smugmug subscription prices to rise

[Baldy]

We know pricing is hugely important and emotional, especially when prices go up — so we'd much rather be dropping them. We try to be open about things this important, so we're coming to our faithful dgrinners with about a month's advanced notice.

We're planning to raise the annual subscription for standard and power users by $10/year. Pro accounts will go to $149/year.

However, anyone who subscribes before the increase will be grandfathered so their rates remain the same as they are now. We'd love to offer lifetime grandfathering but, who knows, maybe some year they'll have to go up too.

Print prices won't rise and in fact during the time we've been in business we've had a couple of print price reductions. Currently we're just focused on subscription rates.

You might wonder what's driving this. There are three costs that have grown for us:

1. Customer service. We know many successful sharing sites offer very limited sharing, but our customers tend to care deeply about quick answers to questions.

2. Feature richness, which increases engineering and customer service costs.

2. The API/pixel explosion/JPEG 12/our committment to unlimited storage/added bandwith allocation/larger image sizes for pros, etc.

The choice was to continue along the path of making the service great or to compromise and keep prices down. I hope we're making the right choice for you.

All the best,
Baldy

[wxwax]

Where's Minoltaman when you need him? :evil

[DJ-S1]

I never paid attention to the pricing, so I looked it up. The new pricing levels will be $40, $60, and $150, right?

As for the early sign-up, are you saying that if I renew my account for another year right now, even though I may have 9 months left on my current subscription, that I will pay $30 to you and not have to renew for a year and 9 months?

Thanks for clarifying...

[rainforest1155]

I never paid attention to the pricing, so I looked it up. The new pricing levels will be $40, $60, and $150, right?

As for the early sign-up, are you saying that if I renew my account for another year right now, even though I may have 9 months left on my current subscription, that I will pay $30 to you and not have to renew for a year and 9 months?As far as I understand this means that the prices for existing customers stay on the old level for the time being until it's necessary to increase them, too!

Means I should upgrade to power user now instead of in a month and that would save me 10$ per year?!

Sebastian

[3rdPlanetPhotography]

While I understand Smugmug having to do this it also bothers me that just about every site that we use now days require some type of subscriptions. All added up it's getting to be very expensive. At some point we have to start dropping subscriptions to afford to live also...LOL 3 kids really eats up the funds :huh

I really love the SmugMug service so hopefully I can keep it at the top of my "must have" lists.

kc7dji

[Andy]

While I understand Smugmug having to do this it also bothers me that just about every site that we use now days require some type of subscriptions. All added up it's getting to be very expensive. At some point we have to start dropping subscriptions to afford to live also...LOL 3 kids really eats up the funds :huh

I really love the SmugMug service so hopefully I can keep it at the top of my "must have" lists.

kc7dji

tinfl.

[wxwax]

tinfl.
:scratch

[Andy]

:scratch

there is no free lunch.
my econ 101 prof at university taught that to me.

[GerryDavid]

But there are free lunches. :0) churches have them sometimes, theres also soup kitchens, ummm, a convience store gives free coffies, hehe.

$10 isnt to bad for the basic account, but the $50 raise for the pro one hurts. Ill be that much longer before I can afford to go pro here, hehe.

[wxwax]

there is no free lunch.
my econ 101 prof at university taught that to me.
Ah, standard internet patter. :evil I mean, sip.

[Baldy]

As far as I understand this means that the prices for existing customers stay on the old level for the time being until it's necessary to increase them, too!

Means I should upgrade to power user now instead of in a month and that would save me 10$ per year?!

SebastianCorrect. Anyone who signs up or upgrades over the next 30ish days will be grandfathered.

We really wanted to say people who are grandfathered were grandfathered forever, but alas forever is a long time :eek1. We can at least hope for years. :D

[DJ-S1]

Correct. Anyone who signs up or upgrades over the next 30ish days will be grandfathered.
While I was thinking of it, I just upgraded tonight. Now I need to start playing with code again...:uhoh

Baldy, thanks for giving your current customers a deal. Just another example of how SmugMug rocks! :thumb

[T4Tots]

So...if my Pro renewal is at the end of next month I should be ok at the "now" rates? I think that's what I am reading.

[Mike Lane]

We really wanted to say people who are grandfathered were grandfathered forever, but alas forever is a long time :eek1. We can at least hope for years. :D
It's that part that is confusing me. Does that mean that I'm staying at my $99 pro yearly rate until such time that it becomes unfeasible for SM to let me stay there (i.e. probably not forever, but hopefully years). Or does it mean that next February (I think it was Feb that I signed up) I'll be paying $150?

Not too big of a deal for me but I don't want to get broadsided either.:D

[{JT}]

For as long as we can, but not forever.

Does that mean that I'm staying at my $99 pro yearly rate until such time that it becomes unfeasible for SM to let me stay there (i.e. probably not forever, but hopefully years).

[Mike Lane]

For as long as we can, but not forever.
Copy that and you guys rule.

[jfriend]

We know pricing is hugely important and emotional, especially when prices go up — so we'd much rather be dropping them. We try to be open about things this important, so we're coming to our faithful dgrinners with about a month's advanced notice.

We're planning to raise the annual subscription for standard and power users by $10/year. Pro accounts will go to $149/year.

However, anyone who subscribes before the increase will be grandfathered so their rates remain the same as they are now. We'd love to offer lifetime grandfathering but, who knows, maybe some year they'll have to go up too.

Print prices won't rise and in fact during the time we've been in business we've had a couple of print price reductions. Currently we're just focused on subscription rates.

You might wonder what's driving this. There are three costs that have grown for us:

1. Customer service. We know many successful sharing sites offer very limited sharing, but our customers tend to care deeply about quick answers to questions.

2. Feature richness, which increases engineering and customer service costs.

2. The API/pixel explosion/JPEG 12/our committment to unlimited storage/added bandwith allocation/larger image sizes for pros, etc.

The choice was to continue along the path of making the service great or to compromise and keep prices down. I hope we're making the right choice for you.

All the best,
Baldy
I must say, if prices had to go up, this is a very classy way to do this. 1) You are announcing this in advance. 2) You are grandfathering existing users for at least a little while. 3) You are giving people who were on the fence about joining a chance to get in before the price increase. And, most of all, you have improved the service a lot in the 9 months that I've been following it.

