Smugmug

So they upgraded there system, Which is fine. But. I had a custom website made thru a 3^rd party. «which they recommended». Well with the new system I can’t bring over the site I paid a lot of money for to the new system. They said they could try to get it close to my old site. So I had paid for music on my site. They can’t do music… I had paid for a slideshow. They can’t do a slide show. They couldn’t give me a credit for getting a new site redone cause it’s a 3^rd party. But they still recommend this 3^rd party to get your site customized??? This is bad business and bad management. It’s like buying a car and the dealership offers a warranty thru someone they recommend, then tell you they won’t cover the warranty.

been with them 5 years. Great customer service and the platform suits my needs. Their new platform upgrade is very easy to use and looks great compared to the old platform (people complaining about the new just doesn’t like change).
I would have given them 5 stars if they didn’t cancel my subscription that I had for 5 years. They emailed me asking me to update my info but all my information was already current and correct. They made it sound like my information was what caused my cancelled subscription. When I told them I «updated”(I didn’t update anything) my info and they proceed to renew my subscription at a higher rate. Of course, customer service stop responding when I pointed out what they did.
I had respect for SmugMug but after this shadyness business practice I can’t help to not root for them anymore.

OMG don’t know what the bad reviews are about. Photo sharing websites have been shuttering left and right. I’ve had to move from Kodak, HP Snapfish, Yahoo pictures, Phanfare, Everpix and I can’t tell you how much I appreciate SmugMug’s stable business model.
They are family run in the heart of Silicon Valley. They have senior engineers that understand the web and photo file formats. They focus on professional photographers who squeak out a living and offer pro services you can’t get anywhere else (from photo processing, RAW file storage, etc) and make it easy for a photographer to run their business.
I host our schools photos — over 40k photos that we give full resolution downloads for free to parents and I only pay $ 65 a year. The website looks professional and I have SmugMug to thank — plus when I run into support issues I always get an email response within hours! Works great for me!

I tried to add more to my old review (or should I say RANT) but got a popup saying, basically, they can only handle 5001 characters of my bitching about smugmug at a time… so I had to write an «update» instead of an edit.
I supposed it’s my bad, for not taking the time to do the research to find a better photo sharing site. But they charged me, after I specifically told customer service to NOT charge my credit card again, I’m trying to cancel my membership.
Since I was already charged, I decided to just go ahead and use them today when I needed to share several folders full of photos, with people whose portraits I’ve taken over the last few weeks. My poor husband has had to listen to me grumbling expletives for the last hour, «are you f_​_​_​ing kidding??» «what… the… f_​_​_​_​»… «Omg… you CANT be serious…»
Things that are somehow made SO simple and easy by every other photosharing site I’ve ever used… Flickr, Google Photos, Costco Photos, Shutterfly… even Snapfish and Picasa (which I’m not even a fan of)… seem like a piece of cake compared to SmugMug. In one instance of dragging and dropping (or attempting it) on a screen that told me to go ahead and drag and drop right there, I attempted to drag and drop a few dozen highlighted photos from another window… and for some reason JUST ONE photo appeared. Sideways. So I did it again. Same thing. I’m embarrassed to admit I did it a third time but I was just in disbelief that something so simple could get so screwed up by such an expensive photo sharing site.
No offense to high school kids but… sometimes I find myself thinking, was this site scrapped together by some kid in the 10^th grade and they are still working out the kinks, but somehow getting away with charging people almost $ 200 a year?
When I finally was able to successfully upload a few dozen pics from a different folder, onto the site, I found that half of them were turned back to their original position (sideways), before I had rotated them in Windows. That was when I said, «You’ve GOT to be F_​_​_​ing KIDDING!!!» Don’t even get me started on the fact that it was way too complicated to rotate them back to the proper position in SmugMug. The thought of having to rotate roughly 50% of all the photos I still have to download, because SmugMug doesn’t have the simple capability to figure out that they were already roated in Windows, makes my skin crawl. REALLY, SmugMug? Totally FREE sites like Shutterfly, Costco, Picasa, Flickr, Google Photos, Picasa, Snapfish can all figure it out, and you can’t???
I wanted to make sure that all my photos are secure and private, but somehow this has made it just about impossible to share any of these photos with the people who are IN the photos. Or at least, it is taking me way too long to figure it out.
Again… it’s my own damn fault for even attempting to use Smug Mug again. Like I said, I am just doing it because I already PAID for it (albeit unwillingly) after I specifically sent emails to customer service asking them to NOT renew my membership… and they charged me anyway.
I’m going to stop now before I max out yet another 5,000 characters bitching about SmugMug!

I got special help from Sean Rogen who introduced me to the new website. There is a learning curve to learn where are all the controls on the new website (transitioning from the legacy) but overall, it’s really good and better. His tutorials can be viewed at
. I think earlier issues were due to the legacy site, but the new site looks fantastic now. Email support can be daunting task as I find misunderstanding to my issue at hand… but eventually you get through it. For instance you are assumed you are at square 1 when you are at square 3, and you have to rewrite the email a few times before they get it. I was misled that the styles could not be changed after migration, but they can. If this was a verbal support, I could have cleared up his misunderstanding and clarified my question immediately. At least it’s 24/​7, and you may need to invest hours for clarification but it’s better than some companies where you have to wait 24 hours for a response. But now, I was shown how to replicate the legacy, and update it… it’s really good! The closest to the legacy format is the first template and you can customize from there. I placed a slide show at the top of the gallery and along the bottom of the home page. How cool its that!

Pros
Accept Paypal, Paying is easy (getting back is not; see cons). Message sounds like friendly (but depends)
Cons
Web download gives a whole gallery of many photos (but not a photo chosen – this is very hard to know until I receive it). I chose several from a single gallery and got overcharged. It is very hard to get the money back.
User-​unfriendly. Explanation is missing, Hard to know until I pay and get it. Photo-​print may be easier.
I purchased some photos from this site. To choose each photo I had to go over 50 to 100 photos from each gallery back and forth. There is no number or anything. Then I changed my mind to get electronic files. There is no way to go from the photo I chose to electronic file option. I had to delete the photos in the cart and then go the photo gallery once again (It is very confusing, but you will know what I mean when you go there). The choose web download, because it is the only option available. I chose some photos from the same gallery – and I get overcharged for a single gallery (see above). Web download means download of the whole gallery.
If you have to order from the site, I would recommend to order a little by little, so you know what you are ordering.

I have been with smug mug for a Long time and loved it until the recent changes. I like the old format I had. Sorry smug mug the new formats sucks. Starting to look for new place to load photos or make my own website.