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"Everyone needs to check out https://smugmug.com https://smugmug.com - for $40 a year you get unlimited photo and video uploads (yes, RAW files are ok). It's li

by rsync 11y ago

"Everyone needs to check out https://smugmug.com https://smugmug.com - for $40 a year you get unlimited photo and video uploads (yes, RAW files are ok). It's like flikr with no ads, only your own stuff on the pages, super customizable (with a power account - $60 a year)" Unlimited storage at a flat rate can only end two ways: 1) Out of business 2) User hostile behavior where only light usage is tolerated That's it. There's not a third way. If the space is unlimited and the price is not, eventually non-light users will be throttled or otherwise inconvenienced such that the service is not useful for them. Your interests are not aligned in this scenario - you want to use as much space as possible and they want you to use as little space as possible.

unicornporn 11y ago
You forgot... 3) They start to mine your data to learn more about you... Compared to Smugmug I think OneDrive (Office 365) and Amazon Cloud Drive seems like the better option to me though. With ACD I can store any file type and encrypt it with Arq[1] for $60 a year. [1] https://www.arqbackup.com/ https://www.arqbackup.com/
- onethumb 11y ago
  Option '3' certainly could be on the list, but I'd guess that's primarily for advertising-driving companies. (Google Photos comes to mind). SmugMug has no ads, so #3 hasn't seemed appealing to us, let alone that I think we already have a great contract with our customers: They pay us right up front, and in return we build the best photo sharing service in the world. Seems fair to me. :)
onethumb 11y ago
Disclaimer: I'm SmugMug's co-founder, CEO & Chief Geek I don't have a crystal ball, but we've been offering unlimited storage since I co-founded the company in 2002 with $0 of investment. 13 years later, the company still hasn't taken any outside funding, has been profitable for most of those years, and still offers unlimited storage. We plan to keep this critical feature for the forseeable future. :) Anyone who's passionate about photography is aligned with our interests. We're photographers and limits suck. [edited: typo]
- onethumb 11y ago
  As I was writing this, I remembered a thread from our message forum in 2005 where a customer asked if they could upload more than 2TB of photos under our "unlimited" plan. Remember, this was in 2005. Here are my replies(tl;dr: Yes!): 1) http://www.dgrin.com/showpost.php?s=14872c114ae3fe4ff300ac6f4d7748e1&p=218073&postcount=14 http://www.dgrin.com/showpost.php?s=14872c114ae3fe4ff300ac6f... 2) http://www.dgrin.com/showpost.php?p=218132&postcount=16 http://www.dgrin.com/showpost.php?p=218132&postcount=16 [edited to add 2nd reply since it seemed relevant]
  - ishikawa 11y ago
    I am a happy user of smugmug for a long time, because it was the best service I found that could handle 1080 videos. But I believe I'm a different kind of customer. I only want to have my personal backup. I don't want to sell photos. Google Photos has become very appealing as the interface is great to see the pictures and videos. But what I really don't like on Smugmug is that the Android App can't be trusted. It sometimes skip a lot of files and also don't handle duplicate files after the album has apparently more than 1000 files. The result is a messy album. I already reported this to support (by that time I did not realize the 1000 files issue, just the behavior) but I had no response. This is not a complain about the service that I really like. It is a feedback according to my behavior as a user. I am testing Amazon Cloud Drive and I'm really impressed. It lacks the great Google Interface but don't change the quality of my videos.
- thenomad 11y ago
  I just had a quick look as a videographer - looks interesting. Any idea if/when you'll be supporting 4k video? I could do with somewhere good to store my videos, but I'm mostly shooting in 4k these days...
  - onethumb 11y ago
    We support 4K uploads today, but don't yet offer playback or streaming at greater than 1080p. (We will recompress your 4K to high-bitrate 1080p). I think it's safe to say we will support 4K sometime in the future, but that's pending customer demand, which we're just not seeing huge amounts of.
hsod 11y ago
why would you want to use as much space as possible? the consumer should want to not have to think about storage space, not maximize their usage. It seems to me there are three major factors here: * the annual fee * the price of storage at their scale * the average amount of storage used per customer It seems to me entirely possible that these factors could have values such that true unlimited storage is sustainable, barring a malicious actor.

by rsync 11y ago

unicornporn 11y ago

You forgot... 3) They start to mine your data to learn more about you... Compared to Smugmug I think OneDrive (Office 365) and Amazon Cloud Drive seems like the better option to me though. With ACD I can store any file type and encrypt it with Arq[1] for $60 a year. [1] https://www.arqbackup.com/ https://www.arqbackup.com/

onethumb 11y ago
Option '3' certainly could be on the list, but I'd guess that's primarily for advertising-driving companies. (Google Photos comes to mind). SmugMug has no ads, so #3 hasn't seemed appealing to us, let alone that I think we already have a great contract with our customers: They pay us right up front, and in return we build the best photo sharing service in the world. Seems fair to me. :)

onethumb 11y ago

Disclaimer: I'm SmugMug's co-founder, CEO & Chief Geek I don't have a crystal ball, but we've been offering unlimited storage since I co-founded the company in 2002 with $0 of investment. 13 years later, the company still hasn't taken any outside funding, has been profitable for most of those years, and still offers unlimited storage. We plan to keep this critical feature for the forseeable future. :) Anyone who's passionate about photography is aligned with our interests. We're photographers and limits suck. [edited: typo]

onethumb 11y ago
As I was writing this, I remembered a thread from our message forum in 2005 where a customer asked if they could upload more than 2TB of photos under our "unlimited" plan. Remember, this was in 2005. Here are my replies(tl;dr: Yes!): 1) http://www.dgrin.com/showpost.php?s=14872c114ae3fe4ff300ac6f4d7748e1&p=218073&postcount=14 http://www.dgrin.com/showpost.php?s=14872c114ae3fe4ff300ac6f... 2) http://www.dgrin.com/showpost.php?p=218132&postcount=16 http://www.dgrin.com/showpost.php?p=218132&postcount=16 [edited to add 2nd reply since it seemed relevant]
- ishikawa 11y ago
  I am a happy user of smugmug for a long time, because it was the best service I found that could handle 1080 videos. But I believe I'm a different kind of customer. I only want to have my personal backup. I don't want to sell photos. Google Photos has become very appealing as the interface is great to see the pictures and videos. But what I really don't like on Smugmug is that the Android App can't be trusted. It sometimes skip a lot of files and also don't handle duplicate files after the album has apparently more than 1000 files. The result is a messy album. I already reported this to support (by that time I did not realize the 1000 files issue, just the behavior) but I had no response. This is not a complain about the service that I really like. It is a feedback according to my behavior as a user. I am testing Amazon Cloud Drive and I'm really impressed. It lacks the great Google Interface but don't change the quality of my videos.
thenomad 11y ago
I just had a quick look as a videographer - looks interesting. Any idea if/when you'll be supporting 4k video? I could do with somewhere good to store my videos, but I'm mostly shooting in 4k these days...
- onethumb 11y ago
  We support 4K uploads today, but don't yet offer playback or streaming at greater than 1080p. (We will recompress your 4K to high-bitrate 1080p). I think it's safe to say we will support 4K sometime in the future, but that's pending customer demand, which we're just not seeing huge amounts of.

hsod 11y ago

why would you want to use as much space as possible? the consumer should want to not have to think about storage space, not maximize their usage. It seems to me there are three major factors here: * the annual fee * the price of storage at their scale * the average amount of storage used per customer It seems to me entirely possible that these factors could have values such that true unlimited storage is sustainable, barring a malicious actor.