The only thing that seems a bit strange is that you raised the bandwidth allocation a month or so ago and kept prices the same. It would have been better to have connected these two events. Now it feels like prices are going up to cover increased costs, when a month ago, it felt like capacities were going up at the same cost. Is there any insight as to why you raised bandwidth limits just a little while ago, but now are raising prices?

--john

[Baldy]

The only thing that seems a bit strange is that you raised the bandwidth allocation a month or so ago and kept prices the same.Hi John,

Yes, I can see how that could be confusing. We did it primarily for help desk support. We just found from experience that enough of our standard users posted photos in high-traffic forums like my adventure motorcycling forum, ADVrider, or dpreview. It was hard to get them to grok what was happening to them wrt traffic but when we upped the limits it pretty much took that problem away.

The other thing is we didn't want to tie it to an issue like that because by itself it didn't have enough impact to bump our costs enough to cause us to raise prices. The wonderful unlimited uploaders, feature richness, and the desire to keep two of each photo on two independent disk systems were bigger contributors.

Thanks,
Baldy

[dragon300zx]

Baldy,

Any firm date on the increase? I wanna sign up for the pro account but I can't until after the yosemite trip prolly around the 13th or 14th is when I was planning on it. Was wondering if that will still be the old pricing?

[XO-Studios]

Ah, standard internet patter. :evil I mean, sip.
off topic but seemingly helpful

www.acronymfinder.com (http://www.acronymfinder.com)

Or in this case, turns out TINFL is an acronym of an acronym :wink

http://www.acronymfinder.com/af-query.asp?String=exact&Acronym=TINSTAAFL&Find=Find

FWIW,

XO,

[jfriend]

Hi John,

Yes, I can see how that could be confusing. We did it primarily for help desk support. We just found from experience that enough of our standard users posted photos in high-traffic forums like my adventure motorcycling forum, ADVrider, or dpreview. It was hard to get them to grok what was happening to them wrt traffic but when we upped the limits it pretty much took that problem away.

The other thing is we didn't want to tie it to an issue like that because by itself it didn't have enough impact to bump our costs enough to cause us to raise prices. The wonderful unlimited uploaders, feature richness, and the desire to keep two of each photo on two independent disk systems were bigger contributors.

Thanks,
Baldy
I'm a pro user so I'm not really providing this feedback for myself. But, I do recommend smugmug very often (I have 56 referrals). I get these referrals, not by just passing my coupon code around, but by explaining to people why I chose smugmug over the competition, primarily pbase. I mainly use three arguments why to choose smugmug over pbase: 1) unlimited storage, 2) friends and family can order prints and 3) great support. I can tell from the responses that 1) and 2) seem to carry the most weight in these conversations. It's not that great support doesn't matter (it does), but customers don't quite know how to value it and they typically don't know what the support characteristics are of the competition. Today, I don't even have to mention price because pbase is $24.95 and you are $29.95. Users seem to think that's basically the same. But, $24.95 and $39.95 are NOT going to be perceived as the same. The bar is going to be a lot higher to understand why one should pay this much extra over pbase or why you shouldn't go investigate some of the other alternatives that are often mentioned by others in these same conversations.

So, I must say that I'm worried for the sake of smumug to see the entry level price to smugmug rise. I think there's a payment threshold and a competitive threshold right around where you have the standard package today. When you go higher than that, you will lose lots of new customers. Due to what your competitors offer, I'm just not sure that I myself would have even started with smugmug at the higher entry level price. The challenge is that beginning users are largely unaware of your feature advantages. They are not sophisticated enough to recognize most of them and it's hard for them to even see/understand many of them by just reading a web site or even in a trial period.

So, rather than just complain, I thought I'd offer some other solutions to think about. It sounds like two costs are driving the need for raising prices: the cost of support and the cost of redundant disk space with higher and higher usages by users. Have you considered these approaches:

1) If the uploaders that use the APIs are causing substantially higher storage to be used, what about restricting the APIs (or at least the APIs assocaited with upload) only to power users who are paying the higher rate? Since there is likely a loose correlation between how much storage space is used and who uses the uploaders, this would assign some of the cost of increased storage to power user accounts while letting you keep your standard rate where it is. It would also probably be a really great motivater to get more people to upgrade to the power user level. If you wanted to keep the existing uploader users happy, you'd grandfather them in for at least a year.

2) I am assuming from your comments here that the things that cause the most support are questions related to printing. If that's so, what about raising your printing prices slightly to offset that particular cost? Again, I'd rather have the cost of printing support be paid for by those who were most using the printing support rather than by the entry level yearly plan. I also suggest this because I don't think most entry level users select a service based on the cost of prints. I think that many (like me) select a service based on who offers prints, but most don't do detailed price comparisons on the cost of prints - primarily because it's not that easy to compare prices and it's mostly other people's money that is affected (e.g. friends and family ordering prints), not your own.

3) If none of the above make any sense to you, have you considered a new entry level plan at the $29.95/yr that does have restricted storage? You could get people into the plan who are cost concious, but want your features/brand and they could upgrade later to an unlimited plan if they wanted. But that would be after they've gotten addicted to your features, support, uploaders, etc... when they'd be more likely to pay a higher fee. I know that unlimited storage is kind of trademark of smugmug, but I'm really concerned about you raising your entry level price that I think this is worth considering.

--John

[rainforest1155]

I mainly use three arguments why to choose smugmug over pbase: 1) unlimited storage, 2) friends and family can order prints and 3) great support. I can tell from the responses that 1) and 2) seem to carry the most weight in these conversations. It's not that great support doesn't matter (it does), but customers don't quite know how to value it and they typically don't know what the support characteristics are of the competition. Today, I don't even have to mention price because pbase is $24.95 and you are $29.95. Users seem to think that's basically the same. But, $24.95 and $39.95 are NOT going to be perceived as the same.I think John made a strong point. I had exactly these thoughts when deciding between SM and pbase a year ago. I wanted the lowest price possible, but was drawn to the idea of unlimited storage. With the help of the 5$ coupon there was no need on argueing over pbase anymore, because I had the same low price.
Actually is the first service on the internet for which I paid an annual fee. With raising the bar for the standard account I don't know if I had signed up with you.

