Smugmug
reviews and complaints

As someone deeply immersed in the world of photography, I've had a mixed bag of experiences with SmugMug. On one hand, the platform offers a comprehensive suite of tools that cater to photographers' needs, from sales assistance to top-notch print partners. The seamless integration with popular apps and the unlimited storage capacity are definite perks. However, navigating the platform can be a challenge for some users, with complaints about the user-unfriendliness and difficulties in accessing and placing photos in the cart. Customer service seems to be a sticking point for many, with reports of slow responses and issues with damaged deliveries. While SmugMug has its strengths, it's clear that there are areas for improvement to enhance the overall user experience.

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.

Fabulous website - It takes a bit to learn how to navigate once you have joined, but overall we have had the best experience with it.

Very nice.

Easy site creation and excellent image presentation. Support is excellent and always timely. Add the benefit of unlimited storage and you can't find a better option. I give Smugmug a galaxy of stars!

I used Smug Mug for over a decade but am switching over to Shutterfly but thoroughly enjoyed my experience with Smug Mug. They make really good prints and even great blown up prints as well. Good Bye Smug Mug!

Flickr is free but smugmug is worth the price of admission. I am not a pro photographer but I like my photos printed out on quality paper and I want my family to have access to my photos and to be able to print them out as well. I want to control who can view my photos and I definitely don't want my photos tagged all over the internet. For these reasons I am willing to pay the yearly fee for smugmug. Worth it in my book.

Smugmug has been my choice for photo hosting - I started off using smugmug to mostly just share my casual photos with friends and family and they all found it very easy to view my photos. I had another professional site where I advertised my services as a photographer, but it was too much trouble to always upload my images so family could see the special events shots. I typically printed my own photos and sold them to clients as I wanted complete control of the entire process. But then a collague of mine told me he was using the smugmug professional services so I checked it out and here is what I thought...

1. The sample websites they show are very well done and it is exactly what many photographers need.
2. Setting up a custom site is not entirely easy and unless you are very web savvy you will need some help.
3. Print prices are fair, not cheap, but fair... quality is pretty good and they provide ICC profiles and calibration prints.
4. They do NOT offer prints on canvas which I think is a mistake if they offer professional printing services.
5. They do offer the ability to sell photos via downloads, which is great.
6. they offer both HD video 1280 x 720 and DVD quality videos on your website, which is perfect as that is often what catches new client's attention. Also great for consumers wanting to show off their photos in a professional slide show video.
7. Easy to upgrade from power user to pro
8. The standard account is NOT FREE... so for the average consumer I do wonder if this is a good deal when other similar services are free. It is advertising free, but I'm not sure the average person cares and would rather have it be free.
9. Complete privacy control over your photos.
10. Unlimited storage for all accounts

I think if you are semi pro or thinking of going pro, then smugmug is a great place to start. If you are purely casual photographer, then you might want to consider some of the free sites out there if you want to save that $40.

Smugmug manages photographs beautifully, displaying them in a high quality that I've not seen other site providers match. It has all the features that a photographer could want, in my experience, if you are building a portfolio-driven website. The customer service is email only but in my personal experience it is excellent. (Really very consistently excellent.). Building a website is a little more tedious than Squarespace or Wix but it's just fine once you get over the initial learning curve. There are videos and help text to assist with that.

As I said, Smugmug is oriented towards portfolio-driven photography websites but it does have many features to assist with sales. There is no blogging feature beyond treating a blog post like any other page to build. There is no built-in integration of calendar, invoice, etc, but you can use external services like Square for that.

On the other hand, if you are ONLY seeking a service for DELIVERY of photographs to clients then Pixieset or Shootproof are more user friendly, but CAUTIONl: I tried Shootproof and quickly backed off because they made my photographs look fuzzy! I work so hard to have sharp photographs! That is an important part of the beauty of my work. I cannot even begin describe how shocking it was that they intentionally reduce the sharpness of my photographs in a manner that is very, very visible. Caveat emptor.

