmug has first class video sharing. Even the now infamous Reverie by Vincent Laforet is on his Smugmug site. Very cool!

Behind the Scenes: Administering your site

To get a behind the scenes look at my site, simply arrow through the images here. As you’ll see there is a tremendous amount of controls available for more customization offerings than any other service in this series. However, with great control comes great complexity, so for some it may seem overwhelming – even confusing. However, the good news is that the Easy Customizer will give the local pro wedding/portrait photographer everything s/he’s looking for. In addition, the easy of uploading photos and the advanced gallery support make it a breeze to create as many groups of gallery sets as you could possibly want. In fact, you have galleries up and ready for clients nearly as quick as your photos will transfer over the Internet. In addition, private galleries are trivial and unlimited (and they mean that – hundreds of terabytes are really allowed).

HTML/CSS Customization

I’ve already mentioned Advanced Smugmug Customization by Barb Gates and shown what’s possible – my site is the result. However, there’s much more available via third-party customizers like:

• Jerry Roek who built Alicia Hartfield's cool flash-based site with her assistance along with this one
• David Wolf who specializes in Smugization

Domain Name Registration

You can use SmugmugDomains.com to get your own custom domain name (i.e., http://ronmartinsen.com) for dirt cheap (only $7.69 at the time of this writing). Sure, SiteWelder includes this but when you consider Smugmug’s pro account costs $150 and you add your domain for only $7.69, that’s still less than SiteWelder’s setup fee!

iPhone Support

Visit http://ronmart.smugmug.com or http://ronmartinsen.smugmug.com/ from your iPhone to see the iPhone support in action. You’ll get a different interface optimized for the iPhone (above left), and you can go to the non-iPhone site like you’d normally get in Safari (above right). My site worked fine in either format (although the flash slideshow doesn’t render on iPhone, since the iPhone doesn’t support flash).

However, that’s just the beginning, you can download an apps for your iPhone that support Smugmug so you can actually upload photos directly from your phone to Smugmug (complete with GeoTagging)! Here’s a cool example of the awesome FREE Smugshot app for the iPhone available on AppStore:

When it comes to iPhone support, Smugmug not only embraces it – it extends it. This is REALLY cool stuff!

Key Customers

Photography Corner lists over 28 pros who call Smugmug home. In addition, there’s a few other big names you’ve probably heard of:

• Vincent Laforet - Canon Explorer of Light who became crazy famous after releasing the first cool video, Reverie filmed exclusively with a 5D Mark II.
• Mark Weisberg – Award winning Portrait/Wedding Photographer
• Robert Evans – Los Angeles Celebrity Photographer
• David Jay – Wedding Photographer and Adobe Evangelist
• Miguel Lasa – Wildlife and Nature Photographer
• Sherron Sheppard – 2003 California PPC “Photographer of the Year” - Journalistic Wedding & 2006 PPA “Platinum Photographer of the Year”
• Brian Valentine - (a.k.a., LordV) – AMAZING Macro Photographer

There’s also a couple good pro photographers using flash on their Smugmug site:

• Alicia Hartfield (Flash site on Smugmug)
• Jaki Good (Flash site on Smugmug)

To see some other examples of cool Smugmug sites, click here.

Search Engine Performance

Like FolioSnap, Smugmug really doesn’t track their Search Engine Performance. However, like everyone in this series they do care a lot about the subject. In fact Andy offers a good article on the subject, but I hadn’t had time to follow his advice so my results are based on doing literally nothing!

As of the time I wrote this article a search for Ron Martinsen Photography on Google resulted in http://ronmartinsen.smugmug.com coming in just ahead of liveBooks and SiteWelder (ronmartphoto.com).

Cost

Cheap – dirt cheap. At the time of this writing, you can get all this cool customization for as little as $59.95 (Power), but you can get much more (like the fantastic shopping cart) for $149.95 (Pro). If you can live with the default themes, then its only $39.95 to host your photos (not recommend for pros).

Pros / Cons

What I love about Smugmug is:

1. Price – You’ve gotta be kidding me? Is that a typo? That’s value baby!!!!!
2. Shopping Cart – Setting prices is a bit cumbersome, and the lack of self-fulfillment is going to be a no-go for some pros. However, the addition of packages, coupons (both coming soon) and the option to use two great services for printing will mean a great way to generate revenue without dealing with the headache of self-printing.
3. iPhone Support – Not only is it good, it’s fun! Everybody else – here’s a model to follow!
4. Uploading Ease of Use & Share Links Features – From the time I’m done with my photos (excluding Internet transmission speeds), it takes me less than a minute to have my photos online in a new gallery. What’s even better, is that my original and 8 other sizes are available to share with others right away.
5. Customization – 90% of what you see can be tweaked via CSS or in some tricky cases via JavaScript, but at least you can get to it – that’s not possible on any other site in this series.

Areas for Smugmug improvement:

1. Too much brute force customization required – Easy Customizer is a GREAT step in the right direction, but most great Photographers I know aren’t computer geeks (beyond Photoshop) so they’ll need a lot more than that to be successful using this service. For them, the other offerings in this line-up are much more compelling (despite the Themes support).
2. Flash Slide Show – This a great site that avoids flash, except here. Take a cue from FolioSnap, and get a non-flash slideshow.
3. Poor Gallery View choices for some Pros - The Default view is good for Wedding/Portrait Photographers, but for everyone else it’s too cluttered. The filmstrip view is the only real uncluttered option, but then that freakin filmstrip is a nasty little best. Note to Smugmug: SiteWelder’s scrollbars with CSS support are a WAY better option!
4. Favicon support is just broken for Internet Explorer – Apple and other browsers may be making headway, but the last I checked Internet Explorer still has a commanding dominance of the browser market. Not supporting this platform is a bad choice. FolioSnap solved this problem, so I’d like to see Smugmug step up and do the same.
5. Limited customization for galleries – For all the cool customizations available, you’re kinda stuck with what Smugmug gives you for the photo gallery itself. I wish that there was a lot more control over that process without having to resort to hard core JavaScript.
6. I don’t have one of those cool superhero pictures from Chris MacAskill!

Conclusion

The other sites in this series are definitely better for the hands-off pro, but Smugmug Pro will continue to get better so that advantage will get smaller with time. However, there’s a ton of great stuff here that no other host in this series offers. Big things like an amazing shopping cart and gallery management that is super fast and easy make it a must for wedding and portrait photographers. A book could be written about Smugmug because there’s just so much there (hum, I should do that), so I have no hesitation in making my highest recommendation for Smugmug.

Special Offer

Save 20% off your first year when you use the code SmugRon when you sign up! If my math is right, that’s less than $120 for a year – that’s crazy cheap!!!!

SmugmugDomains.com has domain name registration for less than $8 for your first year as of the time of this writing – top that!

Other articles in this series:

1. Professional Web Hosting Roundup: Intro
2. liveBooks Review
3. FolioSnap Review
4. SiteWelder Review
5. Smugmug Review
6. Conclusion – pending (and no, it won’t be another Smugmug article :-)