Well it seems not long after posting my little review about Smugmug, Photomerchant and Photoshelter, where I did mention the cost of these services Smugmug has decided to increase their prices.
As it stands the current cost of a Smugmug Pro account is $150 per year. Smugmug have decided to split the pro account into two accounts named “Portfolio” and “Business”.
This email below was sent to all “Pro” account holders and company CEO Chris MacAskill also posted a video on YouTube outlining the details and reasons why.
For the first time in 7 years, we’re raising the price of SmugMug Pro subscriptions, something we tried hard not to do.
We know $100/year is a lot and personally, if I were asked to pay more for a service, I’d want to hear from the person responsible for the decision. That’s me, so I placed my dSLR on a tripod, and looked it right in the lens, imagining it was you. I tried to offer a peek inside SmugMug and our thinking:
Because storage, engineering and support costs are so much higher for pros who sell at a markup, we split pro accounts in two: Portfolio and Business.
1. Portfolio is still $150/year (or $20/month) and still provides access to our pro labs for both you and your visitors, plus pro features like watermarking.
2. Business lets you set prices and earn profit. It will be $300/year (or $35/month) for new customers, but existing subscribers who set prices will be asked to renew at $250/year (or $30/month) beginning October 15, 2012.
More details can be found in this blog post.
It seems that is come public out cry on the Internet about Smugmug raising their prices.Are you a Smugmug user, will these change effect you or will you be looking for a new solution to host your photos?