2) I am assuming from your comments here that the things that cause the most support are questions related to printing. If that's so, what about raising your printing prices slightly to offset that particular cost? Again, I'd rather have the cost of printing support be paid for by those who were most using the printing support rather than by the entry level yearly plan. I also suggest this because I don't think most entry level users select a service based on the cost of prints. I think that many (like me) select a service based on who offers prints, but most don't do detailed price comparisons on the cost of prints - primarily because it's not that easy to compare prices and it's mostly other people's money that is affected (e.g. friends and family ordering prints), not your own.I didn't even check the print prices, because I had no need for it with living in Germany and there were enough local alternatives here. Therefore this suggestion would be the best of John's possible solutions for me.

Think about it. After a year I upgraded to power user and wasn't because I exceeded my limits (with max 250MB/month far away from it). I did it because of co-branding. Yeah, I did it now when you announced the new prices, but I had planed it for a while, it was just a matter of time.
So you pushed me a little, but you can't push possible new members, just scare them away with higher prices without knowing you.

Sebastian

[Bodley]

1) If the uploaders that use the APIs are causing substantially higher storage to be used, what about restricting the APIs (or at least the APIs assocaited with upload) only to power users who are paying the higher rate? Since there is likely a loose correlation between how much storage space is used and who uses the uploaders, this would assign some of the cost of increased storage to power user accounts while letting you keep your standard rate where it is. It would also probably be a really great motivater to get more people to upgrade to the power user level. If you wanted to keep the existing uploader users happy, you'd grandfather them in for at least a year.

--JohnI thought Smugmug wanted customers to post photos to sell/share or am I mistaken. I thought unlimited photos was a selling point for Smugmug and believe they even encourage you to upload. I'm starting to feel like this is not the case and I need to find another service.

If S*E meets the criteria as an API up-loader then I'm an "Up-loader". Without S*E I would have been looking for another host service with this feature by now.

I am shooting Youth Sports ~ 500 shots a weekend and uploading keepers in hopes of making a sale. By the time I'm through processing images and ready to post it's late. With S*E I'm able to upload an entire album whereas before I would have to get up in the middle of the night and start a new batch.

Does Smugmug want this type of customer?http://www.digitalgrin.com/images/smilies/ne_nau.gif

Greg

[GREAPER]

I thought Smugmug wanted customers to post photos to sell/share or am I mistaken. I thought unlimited photos was a selling point for Smugmug and believe they even encourage you to upload. I'm starting to feel like this is not the case and I need to find another service.

If S*E meets the criteria as an API up-loader then I'm an "Up-loader". Without S*E I would have been looking for another host service with this feature by now.

I am shooting Youth Sports ~ 500 shots a weekend and uploading keepers in hopes of making a sale. By the time I'm through processing images and ready to post it's late. With S*E I'm able to upload an entire album whereas before I would have to get up in the middle of the night and start a new batch.

Does Smugmug want this type of customer?http://www.digitalgrin.com/images/smilies/ne_nau.gif

Greg


It wasn't smugmug that suggested limiting the price increase to API users, it was John.

I say Smugmug offers a wonderful service that is beetter than the competition now, and getting better all of the time. I have a pro user account, because I wanted all of the features it had, mostly custom pricing.

I dont sell a lot of prints off of my smugmug account. but I do sell some, and I buy them myself when I need an archival copy of something. I of course wish there were no increase in prices, but if there has to be, and there always does, I am happy with the way they are doing it.

I will still advise people to use smugmug as I believe it to be far and aboce the best service of its kind.

[Bodley]

It wasn't smugmug that suggested limiting the price increase to API users, it was John.

I dont sell a lot of prints off of my smugmug account. but I do sell some, and I buy them myself when I need an archival copy of something. I of course wish there were no increase in prices, but if there has to be, and there always does, I am happy with the way they are doing it.

I will still advise people to use smugmug as I believe it to be far and aboce the best service of its kind.Unfortunately I don't sell too many prints myself - but theres always hope.:D

I too am very please with Smugmug and have no desire to change but I also don't want to cause Smugmug any problems.

Greg

[ian408]

Baldy,

Thanks for the timely explanation. Much appreciated.


Ian

[Andy]

I thought Smugmug wanted customers to post photos to sell/share or am I mistaken. I thought unlimited photos was a selling point for Smugmug and believe they even encourage you to upload. I'm starting to feel like this is not the case and I need to find another service.


i'm curious, why would you feel this way? you are still always getting unlimited storage... that's not changing.

S*E away, and enjoy the great value :deal

[volcs0]

Well, I don't mind renewing my Power account at $60 or $70 or $100... I have my own domain and pay a hosting co. $120/yr for space. I finally moved my pix to Smugmug because I passed the hosting company's 2 gig limit. Now, all I use the host for is email and for FTPing files. In the grand scheme of things, I don't consider $50 vs. $100 per year to be that big of a deal...especially when considering all the other crap I pay monthly for (cell phone, cable, electric, etc.).

BUT, I really appreciate the argument above about new users. I've turned many people toward Smugmug, and they are invariably the type of user that has no experience with websites or posting pictures, etc...just people at work who want to share a few pix with the family and see what I've been able to do on SM. I think all they see is "easy", "unlimited", "buy prints" and "$25". I do think $25 is a "set point" and is easier to sell than $40.

I guess what I'm saying is that it makes more sense to bump the cost of the Power and Pro user, while leaving the entry at $25. But I'm also quite confident that you've done lots of polling and cost analyses. Whatever the decision - I'm here to stay, and I'll keep evangelizing the service.

-sam

[bfjr]

It wasn't smugmug that suggested limiting the price increase to API users, it was John.

I say Smugmug offers a wonderful service that is beetter than the competition now, and getting better all of the time. I have a pro user account, because I wanted all of the features it had, mostly custom pricing.

I dont sell a lot of prints off of my smugmug account. but I do sell some, and I buy them myself when I need an archival copy of something. I of course wish there were no increase in prices, but if there has to be, and there always does, I am happy with the way they are doing it.

I will still advise people to use smugmug as I believe it to be far and aboce the best service of its kind.
:agree
I spent a lot of time on my images to make them as presentable as possiable. smugmug surrounds my images with that same sort of care, if it costs more to sustain/increase that service (and it always does, I know) then I'll pay more. My 2.

