Flickr Vs. SmugMug Vs. Your Own Hosting..

What's better in your opinion? I'm leaving this open ended for everyone to respond. I'm trying to make a decision.

Flickr - $24.95 USD (Pro Level) - Both unlimited bandwidth/storage
SmugMug - $159USD (Pro Level) - Both unlimited bandwidth/storage

Or do you buy a domain with hosting and a photo system:

Ex: GoDaddy.com
$8.95yr (Domain)
+
$43.08yr (Hosting/Storage) - 5GB Storage / 250GB Transfer
+
$25 (Photo Sharing) *no need to buy each year*

Own Site: $77.03

What would you go with? I'm starting the process of selling my images. Don't know. Help!

You should look at Zenfolio as well. Check the thread in the galleries section about Zenfolio. It's worth reading through. $40 pro level.

Interested to know this as well. So I'll go along for the ride if you dont mind

Join the bus.

flickr is good -- I am happy with it as backup and for photo sharing -- but it cannot compare with the clean and professional image that a personally designed website could have. For what it offers, flickr, is competitively priced ...

I've been a pro member of SmugMug for years and love their service.

That being said there are some things also you should think about some other things when deciding which to choose, especially with a do it yourself site in your mix:

- Ease of initial setup and ongoing maintenance.
- Ease of sales (shopping cart/payment method), customer printing or digital download, and custom pricing.
- Ease of reporting traffic and sales from your site.
- Customer service in case you do have an issue/problem.


Also if you do not need a pro account, a standard smugmug acct is only $39.95/yr.

(You can get $5.00 off your initial set up with a referral to SM, and some of the other sites offer a referral discount as well I believe.)

For SM I can testify on any of the issues mentioned:
- From account creation you can be uploading pics into galleries in minutes.
- They offer tons of support for sales, taking care of the transactions wonderfully.
- The offer a site traffic monitor that is viewable but also fully support GoggleAnalytics (free) which will give you all the information you don't get from them.
- Customer service is super fast and friendly.

Any other questions about SM, there is a lot of information and users on the board already or ask away and I'll answer.

Maybe I'll just kick the can and go for a Pro account for $59.

Godaddy.

I just can't stand the look of flikr and smugmug. I honestly don't even click on any link to them.

You posted this in the business section, but make no mention that it is for business and not just for fun.

Just for clarification, this is for business. I might just do this the GoDaddy way as it's only going to cost me $70 USD for everything as listed above.

coreypolis wrote in post #2797929
Godaddy.

I just can't stand the look of flikr and smugmug. I honestly don't even click on any link to them.

You posted this in the business section, but make no mention that it is for business and not just for fun.

I dont like the look either, but I just found out that with SM your page doesnt have to look like all the others. Check this link there are some pretty good designs HERE

Balliolman wrote in post #2797279
flickr is good -- I am happy with it as backup and for photo sharing -- but it cannot compare with the clean and professional image that a personally designed website could have. For what it offers, flickr, is competitively priced ...

Then get Flickr and create a website. You can use Flickr to host the photos, so long as you're not selling them on the page they're hosted on. This is assuming your site is really high-traffic and you have to worry about bandwidth issues. Flickr hosting has unlimited bandwidth, whereas even with the largest GoDaddy bandwidth package it's possible to exceed your monthly limit if an image on your site becomes very popular.

chakalakasp wrote in post #2798130
Then get Flickr and create a website. You can use Flickr to host the photos, so long as you're not selling them on the page they're hosted on. This is assuming your site is really high-traffic and you have to worry about bandwidth issues. Flickr hosting has unlimited bandwidth, whereas even with the largest GoDaddy bandwidth package it's possible to exceed your monthly limit if an image on your site becomes very popular.

that would have to be a very popular image and be hosted at hundreds of places at full rez. I have slideshows playing hundreds of times a day and have never exceeded or even come close to exceeding my bandwith.

You also get email addresses at your home page, ability to store your own documents and do far more than just share photos. For a business this is a must. You can host your own shopping cart, flash templates, slideshows whatever you want.

coreypolis wrote in post #2798199
that would have to be a very popular image and be hosted at hundreds of places at full rez. I have slideshows playing hundreds of times a day and have never exceeded or even come close to exceeding my bandwith.

That's true -- but it does happen. A stormchaser I know put a series of well-compressed 800px wide ice storm pictures (about 30KB a piece) up a couple of months ago and got enough traffic to implode the small webhost he was using. He moved it to Godaddy and blew through nearly 2000 GB of bandwidth in a week! He would have had to shut the whole thing down if he hadn't moved all the photos to Flickr hosting. He ended up making an enormous amount of money with Google Adsense (much more than I even knew was possible!)

I went with my own hosting on dreamhost.com

Right now I have over 200GB HD & 2TB Bandwidth/month... it's increasing weekly.

180 USD/2 Years including the domain name free with the hosting.

I'm happy with Go Daddy. It is template based but there is some flexibility. Great for the price and it is expandable (for a price)