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Author Topic: Zenfolio, Photoshelter, SmugMug or ?  (Read 9025 times)

Hywel

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Zenfolio, Photoshelter, SmugMug or ?
« on: January 03, 2017, 09:19:41 am »

Hi All,

Launching a physical-product side to my business, for my landscape photography. I'm primarily going to be selling via local shops and outlets. But I need a website as a sales and marketing tool, too. I want a place for interested people to be able to browse more if I give them a business card or they've bought postcards etc. to be able to order a large print.

I run three websites already, two with custom management systems and one on Wordpress. As this is going to be a sideline for me I thought initially I'd just set up another Wordpress site... but the overhead of so doing has meant I've just not got around to it.

I'm therefore looking for a photographer-centric template-based site to speed things along.

The front runners seem to be Zenfolio, Photoshelter and SmugMug.

I'll be selling self-fulfilled orders for signed and mounted prints, but it would be useful to have options for larger prints and already-framed prints fulfilled via the website e-commerce service too.

They all seem broadly comparable, pricing is very similar, facilities looks similar from the outside. The last thread about this here was a couple of years ago, anyone got any recent experience or recommendations? Zenfolio was criticised for poor support, Photoshelter that self-fufilled ecommerce was hard to set up.

Any suggestions?

Cheers, Hywel




« Last Edit: January 03, 2017, 09:35:24 am by Hywel »
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Hywel

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Re: Zenfolio, Photoshelter, SmugMug or ?
« Reply #1 on: January 03, 2017, 10:22:15 am »

Hmm replying to myself it looks like I have to rule out SmugMug, unless things have changed recently it looks like you can't do self-fulfilled prints there, and their checkout pages do a horrible jump back to their default branding and page colours/layout. That sort of thing really freaks out customers.

PhotoDeck looks good though. Anyone got any experience of using it, especially in the UK?

Cheers, Hywel
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Cornfield

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Re: Zenfolio, Photoshelter, SmugMug or ?
« Reply #2 on: January 04, 2017, 07:14:36 am »

Give PhotoDeck a try.  I tested lots of services before deciding on PhotoDeck a few years ago.
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Hywel

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Re: Zenfolio, Photoshelter, SmugMug or ?
« Reply #3 on: January 06, 2017, 06:00:47 am »

I'm giving Photodesk a try. Impressed so far. It's interface is not the most obvious, but the extensive help files explain the terminology and present clear "here's how to do this" recipes.

Getting my domain name pointed to them was simple, uploading pics simple (as you'd hope!). Took a couple of hours to get the basic website organised and live.

Watermarking is a bit confusing at first as they are statically generated on upload rather than dynamically generated, but once I've got a good set of settings I'll just delete my test images and do a bulk upload with the appropriate choices.

Ecommerce next...

Cheers, hywel
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pcgpcg

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Re: Zenfolio, Photoshelter, SmugMug or ?
« Reply #4 on: January 07, 2017, 08:49:38 pm »

...Photoshelter that self-fufilled ecommerce was hard to set up.
I've found it very easy... after I called Customer Support and they explained to me how to do it. I have found Photoshelter's customer support to be absolutely top-notch in every respect, which is a good thing because some of the things I wanted to do did require their help. Thus the learning curve was easy and quick. I'm very happy with Photoshelter.
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douglevy

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Re: Zenfolio, Photoshelter, SmugMug or ?
« Reply #5 on: January 07, 2017, 09:08:35 pm »

Agree completely, photoshelter has amazing customer support, and the back end is super easy, SEO is great and their incredibly responsive.

MattBurt

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Re: Zenfolio, Photoshelter, SmugMug or ?
« Reply #6 on: January 20, 2017, 05:38:57 pm »

I've been happy with Zenfolio but have not tried either of the others. I got the free trial before shooting a big bike race maybe five years ago and the sales from that paid for the first year. Since then it has been self-funding and while I have had a few little issues it has generally been easy, stable, and generated some decent income.
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JohnBeasley

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Re: Zenfolio, Photoshelter, SmugMug or ?
« Reply #7 on: January 30, 2017, 06:46:09 pm »

I have two sites with zenfolio and while I find their customer service and storage plans fantastic, I really dont like the check out system for the store side of things. Its just too many click, too many variables. Im hoping to change this year to something more streamlined, I just have found what yet.
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MattBurt

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Re: Zenfolio, Photoshelter, SmugMug or ?
« Reply #8 on: February 01, 2017, 10:19:39 am »

I have two sites with zenfolio and while I find their customer service and storage plans fantastic, I really dont like the check out system for the store side of things. Its just too many click, too many variables. Im hoping to change this year to something more streamlined, I just have found what yet.

Have you tried their new process? I did for a while but it didn't have an important feature I needed so I switched back. It did seem more streamlined so I hope they bring more features to the new process.
I needed to be able to have free downloads of watermarked images and paid downloads of the same image without watermarks.
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ericbowles

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Re: Zenfolio, Photoshelter, SmugMug or ?
« Reply #9 on: February 14, 2017, 01:18:43 pm »

I've been using Zenfolio for a while and overall have been happy with it.  Over the past few years they have added functionality for higher level licenses.  For example, I can approve orders and review cropping, make changes, assign delegates to upload when I have a second photographer, etc.  Over the past year I've been using Packages to provide free web sized digital copies for social media with the purchase of prints. 

I have had some clients struggle with the purchase system.  There are a lot of choices.  A few have gotten lost navigating Favorites instead of their cart.

Their website support is just okay.  Hosting has been provided by several companies over the years - some better than others.
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Box Brownie

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Re: Zenfolio, Photoshelter, SmugMug or ?
« Reply #10 on: February 15, 2017, 07:34:51 pm »

Interesting thread.

I did not recall hearing of Photodeck before so had a looksee.

The one thing that struck me was comparison of the packages page:-
The Folio has no eCommerce but costs more than the Lite package which has eCommerce enabled and as it uses a sub-domain (of Photodeck . com) can only surmise there is some level of monetising for them by doing so???

As its stands I will sticking with Photium until I can decide just how I want to develop my idea. (NB the package I have is slightly less than the Folio but has level of eCommerce plus my linked domain.

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algrove

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Re: Zenfolio, Photoshelter, SmugMug or ?
« Reply #11 on: March 22, 2017, 10:19:35 am »

I trialed all sites mentioned here and more. I ended up with Photoshelter. Agree the Customer Support is worth it to me. No matter how basic the question they will walk you through it step by step.
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