[Nikolai]

I'm a pro user so I'm not really providing this feedback for myself. But, I do recommend smugmug very often (I have 56 referrals). I get these referrals, not by just passing my coupon code around, but by explaining to people why I chose smugmug over the competition, primarily pbase. I mainly use three arguments why to choose smugmug over pbase: 1) unlimited storage, 2) friends and family can order prints and 3) great support. I can tell from the responses that 1) and 2) seem to carry the most weight in these conversations. It's not that great support doesn't matter (it does), but customers don't quite know how to value it and they typically don't know what the support characteristics are of the competition.
I also have Pro SM account, and, as in Sebastian's case, this is so far the one and only Internet service (apart from few domains registration/hosting fees) I'm actually paying for on an annual basis (and in addition to this fact I'm feeling pretty good about it:-)

However, I think John made a very good point here. For a newbie who is looking for a photo sharing service customer support issues are non-existent. Even worse, the very mentioning of the customer support assumes the presence of some sort of issues that have to be resolved - and nobody likes having issues in the first place.

I clearly remember myself just one year ago, when I was in this very position - I was looking for an online place to store and share my (at the time) dozen GB worth of pictures. I was mostly using dpreview as a reference point and very soon my choice was narrowed down to PB and SM. In this order. PB *seemed* to be cheaper and easier to use. PB offered 1 month trial, while SM had only one week.

Everything was resolved after I actually did try both. I was truly impressed with the features, unlimited storage was an absolute winner, and the fact that I got a reply from Ben just a few minutes after I sent my first question brought the whole new light to the "customer support" aspect.

However, this was only AFTER I decided to give SM a try. I can honestly say that $30 (or $25 with a coupon) was on the very high margin for me - purely for psychological reasons. I'm not sure if I would even start considering SM with a $40 price tag for entry level. I know, it's really silly and funny, we're talking about $10 (which is, in essense, a difference between a nice lunch and a great lunch - *one* lunch) *per year* - and yet, it makes a whole lot of difference for a person who is "just looking".

Hence my concern here is that new pricing - for the entry level account - may divert a flow of new customers away. I got a few ppl from work subscribed to SM and from discussions with them I'm pretty positive they would not buy into $40 ticket..

I understand that some business decisions have to be made, and I am definitely not trying to tell Chris and Don how to run their buisness.

However, I in agreement with a several suggestions made so far:

Low entry level price IS the key factor for a newbie. Maybe this entry level should be real entry level - no custom stuff, file size limited to 3Mb, jpgs only - there are ways to limit features.
Once you got a person subsribed - you can be pretty sure he/she will upgrade verry soon. And even if not - you still got something, right?

If it's the printing issues that require a lot of efforts in programming and support - maybe shift the burden of payments to those who actually benefit from it, rather than spreading it evenly accross the board and imposing higher rates on those who rarely/never use the cart (again, our German friend Sebastian is a good example)
Once again, I like the service - in every sense of the word, and I'll do my best to promote it. But I think going beyond $29.99 for an entry level will make a pretty big impact...

HTH

[Bodley]

i'm curious, why would you feel this way? you are still always getting unlimited storage... that's not changing.

S*E away, and enjoy the great value :dealParanoid - I guess after reading the post it seemed like "Up-Loaders" were frowned upon and causing the problems although originally that's what I thought the site is all about.

Guess I was being overly sensitive to posters and not listening to Smugmug.

I'm happy as a clam :D with this site!!!

[GerryDavid]

I doubt I would have considered sm @ $40. I wasnt happy with pbase, so I probably would have continued to look for a $25-$30 option.

Also the 1 week trial AFTER you give the credit card info almost discouraged me from joining. With pbase you dont have to give any information to get the free month trial. *they limit your storage to 10mb instead of 100mb at the time*

At this point price is very important for me, and for others that just want to show thier pictures to friends and family. There are some free options online, like tinypic.com and what ever the other one is. I think it would be harder to get them to convert at the higher price.

So what if you have 4 packages instead of 3?

Basic thats still $29.95, and raised printing prices. With this you could make more than $10 in a year with increased printing prices. perhaps 10 cents more for each size.

Not so Basic for $39.95, then the other power and pro.

[Cameron]

I agree with much of what has been said thus far. Now that I'm a happy smugmug customer and understand the benefits and value of smugmug, I'm not bothered by the price increase. It is certainly worth it. However, as has been expressed, I may not have signed up originally (or even considered smugmug) at the $40 price-point.

I think you'd be better served by keeping a low-price account with fewer features. Once customers fall in love with it, they'll pay more for extras, but I fear many would dismiss it without giving it a chance. Now, if you're intending to target the pro/serious hobbiest customers at the expense of photo-sharing families, your pricing isn't an issue. At first glance, the more value-oriented customers likely won't appreciate smugmug's benefits enough to give you their credit card when there are a lot of cheaper options.

Perhaps keeping a $29.95 account with limited space (1GB?) and/or no API access? I'm not sure that upping the print prices on the cheaper accounts is a good option, since it's likely the value-customers who will share lots of photos for mom & dad to print at the default prices. People like that will likely go where prints are cheap.

Anway, there is lots of good discussion here, but you've had a successful business model thus far and I trust whatever decisions you make will be well thought out. As with the others, I'm here to stay.

[Richard S]

My personal opinion is that basic users would be willing to pay
50/year, advanced 100, and pro's 200 or perhaps more as long as
everything works as expected and the powers that be keep listnening to
user feedback and making things better.

I've been a smugmug "power user" for a month and I'm very happy. I
needed a place to stick my photos where I could just email the link to
people and be done with it. I was tired of having to explain that
they want you to login and give your email address or other such
nonsense. I also had my own little HTML galleries but it's too damn
much work to be your own sysadmin all the time.

So, smugmug fills an important niche, but it's not 100% there yet.
The way templates and gallery stats are handled both need to be bumped
up to the next level of being clean, polished, and complete. The
"Photo Details" info processing needs to go through at least one more
evolution. The API mechanism is good, but it's just an API, it's
what's underneath that matters.

I say raise prices now rather than doing it piecemeal. That would be
bad. So much of what smugmug is now is really good, so don't lose
that. We want smugmug to succeed on all levels including as a
business (so it stays around, duh).

