SmugMug

First, I been with Smugmug for two years. Initially, I had trouble creating a design that I like, you just need to be a website designer to be able to do it. But they have plenty options already pre-made. However, after everything was set and go, I just do my job, upload my pictures, and they do the rest saving me money and time by not needing to contract an employee to manage, sell, accounting, for the pictures I sell. They have great professional printing with many options; I would like more options on professional art paper, but 90% of my business printing is done through them. Because their cost on printing, my personal printing is mostly done with other companies.

Iv had a paid account on SmugMug for years. All of a sudden they are saying I violated their terms and terminated my account. They just cut it off with no notice. I never changed any settings in my account! They say it was public when in fact it was private and unlisted and the only way to find it is if you had the link. The woman who emailed me abut this is Jenny she does not know how to do business. The email said I had 72 hours to tend to this but the next day it was closed. There was no details on what the issue was and now they are ignoring my questions and concern about the matter. I never had any issue until this woman got involved in my account. Instead of fixing the problem, if their even was one. On their own and letting me know what is going on they just cut off my entire work. They have my card info and personal photos. They had no problem charging my card every month and raising the price but their customer service is trash. I'm glad they terminated my account who wants to support and trust a website that treats their customers like this. Very unprofessional. So rude. 2 stars because if their were smart employees in charge they would have more business.

SmugMug seems to be very controlling in their ways to me and has their hands in your pockets a lot. They take a subscription fee and then take commissions on your sales and then basically pay you when they tell you they will... just feels unpleasant to me and way too controlling. I am using them for now because I don't have another option, but when I do I'm gone. Their email support is responsive, but would much prefer phone support anyway of the week to this back and forth email nonsense. It is very simple to setup and get up and running... just the heart of SmugMug doesn't seem to kind and helpful and seems more greedy and controlling which. Gives me a bad taste in my mouth.

Smugmug appears to have all the bells and whistles of a top-notch site. Beautiful photography, well designed pages, and 23/7/365 customer support. Well, not really. You can email them, but I have only ever had one response. People stole pictures from my site for Christmas presents, but the water marks would not apply, and the no right click does not apply for every device, apparently. You are not secure. I purchased pictures with a printmark, received them without the printmark. What the heck am I paying for. Prints were awful with the wallet sized for one of my clients, color was different top to bottom and some of the prints were off-center, but nothing was done, I was told that sometimes happens. You can pay a lot of money for bells and whistles, only to find that it is smoke and mirrors. So sad.

Just signed up for Pro Account. Seems like the learning curve for site will take a long time. Some of the basic things I needed I had to contact support. So far support has been fast and able to resolve problems I had. They even went into the site and cleaned up a mess I had made. We used a great site (Eventpix) that is no longer in business and allowed self fulfillment for orders that was perfect for the event photography we do. For now hopefully we will be able to steer customers to the Smugmug site to view photos then back to us to order. We tried Smugmug for a year a few years ago and it was more user friendly then now. With any luck they will streamline their business for event photographers who need to get pictures up the same or next day easily. I also noticed that at certain times the site seems slow or not responsive to changes and need to do over.

I have been a loyal SM customer for many years. Their hosting was great until the new version came out. I call it the "New Coke". New look (worse) and leaves you craving the Classic Coke. Converting to it takes months of hard work - which they demand you do for them.

Then they started e-mailing photos of themselves with every support e-mail. NOt just photos of themselves. No, they are so ashamed of how they look, that they paint their faces with religious imagery. I don't appreciate them sending these into my home. I pay them for hosting my photos, not promoting their religion at my expense.

Their support used to be excellent. Their hosting used to be excellent. They used to operate in a professional manner. Those days are gone. Too bad they are wanting to self-destruct.

They need to go on some serious customer support training courses, and learn what corporate professionalism looks like.

Setting up a website involves many complicated and time-consuming steps. Many of these could be made more simple, like adding a home icon rather than instructing the client to go through multiple steps to direct visitors to a home page. Almost every step was fraught with unnecessary difficulties necessitating multiple questions to the help center. They should take a lesson from apple, where doing things is basically intuitive. If I hadn't already done the work to upload photos, I would have started with another company.

I am not joking I am $#*!ing fuming right now. SmugMug literally sucks so bad. I am a photographer, and hadn't used the app in a while, I try to log back in and my account has all the sudden been $#*!ing closed?!?!?!? Well I have been contacting the support center for months and they have been so extremely unhelpful. I will never get those pictures from that account back, they have deleted my account and pictures. They $#*!ing suck please do not waste your money on this good for nothing peice of $#*! app, they are scamming and taking advantage of new photographers. This is literally $#*!ing bull$#*! im begging you please do not use this app. There is no support and no real person I can even ask about my account just a $#*!ing robot over email that barely even responds. If you give a $#*! about your pictures and your presentation when sending out edited photos do not use this app. I really am so mad right now. $#*! YOU SMUGMUG YOU PEICE OF $#*!ING UGLY $#*!