SmugMug account options

So its time to get a real site, I have a domain already but have not pulled the trigger on hiring someone to build a site. I was looking at Smugmug today and thinking their Power Account might be enough for now. How many people are using the basic or power level accounts. At this time I don't have a need to sell or have customer galleries (this one will be handy in the future, but I assume I can upgrade accounts when the time comes).

At $8 a month its a very affordable option for a gallery type site. Will I be able to have a page with an about us section and maybe session pricing? Is the Power worth the extra couple bucks a month vs the Basic plan?

Thanks in advance everyone.

I have a Power account which has worked well for me. I don't watermark images or have a need for the higher end photo labs that come with Portfolio.

On the other hand I'd wait a bit to see how this (my opinion) mess turns out with the launch of the "new" Smugmug. There are a lot of feature requests, many of them critical, but from what I've seen so far is SM is slow to get things done, likely because they were overwhelmed with issues. Their launch should have been called "beta testing".

If they actually listen to real users complaints and focus on critical issues they may actually have an excellent product in a month or two. If they choose to ignore some of us they'll see a bit of an exodus to Zenfolio.

Right now, unless you do heavy customization, the only significant advantage I see with SM over Zen is that SM finally got rid of Flash for standard slideshows, which means that on a wide gamut monitor standard slideshow images are no longer overly red and over-saturated. Zenfolio still hasn't made the upgrade for whatever reason.

I have the power account.

If I need to watermark I do it in Lightroom then upload the photos. Client galleries or just protected galleries are very handy. I don't do any selling through Smugmug as I do all fulfillment myself.

With the basic account I don't believe you can link your custom domain name.

I quite like the new Smugmug layouts. There was quite a bit of a learning curve involved but for the most part I'm running.