That's my $0.02.

[BenA2]

I'll chime in as a very happy standard customer who won't mind paying the additional $10 for my current service. In fact, I'm now encouraged to upgrade to Power before the increase. But, I am concerned about the price increase affecting new standard subscribers. I think the current price point with the $5 referral is perfect for new users, because of it's competitiveness with Pbase, and also just because $25 just doesn't sound like that much money.

I have to say, though, what's been even more important to new users I've brought on board than the subscription price is the print price. I've found the $0.29 4×6 print price is the top end of what people are willing to pay. They know they can get $0.18-$0.22 4×6 prints elsewhere, so it takes some salesmanship on my part to convince them smugmug's quality (they don't care about custer service before they subscribe) is worth the extra money. Because of this, I hope smugmug does not take seriously the suggestions in this thread to increase print prices.

I do like the idea many have proposed to add a new lower-level user to maintain the $30 subscription price. No API, max file size, JPEG only, are all reasonable limits that should reduce cost, be transparent to the lay user, and maintain smugmug's key differentiating feature of unlimited storage. Once these users learn the value of smumug's features and customer service and begin craving a bit more, I think they'll be much more willing to pay the extra $10 to upgrade to what is currently the "standard" level.

Ben

[Matthew Saville]

I think in the long run, all the people that sign up / upgrade now, to beat the deadline, will be offset by how fewer new signer-uppers there are in the long run. I hope this price increase will offset the the fewer signer-uppers... (If smugmug goes under I expect to be sent a DVD with my images on it as a parting gift...)

I guess I do plan on keeping my smugmug for family / friend purposes, but as far as being a young nature photographer trying to market himself, I'm getting nada and I think sooner or later I'm going to have to bail out of the pro user account. Dang, I'll sure miss the "clean" setting...

-Matt-

[Dach]

I understand the reasons websites need to raise their prices, especially with what I've been having to endure with meetup.com lately. However, I tend to agree that there will be some merit in keeping a "cheap" account option, especially with flickr looming on the horizon. They are going to be getting pretty popular soon, I think, and their price point is $25/yr. They do have some weaknesses, however, which would need to be exploited in smugmug's smarketing. I took a detailed look at it today to see what they offer. Some of it's good, such as unlimited photos galleries, and bandwidth (which I think they can afford since they're part of Yahoo); some very complex ways of linking photos; and similar privacy options to smugmug. On the bad side, their ToS is fairly complicated (no forum avatars?), there's already an epidemic of people stealing images and claiming them as their own (primarily out of ignorance of the aforementioned "very complex ways of linking photos"), and almost no control over the page layout (I know it sounds silly, but one of the reasons I chose smugmug was because I could make the background black. It would have been a harsh transition from my website to a white photo page).
It's just something to consider as they begin their rollout. There might be a lot of people who are willing to pay the same amount for what they perceive to be a better feature set, but not significantly more. Honestly, the bandwidth was never a big deal for me, because I'm not a pro. I have a lot of friends, and over 2,000 photos on my smugmug site, and I've never used 2GB of bandwidth in a month. So, non-pros likely wouldn't consider that as big a deal as something as simple as a black background. But not at $40.

[Baldy]

This is a really good discussion and I appreciate very much how thoughtfully you've debated the issue.

Truth be told, we have cringed at raising the standard price as well. It's interesting to think of placing some restrictions on it because it would be nice to maintain an impulse-buy price point. But it's an account level with low margins for us currently.

If you put it in perspective, PBase does have a low price point but it keeps them at two people in a garage whose customers complain about lack of communication and down time.

Looking at the hosting or blogging worlds, we're quite a bit cheaper. Google gives Blogger away for free, but pretty much everyone's complaining about it and TypePad is more like the gold standard at $4.95/month entry level. Nobody uses gigabytes of bandwidth and storage there, either.

Flickr has potential but their price has been $59 on sale for $42 until recently, and they still limit your uploads per month so disk usage won't run away. Their costs were high enough they had to sell to Yahoo pretty cheap in less than a year. Yahoo doesn't have the best record of keeping apps innovating that they buy, even ones they spend billions for like Broadcast.com or Geocities.

I don't think we want to restrict the API because the uploaders like SendToSmugmug are really popular with standard users.

Our basic thought has been the price rise will cut subscriber growth by 20% but double our margins on standard accounts so we can put in ever more robust hardware, features, etc. We can be the TypePad and let the free sites get their millions but keep going bust as they have for a long time (remember Microsoft photo sharing, Adobe, Canon, Photopoint, Zing, Photo Island, etc.?)

Someone said print prices at 29 cents are at the upper limit. I think that's true. Print prices have continually dropped on the net and I think they'll continue to.

Anyway, we're absorbing everything you write and it's one reason why we're doing it this way.

All the best,
Baldy

[jfriend]

This is a really good discussion and I appreciate very much how thoughtfully you've debated the issue.
...
Anyway, we're absorbing everything you write and it's one reason why we're doing it this way.

All the best,
Baldy
I'm glad you're listening and thinking about the tradeoffs.

If you really think you'll only lose 20% of your subscription growth, then it probably makes more sense for your business just to raise prices as you are planning and not add a lower plan that stays at the "impulse" or "starter" level of $29.95.

My comments were based on an assumption that you'd lose more than 20% of your subscriber growth. The challenge is that people who haven't become customers yet have a hard time telling the difference between smugmug, pbase and some of the other low cost services. They won't really know a quality service when they see it. They will able to discern storage, bandwidth, availability of printing, whether they shows ads or not, some visuals about the layouts available and how the site looks and price. After that, most users won't be educated enough to know how to pick a quality site and what to decide to pay for and what not to. With unlimited storage and printing and an impulse price, smugmug is easy to sell (look at the number of referrals I have and you'll see why I say that).

If more than 20% of new subscribers go somewhere else (as I suspect will be the case), then I'd wonder if there was some newly defined "starter" account that could still be offered at $29.95. This account would ideally be limited in some fashion that helps control your costs (presumably disk space is the easiest, but you may have other cost drivers that could be considered too). At worst, you'd want to break even on that level of account. At best, you'd make a small margin. In either case, the goal would be to capture the users at first and hopefully upgrade them to standard, power, pro as their needs grow over time and as they become familiar with how smugmug can fill those needs with the higher plans. Once they've signed up somewhere else, the chances of getting them back to smugmug are a lot, lot lower.

