SmugMug Price Increase

divmedic4 wrote in post #14939772
I do find it interesting that there is such a strong denial that SM may be having financial difficulties. IMO, when the person most associated with a service oriented business and who holds a hefty title (COO) jumps ship there is 1 of 2 things going on. Either the company is sinking and they are getting while the getting is good or there is a serious philosophical difference developing and that person is leaving before the financial difficulties result because of the philosophical differences.

I'm not sure who is in denial, SM's CEO has said margins have run too thin to keep pricing where they are and keep moving forward. Pretty straight forward. The question now is will there be a bigger than expected exodus and where will that leave them.

As for COO.. there's a 3rd reason: no way to become CEO/no growth. Or even a 4th: simply tired of it. Folks in these near top seat positions get bored, want a different challenge. Or it's a combination of all.

Wow. I used to have accounts with both SM and ZF simultaneously. I am glad I kept Zenfolio. So much easier to use too.

Justaddwata wrote in post #14933351
Putting the Smug in the smugmug name I think - How can they blame storage costs - prices have never been lower. While prices are not astronomical - the increase is yet another reason to look at the competition (or a new competitor to enter the market)

You make the mistake of looking at the cost of a HDD.

But you need big RAIDs. And a number of them with failover, spare disks, backups, ...

A redundant RAID controller with huge bandwidth and capable of concurrently serve multiple servers through redundant interfaces isn't cheap. But that is what it takes to keep the data online if the RAID controller fails, or the RAID power supply, or disks in the RAID, or the interface between RAID controller and one of the computers or one of the servers handling the disks. And all needs to be properly cooled and with redundant power supply.

And besides the redundancy for serving data, you also need a backup backend, making sure you have everything mirrored at a different geographical location in case you have a big fire.

The storage needs to be protected by access control and potentially a number of guards - when the operation is large enough, it's economically interesting to try to blackmail the organization. And the investment in everything is so huge that you need to try to isolate the different subsystems with access control in ways that a very disgruntled employee can't just wipe 100TB of data and get that wipe to migrate through the redundant copies.

In the end, your view about cheap is missing quite a number of small issues.

Naturalist wrote in post #14933753
Economics 101 taught me when demand increases, the price decreases. More for the dollar - except in Smugmug's world.

Economics 101 is for mass-markets.

A 64-disk RAID enclosure isn't mass-market.
A 50kW+ UPS isn't mass-market.

And the RAID-enabled disks are more expensive and behind in releases compared to the workstation and desktop disks.

Economics 101 should have tought you that it is expensive to be at the front. That is where the big data centers are.

I've been with SM for 5 years, time to look elsewhere...
100% increase for new users and 67% for current is simply ridiculous; toll roads can do that, not a business that has competition out there...

bps wrote in post #14933702
A lot of folks here are criticizing the price increase, but have you considered how fast their storage requirements have increased? My 5D MIII Raw Files are 25-26mb in size. Now imagine the D800...

Bryan

Seriously.

Yeah, if SM had raised their prices $15 every year, you would have been cool with it. But the fact is that if they did that, you would be paying more now than you are and you would have been paying more every year over the last 7 years. So you have saved money and you are still getting a really cheap service.

A lot of people don't want to run a business and just do it for fun.

Exactly. They have been WAY cheaper than anyone else. Now they are pretty much matched up with their competition. I don't understand all the **** and moaning from everyone about that.

Where?

Fraction? I was paying $100 for Smugmug. Premium for Zen was $120. So the Fraction would be 6/5.

Now I am paying $200 with SM. For Zen, I would need to pay $250. So the fraction is 5/4. I'll stick with SM over paying a 'fraction' of the cost with Zenfolio.

No, but those of us that have the higher MP cameras probably upload a lot more pics to Smugmug than your average consumer with a T4i. Oh wait, that T4i is 18MP by itself.

Still, a wedding or sports photographer shooting with 18-22MP cameras have a LOT of files to upload.

LOL! So unlimited uploading and use for $250/year is too expensive, but you are cool with paying for Photoshelter? 1000GB for $550/year! Have fun with that!

Had you been charged an increase of $15/year more, you would have been paying more every single year and you would be paying more now. Why is that more palatable? That's just flat out dumb.

If my clients acted and said the things in the same manner that people have acted towards Smugmug this weekend, I would be trying to change my clientele, that's for sure.

Three common things I've noticed about this forum and other forums, is that...

1.) Price hike is coming out of no where...
2.) It's a rather 'large' price hike...
3.) No one sees value of what they're doing...