Similarly I tried Squarespace a couple of years ago and they recommended downsizing photographs prior to posting. WTF? Smugmug encourage you to load full size JPEG's and they automatically downsize depending on the circumstances. They also allow your clients to download different sizes for different purposes.

I am going to use Squarespace or Wordpress for my more commercially oriented website, a purely headshot-driven business with calendar and deposits integrated with the website, along with heavy SEO.

My Smugmug website looks gorgeous on my iPhone, by the way, without any additional programming. Highly responsive.

Bottom line is that Smugmug is excellent for photographers that do engage in sales (or not), but nothing is perfect.

Smugmug - a culture of sorcery.

I love SmugMug... or did. I have been a Pro customer there for many years. The features of the site up until now have been excellent. (the jury is still out on the "new" format) I have been advertising for them since day 1. On photography sites, forums, and blogs, I have been encouraging people to try them out. I was spending a lot of time promoting their site - and expecting nothing in return.

I have been having an on-going issue with the so-called "sorcerers" at SmugMug. For those unfamiliar with SmugMug, they dress up like sorcerers, paint their faces like demonic junkies, and then send the photos to you whenever you submit a service ticket. For what purpose - I have no idea. I don't want to see their religious imagery, and it adds nothing to their service - in fact it demeans people of Godly faith.

When I asked nicely that they not send the inappropriate photos, they literally laugh, and flat out refuse. They say that it is their "culture" there. A culture of sorcery. Which is fine - they can do whatever they want in their own time - but they should not be forcing their chosen culture on their customers. Especially when it is demonic in nature. They should be respecting other people, and other cultures, not forcing theirs on people who don't worship evil.

I sent a letter to the management, begging them to stop sending the inappropriate photos, and even they didn't care. Their "culture" is also one of arrogance and apathy. They honestly don't care at all about who they offend. This must be a highly valued religion for them, to demand to force these photos on people.

For those who have had real life experiences with the occult and the principalities and powers of darkness - you would question the wisdom of creating a culture of the occult to operate a business from. But amazingly - that is what they have chosen to do. They have no respect for anyone with values contrary to their own. They don't care how many people are harmed by the occult, they just want to force it on everyone.

You can only imagine that the leadership is very immature and totally ignorant of the very occult that they embrace and promote. They claim to be focused on the customer, when in fact they ignore and mock them.

There are some very nice support people there who do respect us when they e-mail, but they are very rare. They were able to provide excellent service for years without this nonsense. Perhaps they are too big now to care about their customers.

So I will be leaving... no matter what the new system looks like. For every person that complains about something - there are many more that will say nothing.

It is very unfortunate that people there just don't care about others. Selfishness is such a pitiful thing. They would otherwise be a fabulous site. As they were in the past. I don't want to fund their culture of hatred and disrespect for others.

a company with zero phone support obviously cares nothing for its clients, nor does it respect their time. When I find a time slot to work on a website, it is for that, working on my website. Do these people not understand that it disrupts my whole flow to come back to their emails and open up everything again and find my place "once they respond on their own time". It is obvious that their margins are far more important than my time. unfortunately, I paid for something that I must now abandoned and pay for with a different company. It sucks that such a small company already understands how to put "corporate greed" into action. I will be writing several reviews about this, how clunky their software is, and other major problems that make this "not worth the time" or even the money I already spent.

I purchased my television is 2 years ago last month me and my family were watching a movie and their big pop crackle snap smoking and we saw Flames that TV is melted and it looks like it bursted and a little spot on the screen I contact the Samsung they will not help me they keep giving me all of these excuses they send me an email saying that they were going to fix it accommodate me but they didn't

A lot of things have to be done by their technicians before presenting it to customers.
It's hard to use it. A very misleading interface, when you upload pictures, it takes a while to find where they are exactly. It's very uncomfortable.
No, don't tell me I am silly, I understand these things much better than most of you, so that's why I am complaining, I just don't understand who made this website so terrible. The things should be fixed. It's bad.
But the idea is great. Only it's poorly performed.