Over time, you could separate the "starter" plan from the "standard plan" with a few other features if you wanted even more of a reason for users to upgrade to the standard plan than what you started with.

Thanks for listening. I'm impressed that you are testing this out in public to get feedback. IMO, that's a great use of a forum like this.

--John

[ian408]

Baldy, Onethumb, et. al,

Maybe it's because I am too familiar with what it cost to provide just
the storage infrastructure (at the redundancy level you do) and because
I am selfish and want SM to survive. But I think your price increase is
more in line with the service you offer.

Ian

[gus]

Baldy, Onethumb, et. al,

Maybe it's because I am too familiar with what it cost to provide just
the storage infrastructure (at the redundancy level you do) and because
I am selfish and want SM to survive. But I think your price increase is
more in line with the service you offer.

IanYep...where else can you talk with the owners & get personal feedback & emails to the extent that SM offers ?

Not many places will offer a grandfather like they have (that did take me a long time to work out what it ment)

[ginger_55]

Maybe one user isn't that important, but I am understanding very little of what I am reading. With a pro account, I should be able to understand things like API.
I even have trouble figuring out what unlimited storage means. I think I have that one figured out, but everything else is pretty much a dark hole for me..................as in BLACK. I did understand black background, that was very important to me, also.

And somehow at that time, a year ago last month, I had the money to pay for a pro acct, I had just bought a Rebel, and I had visions of sales that have not happened to any large degree. A lot of it being my own fault.

What I do understand, and this is what I heard: $10, ......oh, I will be paying $10 more a year, damn, but I can probably manage $10 on top of the $99 I am paying now.

Then I heard $149.00 a year, and my heart dropped and I was starting to feel panic. Then I read, no, some people are being grandfathered, if they join now. But I joined a year ago, so does that mean me? Other people seem to have asked that question and it has been answered.

Also, this 1/3 price hike does not seem significant to a whole lot of people who are paying more for cable and all. Now I am feeling insignificant, because $49 extra a year, coming out of my food, gas, etc, 100.00 a week, seems very significant, to me.

And referrals, I don't have any. I would love to, I know people who make more money than I do, pay more for other things, I even know people who go out to dinner some times. Usually the Outback and other steak places, or that is what I am hearing. And that is my family. My friends go to much better places: often.

But they do not pay anything for storage. They don't need to, or want to. And if they were to do that, everyone who says 39.00 sounds like 40.00 and a lot more money than the 29.00, that sounds like 25.00, is right. Essentially, I would be trying to refer people at a 15.00 price raise, as that is what it would sound like.

But that doesn't matter, as I am the only person I know who pays for storage, or is going to, for that matter. The people I know pay a fortune for stuff for their dogs. So trying to refer them to smugmug would be like trying to sell you on spending most of your time training your dogs to run an agility course: and that costs a lot of money, but it is worth it. And they know why. As you all know why this is worth it.

It sounds to me, this is how I would be thinking if I were starting with my Rebel this year, I would be thinking that this is the country club of "storage", which is a word I wouldn't know yet, and I would go where the middle class goes...............where ever that is. But if one place were 25.00, another was 29.00, I would choose them first, because I didn't know anything then, and I still don't know anything much about why this is so great other than the cool black color. Oh, I also did look forward to designing my own front page. That was big in my dreams. My son did it for me something like 9 months later, I don't know why he thought I wanted a christmas theme in January, but I have it, with no idea of how to change it.

I would not think I would be your typical pro customer even now at the current prices. And I am pretty old at 65, so maybe forever will be accurate on the prices and the grandfathering for me. But I worry that I won't be able to continue anything when my husband retires in 4 or 5 years, or the company folds, whichever is first. !50.00, which is what 149.00 sounds like, well, it would have to go. And there would be no 29.00 acct for me to downgrade to.

It is a scary world out there for some people.

And none of this is an exageration, I just don't know how typical it is. I think now that the middle class is disappearing and there will be just the ones who have accts and the ones who don't: anywhere. As I said, no one else I know is putting as much into photography as I am. And I don't think anyone else knows how truly much I am really spending on it. Nor do I think most people who don't have a problem juggling can realize what a struggle that can be, and how easily it can collapse.

And all for the words $10.00, only $10.00 a year is not what it is. It is a 1/3 increase.

For those of us who are struggling, I have a suggestion that could benefit both of us, if the book keeping does not make it cost more for you all than it would bring in.

Why don't you let some of us pay for 6 months at a time, instead of the whole yearly sum at once. Well, not "us", I mean "them". Because you could charge them $40.00, instead of the $30.00 you are now charging and let them pay 20.00, or so, twice a year. Or let them pay 30.00 once a year.

I can tell you I would have bought into paying $60.00 twice a year, rather than the whole 100.00 at once.

But please, I do need the grandfather business, but it is an idea........

That and cutting some of those services that people are telling you some people, especially the $30.00 accts, do not understand. Believe me, they don't. They might like the color.........
Or they might even want more, like their own design on front, so they might get the pro acct, like I did, but they don't have 150.00.

(honestly, you all could make money by selling a dictionary of terms)

i also have a Webshots acct, I got it because it was free, but then I needed more "storage", so I paid for that. Now I don't know how to get rid of it, because I don't have those pictures anywhere else, I don't think. So I paid something like the 25.00 again this year to keep my photos for another year. And 25.00 was something I managed to come up with, though I did wait until like 2 months after it was due. I was going to let them junk the photos, but I finally did come up with it. After all, that is a small amt of money to keep those photos safe. But 40.00? Maybe I could dig up the CDs I probably put the photos on.

Everyone else I know with an acct has a free one.

ginger:cry

[gus]

Ginger you are never alone with not understang stuff like API & such. I am so retarded with computer jargon that i would be much more comfortable painting hunting scenes on cave walls by fire light.

I am probably going to upgrade to a pro account before the month is up. Not because i think im going to sell anything but because its my only hobby & i love photography & would like to see my site as best as it can be. Dont worry i have never any referals either.

Maybe one of the tech types in here could explain in the hall of wisdom what it takes to do a pro account..ie just to find out if its above a 'non tech' user. I see ones like lynn that look great but i have no idea how to set them up with your own photos in the banner etc.