If they would have delivered it better, not have such a large hike, and gave a 'better picture' (no pun intended) of what the benefits of hiring more engineers will do, I think people would still piss and moan a little, but no where near as bad.

As a manufacturing engineer, I don't go to my boss and say "I need $40k to make the line better." and except him to trust me and give me the money on the spot. I have to come up with a plan/budget and then figure out if it can be done in a month or two or three, etc... Same concept here.

^This

pwm2 wrote in post #14942892
You make the mistake of looking at the cost of a HDD.

But you need big RAIDs. And a number of them with failover, spare disks, backups, ...

A redundant RAID controller with huge bandwidth and capable of concurrently serve multiple servers through redundant interfaces isn't cheap. But that is what it takes to keep the data online if the RAID controller fails, or the RAID power supply, or disks in the RAID, or the interface between RAID controller and one of the computers or one of the servers handling the disks. And all needs to be properly cooled and with redundant power supply.

And besides the redundancy for serving data, you also need a backup backend, making sure you have everything mirrored at a different geographical location in case you have a big fire.

The storage needs to be protected by access control and potentially a number of guards - when the operation is large enough, it's economically interesting to try to blackmail the organization. And the investment in everything is so huge that you need to try to isolate the different subsystems with access control in ways that a very disgruntled employee can't just wipe 100TB of data and get that wipe to migrate through the redundant copies.

In the end, your view about cheap is missing quite a number of small issues.

And you're merely estimating random numbers you have no access to, if Zen can run the same thing for 60$ !!!! Theres no way they haven't been making money on the 150$, and even THEN, remember that they are still going to offer the unlimited storage at 150.

So it can't possibly be unprofitable.

Yes, there are alot of parts that make up online storage, but if ANY of those parts get cheaper (as is the case with HDDs) then the system is in fact, cheaper then before, even if only by a small margin.

And heres the curve ball, most customers to these kinds of services are from a community centered area, like POTN, FM, etc. The outcry is pretty strong, even if less then half of people leave, there will definitely be a noticeable decrease in new sign-ups over time as people stop recommending them.

abbypanda wrote in post #14942330
That's very useful Lore, I may give that a try.
I assume your website linked is the zenfolio? It looks nice!

In Regards to Smugmug, is it possible they are trying to change their clientele and go after the higher earning photographers who do a lot of sales and simply get rid of those who don't do many online sales and simply use it for storage or a mere portfolio?

I see a lot of the ppl on this thread who are saying they will leave or are unhappy do not do a lot of sales through the site.... Is there anyone who does a lot of sales through smugmug who is leaving also? I havent seen a ton of complaints of "I do thousands of dollars of sales but I'm sill leaving" or something like that.

These are just questions as I'm noticing a trend it seems on this thread. I am not saying I agree with it, or criticizing anyone.

I do believe smugmug didn't realize how big "the little guy" was when they were deciding this and it seemed by Saturday afternoon I was seeing smugmug staff kinda admitting that and that they would take a look into it. I get the impression we will see a level catered to "the little guy".

From what I gather, the zenfolio package at $120.00 is a package geared for "the little guy". So I think they need to compete at that level and than the higher end photographers will have the Business package at $300.00.

For me, I sell enough to clear my costs, but at the same time, every little extra hurts. It's easier for me to cover $120.00 than $250.00. I don't need all the bells, whistles, nor demand more stuff. I just need a place to upload and sell the occasional prints. I really enjoy the labs bayphoto and whcc also. Their customer support is great, but I don't think it's any greater than zenfolio. I've always had good luck with zenfolio's staff.

I've been looking at http://gopixit.com/ also and hear good things about them also. So there are services out there that can compete and one can do very well with. My renewal came a few days ago so I have a year to see what happens and what changes. I do foresee smugmug helping out "the little guy" tho. They would be nuts not too.

wolfden wrote in post #14945000
I do believe smugmug didn't realize how big "the little guy" was when they were deciding this and it seemed by Saturday afternoon I was seeing smugmug staff kinda admitting that and that they would take a look into it. I get the impression we will see a level catered to "the little guy".

From what I gather, the zenfolio package at $120.00 is a package geared for "the little guy". So I think they need to compete at that level and than the higher end photographers will have the Business package at $300.00.

For me, I sell enough to clear my costs, but at the same time, every little extra hurts. It's easier for me to cover $120.00 than $250.00. I don't need all the bells, whistles, nor demand more stuff. I just need a place to upload and sell the occasional prints. I really enjoy the labs bayphoto and whcc also. Their customer support is great, but I don't think it's any greater than zenfolio. I've always had good luck with zenfolio's staff.

