Flickr Pro vs SmugMug

[West Coast Birder]

I’m reaching the limits of my free Flickr account and thinking of upgrading. Flickr Pro at about $70/yr seems like the logical choice. It has unlimited storage and seems to meet the needs for a non-professional like me.

On the other hand, SmugMug is significantly more expensive. It definitely seems to be catering to the professional photographer from what I can see.

To those of you who have SmugMug, what makes it worth it to you? Which tier membership is the one you have? What are they key features that make the price premium justifiable to you?

 

[bobpal]

I use SmugMug and have the Portfolio package. It runs $225 per year and I have a custom domain, www.palermini.com.

I started with them because I wanted an easy way to sell prints and downloads of college athletics. I had a good (enough) business going from about 2011 to 2016 when we moved. In my new location I have very few sales so I downgraded my SmugMug package but the price has crept up to about 10% less than I used to pay for the more versatile package.

I still need a website, but now it is not for direct sales. It is easier for me to not start over. SmugMug works great as a source of my photos for POTN and FoP.

If you work at it you can make your site look exactly like you want it to. If not they have a lot of templates that look good.

 

[West Coast Birder]

Thanks Bob, that was very helpful! I don’t know if I’ll ever sell prints and SmugMug seems overkill for someone like me, but I’ll look into it some more.

 

[joayne]

I bought into to SmugMug when it was much cheaper and user friendly.
They have taken a turn to promoting pros and it's hard to stay with them because of the cost.
You know, I just don't want to go through the pain of moving everything. I've got quite a lot stored there from WWPW

 

[West Coast Birder]

Thanks, Joayne!

I think Flickr Pro is probably sufficient for my use.

 

[joayne]

As an aside some of us SM users are have some difficulty with SM loading images with the BB code
You know, one of intermittent quirks

 

[bobpal]

As an aside some of us SM users are have some difficulty with SM loading images with the BB code
You know, one of intermittent quirks

I'm not. I have posted many photos. I use Imbeded, jpeg, at 1024 wide. One time after I clicked the post button there were ? icons instead of pictures. A refresh of the page loaded the photos.

 

[edmidlifecrisis]

I have both (including Flickr Pro) because I have my web site hosted on SmugMug. I guess it depends on what you want it for. I have had Flickr for so long I think I have something like 11, 000 photos on it. Most are private that I use just as a repository so I can access them any time on any of my devices. Lots are public though.

 

[West Coast Birder]

I’m just a hobbyist. I plan on retiring in a year or so but I think it is still going to be a hobby for me. Given my usage, I think the lower cost of Flickr pro will do for me.

 

[DavidWatts]

My house is brimming with comp'd SmugMug merch, so I will be staying with them for a while I guess. My SmugMugMug has hot coffee in it at the moment. I do agree with SM being expensive, but it is also the most flexible in the upper tiers.

 

[Scott M]

The basic plan for SmugMug isn't that expensive. I just checked, and I last renewed in July 2023 for two years at $110 total, so that's $55 per year. I get unlimited storage, but cannot use my own domain name. As a hobbyist, it works for me. I have been using their service for many years.

 

[i-G12]

Flickr meets my needs. So that's what I'm doing.

Actually I don't upload a lot to Flickr. Haven't gotten to the point where I need the "Pro" version.

 

[digital paradise]

This is a little off topic but just in case. This does not solve the hosting problem because you can't use it to link photos. If you have an Adobe Photo plan you get up to 5 personal web sites with Portfolio which are integrated with LrC.

 

[paddler4]

I've used Smugmug for many years and have the Power plan, which is $110 per year. At some point, I thought of selling directly from Smugmug, but I never have. I like the range of featuers (e.g., public and private galleries, the ability to organize the site in many different ways, the ability to customize the appearance, etc.), and their customer support is superb.

This does not solve the hosting problem because you can't use it to link photos. If you have an Adobe Photo plan you get up to 5 personal web sites with Portfolio which are integrated with LrC.

Not sure what this means. It's very easy to export from Lightroom to Smugmug and very easy to link from Smugmug to other sites. In addition to the native publish-to-Smugmug function in Lightroom, there is a superb plugin by Jeffrey Friedl, http://regex.info/blog/lightroom-goodies/smugmug, which I think is better and that I've used for years. How one links from SM to other sites depends on the other site, but I've never had difficulty doing it. SM even allows you to set the size of the image that's linked, up to whatever limit you've set for that particular SM gallery.