Gus

[ian408]

Not to burst anyone's bubble but unlimited storage is not free. Nor is the
bandwidth to serve those images.

Either you pay for it or it is paid for via advertising or some other revenue
stream. I certainly don't want to have banner ads or other adverts plastered
over my stuff nor do I want the folks I share images with to wait while some
advert displays itself for the requeset 10 seconds before you get to view
the images.

Pick your poison. Free == ads and other gimicks to get you to click
through (plus limited storage). $39-149 gets you unlimited storage plus
(at the Pro end) a check when you sell stuff is a bargin. Try hosting
that yourself.

Ginger, I understand the difference even a few bucks can make in people's
lives. An increase of $10/year doesn't seem like much to me but it is to
someone else. However, these are decisions we, as individuals, make. If
you're using your Pro Account to sell images, then it's a business expense.
If you're not selling many prints, perhaps you don't need a Pro Account?

Ian

[gus]

As my father always said..."you wanna dance ?.. then pay the band"

[ginger_55]

Well, I have a little money, now. Maybe I should just start sending it so that when it comes time to renew, I won't worry about it all year.

I feel like humungus, it is my only hobby. It is the only thing I do. I have been sitting here all day, mostly stuff for the church............and that is not paid stuff, it is my contribution. When I finally sent the stuff to the church a bit ago, I included the link so that they could pass the info onto some parishioners whose photos I took.

I don't need photography, really, I just like it.

And I try to afford it, and this is scaring me, OK. Now this place shutting down would scare me, too. I just told it like it is. For others............. not just me.

They don't want to dance, or they dance at other places with the rednecks and stuff. And post their stuff where they can. I have had three free accts.
I think I still have one at Shutterfly. I know I do. And it is not a bad looking place. But because I don't sell alot does not mean that I don't want a pro acct. I know it is doing something for me. I did sell 50.00 last yr, made that much, I mean. Helped pay this yr.

I just like Smugmug and not for the reasons you do, but I want it just as much, maybe I don't need it as much, but I want it as much. And the way it is, it is the way I told it. As a pure amateur, I do not want to pay 40.00 for the lowest acct. It is kind of like all or nothing right now.

And I kind am looking at a place for pros, am I not. If memory serves me, we are not talking about "us" here, we are talking about "them". And whether "they" will pay 39.00, because $200.00 would not be a problem for us with a pro acct.

Sorry, I am getting a bit reactive.

(Do I have to know what bandwidth is, too? For this acct.)

ginger

[winnjewett]

I think a lot of us have lost sight of what photography used to cost. Do you remember way back in the ... 90's when it used to cost $4 to shoot 36 pictures, and another $4 to develop them?

smugmug's pro account will cost new members the equivelant of 18 rolls ... per year. That's just 1.5 rolls per month; 14 pictures per week.

I find it reassuring to think back a few years and remember how much I used to spend. I'm not saying that digital is free, but it sure is a whole lot cheaper.

-Winn

[ginger_55]

I think a lot of us have lost sight of what photography used to cost. Do you remember way back in the ... 90's when it used to cost $4 to shoot 36 pictures, and another $4 to develop them?

smugmug's pro account will cost new members the equivelant of 18 rolls ... per year. That's just 1.5 rolls per month; 14 pictures per week.

I find it reassuring to think back a few years and remember how much I used to spend. I'm not saying that digital is free, but it sure is a whole lot cheaper.

-Winn

This has nothing to do with anything. But I paid nothing for film, or normal developing, throughout the entire 90s. I got it free, by the brick, and I had it developed for free, also. I just wanted to point out that we all have different stories. As I said, nothing to do with anything, and if it is only newcomers, then this has nothing to do with me. I guess.

g

[winnjewett]

This has nothing to do with anything. Ginger,
Respectfully I disagree that my statements have "nothing to do with anything." We are discussing the cost of photography. My point was that before digital, part of that cost was the cost of film. Today, part of that cost is the cost of hosting.
But I paid nothing for film, or normal developing, throughout the entire 90s. I got it free, by the brick, and I had it developed for free, also. I just wanted to point out that we all have different stories. It is nice that you were able to get your film and developing for free. Most people don't.
As I said, nothing to do with anything, and if it is only newcomers, then this has nothing to do with me. I guess. The rate increase does not apply to you since every current user will be grandfathered, at least for a while.

-winn

[ginger_55]

Ginger,
Respectfully I disagree that my statements have "nothing to do with anything."
-winn
I did not mean your statements
Sorry about the misunderstanding.

I was just referring to my response which, as you pointed out, was an unusual situation so it would not have had anything to do with the point you were trying to make.



g

[BBJ]

Hi All, Ok well this was my first photo hosting site and have been happy with it. I went straight onto the pro account as liked the features, but as i live in Australia and i think it cost me around the $125 mark when i joined a few months ago i could justify this cost although i dont upload large files i always downsize my pictures as i dont use the print service from SM. There is quiet a few of us from Australia on SM and while i have been happy it will now cost me something like $192. Maybe i too should start looking for another host, i can understand and dont mind a $10 rise, but when talking a $50 rise is a bit steep and might put a lot of people off.

John
BBJ
:cry

[Cameron]

Hi All, Ok well this was my first photo hosting site and have been happy with it. I went straight onto the pro account as liked the features, but as i live in Australia and i think it cost me around the $125 mark when i joined a few months ago i could justify this cost although i dont upload large files i always downsize my pictures as i dont use the print service from SM. There is quiet a few of us from Australia on SM and while i have been happy it will now cost me something like $192. Maybe i too should start looking for another host, i can understand and dont mind a $10 rise, but when talking a $50 rise is a bit steep and might put a lot of people off.

John
BBJ
:cry
If you're not using the print service at all, you're really not gaining much by having the pro account and you could downgrade to the Power account and save $50 (or $90 with the new prices). It would be better than leaving because you couldn't afford the pro account. :dunno

[BBJ]

Ok well with the lower account does it give control to protect your images like watermarking like the pro account?

[Shay Stephens]

I host my own site. I pay about a hundred dollars a month for a DSL line, static IP address, and permission to run servers.

I pay for the electricity to have it running 24/7.