I've been looking at http://gopixit.com/ also and hear good things about them also. So there are services out there that can compete and one can do very well with. My renewal came a few days ago so I have a year to see what happens and what changes. I do foresee smugmug helping out "the little guy" tho. They would be nuts not too.

Agreed, that goes back to my post earlier: their "help" for the little guy now from what I understand is basically "you can pay more to sell your prints online ("portfolio) but if you want to get any of the $ you have to pay even more ("business")". Why would anyone want that? You either want to sell your prints for $ or you dont (justifying the downgraded package of "basic" or "Power") but why on earth would you want to sell pics for someone else to get the $... maybe I'm missing something. For me, if I stay I'll downgrade. I dont sell enough right now to justify paying "more", but I also dont see the need to sell online to not get any profits. I have till next may to decide, who knows by then!

Anyone heard of shootproof.com? I just saw their ad on FB. Looking at it now.

Csae wrote in post #14944987
And you're merely estimating random numbers you have no access to, if Zen can run the same thing for 60$ !!!! Theres no way they haven't been making money on the 150$, and even THEN, remember that they are still going to offer the unlimited storage at 150.

Mention one (1) number I have estimated randomly in my post.

But you would actually be wrong, since I have seen tenders for hosting of equipment in multiple, access-protected sites. Definitely not as large, but still with quite large sums on the bottom line.

And quote where I did say that they can't be profitable. Commercial companies need to make a significant profit. Both as return on investments, and to have money to develop and to regenerate equipment. But I did my post as response regarding the quickly dropping prices of disk drives.

If one part drops in price and another part increases in price, then your view fails. Insurance costs don't go down. Power bills don't go down. Security bills don't go down.

And server-class computer equipment isn't magically dropping in price. For much equipment, you have similar prices over a very long time span. For the disks itself, the price is dropping when looking at one GB of storage. But since the needs go up, you can't reduce the number of drives, and each individual drive do not really drop in price. And controllers don't drop in price because there are regularly moves to newer technology - and new technology is always a price premium when you are at the leading edge.

And is that incompatible with my post?

Ofc if one part goes down and another goes up it changes, but nobody has mentioned anything about RAID controllers going up, or any of the other parts you mentioned.

I won't bother answering to each of your points, since HDDs have gone down, and they are part of the puzzle, BW costs have gone down, and thats another major part. And i've heard nothing of any of the other parts going up. Inflation aside, theres no reason for the system they use to go up. As technology moves forward, things get cheaper, its the whole point of technology.

Theres nothing wrong with wanting more profits, or R&D, but don't mention storage costs as a reason and they specifically did and said it wouldnt be profitable and you defended them by trying to make it sound like the storage system is getting more expensive.

My last point, the curve ball, has absolutely nothing to do with your post.

Csae wrote in post #14945201
Ofc if one part goes down and another goes up it changes, but nobody has mentioned anything about RAID controllers going up, or any of the other parts you mentioned.

I won't bother answering to each of your points, since HDDs have gone down, and they are part of the puzzle, BW costs have gone down, and thats another major part. And i've heard nothing of any of the other parts going up. Inflation aside, theres no reason for the system they use to go up. As technology moves forward, things get cheaper, its the whole point of technology.

You seem to confuse storage costs with the price of raw disk media. On the other hand - let's follow that trail: what did you think happened when the HDD prices skyrocketed after the floodings? The data centers didn't need any new systems during that time?

pwm2 wrote in post #14945225
You seem to confuse storage costs with the price of raw disk media. On the other hand - let's follow that trail: what did you think happened when the HDD prices skyrocketed after the floodings? The data centers didn't need any new systems during that time?

...Storage costs -include- the cost of raw disk media.

So.... With that out of the way.

Yeah storage systems probably increased in price during that period, or maybe not, were any of those factories actually outputting those kinds of raw disks? AFAIK they were only doing consumer based HDDs for mass-markets.

The reason storage has dropped in price is due to better technologies, this applies both to raw disks and mass markets HDs.

The reason HDDs went up for that flooding was because of a couple key factories being flooded and put out of order for a short term.

It might even coincide with the -2% inflation rate you guys had in the states, where it would easily overturn the increase in costs, but i can't remember the exact dates of the flooding in relation to the inflation.

A smart business would also have space in mass and not buy during a price hike. Similar to how smart businesses might wait out SM and see if they change their minds or offer better options.

Talking COD is pointless as we don't have access to SM's numbers, what isn't pointless is pointing out that competitors offer a lower fee for unlimited storage, and that even SM is keeping unlimited storage on the 150$ plan.

So again, and hopefully ending this silly debate, based on the aforementioned two factors, storage costs ARE NOT the primary concern in this price hike.