Years and years ago I was looking for a service to store and sell photos. There were a few options at the time, but nothing very robust and had everything I wanted - storage, digital sales, print sales and the ability to provide coupon and discount codes, and hold general sales for customers. The two I found were Zenfolio and SmugMug. I opted for SmugMug because their interface was and still is superior to Zenfolio. I've been a SmugMug customer for about 10 years. One thing that always bothered me about SmugMug is that there is no way to collect profits from sales quickly. Their set up only pays you once a month, and by default will only send that payment if you've made more than $500 in that month, otherwise you need to request the payment. This on top of the cut they take out of your sales, in addition to the yearly or monthly fees you need to pay for the service, just never sat well with me.

My favorite feature of SmugMug was the ability to create, apply or change coupons and discounts, or simply hold sales. This comes in handy when I do large sessions for dancers - many dancers will have multiple costumes and can end up with 20-50 pictures in their gallery. I not only had the ability to give a gallery price set on how many pictures they have in their collection, but I could also create a discount code for anyone to use as an incentive to make purchases. With SmugMug, it is so easy to just whip up a code and attach it to as many folders and galleries as you want. The entire workflow through SmugMug is well thought out and geared with the photographer in mind in selling their pictures. Payments however are not set up for the photogrpher who'd like to receive payments quickly. SmugMug sends out payments on the 7th of each month - automatically if you make more than $500 in that period, or by request if under that threshold. These payments are set up per calendar month. I ran across a few instances where I sold pictures in the first few days of a month, and because the 1st of the month starts the new pay period, I needed to wait until the 7th of the next month to be paid! For the yearly subscription price I've paid to SmugMug year after year, and for the portion they take from sales, I think users deserve to get paid faster.

After years of this setup, I decided I didn't want to wait a month or more to get my payout. I looked a two or three services - can't even remember which ones they were- and the one that got my attention was Zenfolio. I figured why not take a look at them again. In 10 years things looked like they improved. I learned I can sell pictures, offer discounts and coupons, house the images I need to, create a webpage easily from the dashboard - all things I wanted in a service - but the winner for me... I would receive profits (and slightly larger profits than with SmugMug) within DAYS, not once a month! Bingo! Decision made, I'm switching!

I kept a nice pillow of time with both of the services (my SmugMug account was paid through this fall) to make sure I'd be able to reliably use Zenfolio for clients. It was a bumpy start- I didn't use it with clients until I knew for sure the presentation and my system was set up right. When I did take it live, a few hiccups showed up along the way and I had to exchange a few emails with tech support, but it's been a pretty seamless migration so far. One feature I really love about Zenfolio is that I can choose so many print services for customers who would rather buy prints over digital files- they offer service through Mpix! I was happy with the SmugMug choices they have but they never offered Mpix. I've been a fan of Mpix.com for decades now! Back with I started in this crazy game, a photographer friend introduced me to them and I've been using them ever since! I always recommend them for prints! Excellent quality, amazing customer service! Just putting this out there for any eyes this might fall upon.

One other service I find helpful with Zenfolio that SmugMug doens't offer is the ability to do scheduling. I like that I have the ability to schedule things, if I so choose, through my webpage. While I've found some limitations with the BookMe service provided through Zenfolio, I've found other calendars and schedulers easy enough to plug into my site if needed. I never had this ability using SmugMug.

Now for the nitty gritty...

Zenfolio isn't perfect. My biggest complaint, and something I've brought up in customer support, I don't understand why they can't make discount codes and coupons more robust. This is getting into more detail than most need to read, but if you're a photographer finding this post by chance and looking for pluses and minuses for services, it might be useful knowledge. With Zenfolio, you create a discount code and apply it to any galleries you desire. You made the code live and it is applied to any of the galleries you labeled. Great, right? No. Not at all. When I take pictures of 50 dancers, most of whom are in multiple costumes, I like to process and get pictures out as soon as possible! With SmugMug I could do this and simply assign a pricelist or discount code to any gallery as I worked and finished them. In order to do this with Zenfolio, you either need to have all of your galleries tagged before the code is made live, or you need to apply a separate code to each gallery as you upload them. For the love of my sanity and workflow Zenfolio - please change this!!!!

In summary though - I'm so far liking my experience with Zenfolio. Besides the few things SmugMug just makes easier, so far the tradeoff to Zenfolio has been a win for me. It has a pretty decent interface, I'm is pretty user friendly and photographer to client flow has been pretty smooth. There's always room to improve, so I'm hopeful with time they'll work out whatever kinks they have and it will one day be perfect.