Smugmug Changes Membership Prices

Not too happy about this... Anybody know why ?

Most businesses who increase prices this drastically are in trouble and chasing profits. It never works.

Use the SEARCH function - there are about 4 streams on this already

Well, they said it was for engineers and cost of storage. They must be extremely confident in their Pro users upgrading. I'm up for renewal and don't get many print sales... so I'll probably be downgrading.

But this huge increase is quite frightening.

I'm worried the basic accounts will be next. I don't make money on any of the 13,000 images I have stored. I suppose I could start trying to archive my photo's myself.

rob0225 wrote in post #14933336
Most businesses who increase prices this drastically are in trouble and chasing profits. It never works.

Thanks for the feedback. No worries, we are not in trouble. The honest truth is storage and engineering costs. We have a lot of really awesome stuff coming up on the horizon!

ZacW, it would've been much smarter to wait till that stuff on the horizon is a reality

And frankly if cost of storage is truly the problem, penalize the people who USE MORE OF IT. Guy in one of the other threads on the subject says he's storing hundreds of thousands of images. I've been with SM for a year and a half, have less than 10K photos and am using 86GB of space at the moment. EIGHTY SIX GIGS, and you want an extra hundred bucks a year? So I can subsidize the rack space it takes to house that guy's pics? The price was what was keeping me at Smugmug over moving to something like Zenfolio with more features. So your solution is to raise prices to match theirs BEFORE adding features?

I'm sure it was a very hard decision to make, but for your sake, I really hope when the bigwigs at Smugmug were running the numbers, they factored in a sizeable drop in subscriptions, without nearly as sizable drop in storage requirements. The people who will be leaving in droves will be low-load small fries like me. The guy who's got a 6TB catalog of images and growing exponentially faster because he just switched to the D800 will stay right where he is, but we won't be around to subsidize his storage array anymore.

ZacW wrote in post #14933597
Thanks for the feedback. No worries, we are not in trouble.

...yet.

banquetbear wrote in post #14933972
...yet.

yep, famous last words.

I'm sure they quantified the impact of lost subscriptions, but I'm curious if they thought about the impact to the prosthelytizing masses. I used to be a big SM cheerleader, and their community was one of their strongest assets.

They basically just flipped a fair amount of us off, and said "we don't want you." I get asked pretty often by people who I used for my website, and I'm coming up with a new answer for them shortly.

ZacW wrote in post #14933597
Thanks for the feedback. No worries, we are not in trouble. The honest truth is storage and engineering costs. We have a lot of really awesome stuff coming up on the horizon!

Then it was a stupid business decision. Increase prices but provide no appreciable value. The fact you have stuff coming is irrelevant and to some degree validates my point. There is obviously something going on if you can't afford to implement the "awesome stuff" on the horizon BEFORE you increase prices, but need to use the increased pricing as a means to finance your upcoming features.

As you can see, your reputation is getting hammered across the internet and will only increase next week after the holiday. This is s small community and people talk and remember who does and does not treat them right.

Hindsights 20/20 but how much easier would this have been to phase it in over time while continuing to provide increased value as planned? My recommendation would to reevaluate the decision and put together a plan and walk this decision back and look at phasing it in over time to reduce the damage to your reputation.

rob0225 wrote in post #14934826
Then it was a stupid business decision. Increase prices but provide no appreciable value. The fact you have stuff coming is irrelevant and to some degree validates my point. There is obviously something going on if you can't afford to implement the "awesome stuff" on the horizon BEFORE you increase prices, but need to use the increased pricing as a means to finance your upcoming features.

As you can see, your reputation is getting hammered across the internet and will only increase next week after the holiday. This is s small community and people talk and remember who does and does not treat them right.

Hindsights 20/20 but how much easier would this have been to phase it in over time while continuing to provide increased value as planned? My recommendation would to reevaluate the decision and put together a plan and walk this decision back and look at phasing it in over time to reduce the damage to your reputation.

The important thing to remember is that we haven't raised prices in 7 years and we actually have completed over 400 requests (many from the top 10 list) on our user submitted feedback page. You aren't paying for what we have coming in the future, you are paying for what you are already getting. A turn key business for $250/$300 per year is very reasonable!

Zac its not a turn key business for $250/$300 per year. Its that plus sales commissions.

While I use the service and have been very happy with it, I also have had customers ask for certain photos that I will print same day locally. And by locally I mean walmart, yes walmart, with the same quality if not sometimes better then what I have received from "pro-labs"

One other thing I have found, and will bring the question.. SM brings so much business to these pro-labs, wheres the discount? I can go directly to their webpages, and its the exact same price. So is SM making a profit there too? We're getting charged retail, when we should be getting a wholesale price, plus add on to the SM commissions.

Open up your book, and let us read it.

Yeah, came here to look for alternatives. Is Zenfolio the main alternative? Want unlimited storage, but can use less if necessary. I use Smugmug mainly for online proofing, galleries and some sharing. I sell a bit from there, but not enough to cover the old fee, much less the 60% increase.

Any other suggestions besides Zenfolia?

ZacW wrote in post #14934860
The important thing to remember is that we haven't raised prices in 7 years and we actually have completed over 400 requests (many from the top 10 list) on our user submitted feedback page. You aren't paying for what we have coming in the future, you are paying for what you are already getting. A turn key business for $250/$300 per year is very reasonable!

...don't take this the wrong way: but there is a reason why forum support people aren't in marketing. These "talking points" that you've raised won't help overcome peoples reaction to what your employer has just done. You haven't raised prices in seven years? Well, considering you've just doubled the price its obvious your business should have raised prices earlier. You completed over 400 requests? Well good for you: but are you saying if you hadn't done those requests you wouldn't have raised prices? And smug mug doesn't offer a turn key business. I wrote my own business plan thank you very much and if I was using smug mug it would be as a business tool only. Calling the service you offer a "turn key business" is really overstating what you offer.

Your reaction here, and the video posted by the CEO on your blog, just strike me as, well, smug. It certainly seems like you named the company appropriately!

Are the new prices already reflected on the web site? Looked at the news page about the price increase but they look the same.

Would have been nice if existing customers were grandfathered in with the old prices with the option to upgrade to higher priced packages if it came with additional features.