I do all my own web design and engineering, if it's not working right, I have to figure out why and then devise a way to get it working. If I want new features, I have build them. I have a few features planned that I am just waiting for time and creativity to join forces before I can design and implement.

I pay for upgrading the equipment, repairs, and software upgrades.

Print fullfilment for me is all manual. I get the order, I have to find and prep the image, send it off to the printer, QC it when it gets back, and then ship to the customer. That takes time and money too.

You smugmugers have it easy, irregardless of what the other hosting sites are doing or charging. Keeping a site like smugmug running is a freaking amount of work and expense. And the crew is obviously customer centric and doing what they need to to keep the site and service at high levels. That is worth something in my book and in my experience.

[ginger_55]

I just woke up an hour ago.

I want to ask one thing, I am thinking about, because it mother's day sunday, and I have two daughters, who are mothers........

Are the people who get accts now, or have accts, going to be grandfathered in?

The reason I ask is because I was thinking, not for sure, but thinking about giving the lowest, cheapest acct, as a Mother's Day present to each daughter/mother...............but only if it is grandfathered in.

Otherwise, well, I guess I would just wait for them to get their own accts, somewhere. And that may not happen. The actual only way they are going to have accts, that I know of, is if it is given to them, and they find, tru use, that it is of benefit.

I do like smugmug best, and I would like them to try this before anything else.
However, I do not want to "spoil" them with a smugmug acct that they are then going to want, but have to pay more for.

I don't know if that makes any sense, but I do like to give presents that are of benefit that people would not get themselves. (Drives them nuts) This would be one. It would be a big gift for me to give on Mother's Day, as I don't usually give anything.

That is the only thing I do want to know. I know this is not a support area, really, for smugmug, but I don't know if you all have this knowledge about the grandfathering set over on smugmug.

ginger (I will try not to post here, on this thread, all day re any more personal concerns) Thank You.

[Steve Cavigliano]

I just woke up an hour ago.

I want to ask one thing, I am thinking about, because it mother's day sunday, and I have two daughters, who are mothers........

Are the people who get accts now, or have accts, going to be grandfathered in?

The reason I ask is because I was thinking, not for sure, but thinking about giving the lowest, cheapest acct, as a Mother's Day present to each daughter/mother...............but only if it is grandfathered in.

Otherwise, well, I guess I would just wait for them to get their own accts, somewhere. And that may not happen. The actual only way they are going to have accts, that I know of, is if it is given to them, and they find, tru use, that it is of benefit.

I do like smugmug best, and I would like them to try this before anything else.
However, I do not want to "spoil" them with a smugmug acct that they are then going to want, but have to pay more for.

I don't know if that makes any sense, but I do like to give presents that are of benefit that people would not get themselves. (Drives them nuts) This would be one. It would be a big gift for me to give on Mother's Day, as I don't usually give anything.

That is the only thing I do want to know. I know this is not a support area, really, for smugmug, but I don't know if you all have this knowledge about the grandfathering set over on smugmug.

ginger (I will try not to post here, on this thread, all day re any more personal concerns) Thank You.
Ginger,
The way I read it, if you sign up for a new account, or renew your existing account (due or not), within the next 30 days or so, you'll get today's prices for at least the next 12 month period (these additional months can be added on to your existing account's remaining months).

If that's true, you can give gifts at the old price (within the next 30 days) and/or pay for another 12 months on your Pro acct for $99. As much as they'd like to keep older users grandfathered, I wouldn't bet on anything beyond one year's worth :dunno

A few posts back I read where you wrote "I don't NEED photography". I beg to differ. It may be a PITA and frustrating at times, but I can feel your excitement when reading some of your posts. Sounds to me like this is one of the things in your life you really enjoy. Do what you need to do to keep this enjoyment in your life. Is it a want or a need? Semantics aside, you really do NEED this hobby :D

Steve

[DavidTO]

I host my own site. I pay about a hundred dollars a month for a DSL line, static IP address, and permission to run servers.

I pay for the electricity to have it running 24/7.

I do all my own web design and engineering, if it's not working right, I have to figure out why and then devise a way to get it working. If I want new features, I have build them. I have a few features planned that I am just waiting for time and creativity to join forces before I can design and implement.

I pay for upgrading the equipment, repairs, and software upgrades.

Print fullfilment for me is all manual. I get the order, I have to find and prep the image, send it off to the printer, QC it when it gets back, and then ship to the customer. That takes time and money too.



Why?

[DavidTO]

BTW, Shay:

I took a look at your site. Very nice, well done.

[Baldy]

This is probably unmentionable but if you don't ask you don't know...

We get a lot of JPEG 12 images, which means they basically have no compression. If we stored them as JPEG 10, they'd be 1/3rd the size. Research shows that no one, not even with a fine eye, a lupe, and images with hard lines, can tell the difference between a print made from 10 or 12.

Trouble is, we then couldn't claim we store the unaltered original. And Photoshop books and forums tend to focus on no loss in compression so we'd be battling years of accumulated perception. And hence the reason we've never mentioned it.

It's just one factor in costs so we probably couldn't reflect it in pricing, but with 21,000,000 images online it's a big factor in costs and speed in processing images.

[DavidTO]

This is probably unmentionable but if you don't ask you don't know...

We get a lot of JPEG 12 images, which means they basically have no compression. If we stored them as JPEG 10, they'd be 1/3rd the size. Research shows that no one, not even with a fine eye, a lupe, and images with hard lines, can tell the difference between a print made from 10 or 12.

Trouble is, we then couldn't claim we store the unaltered original. And Photoshop books and forums tend to focus on no loss in compression so we'd be battling years of accumulated perception. And hence the reason we've never mentioned it.

It's just one factor in costs so we probably couldn't reflect it in pricing, but with 21,000,000 images online it's a big factor in costs and speed in processing images.

I'm glad you mentioned it here. I saw an earlier mention you made of this, and changed my jpeg settings accordingly.

[winnjewett]

We get a lot of JPEG 12 images, which means they basically have no compression. If we stored them as JPEG 10, they'd be 1/3rd the size. Research shows that no one, not even with a fine eye, a lupe, and images with hard lines, can tell the difference between a print made from 10 or 12. What is the corrolation between the 1 to 12 scale and the 100% scale? Is it linear? Or is it something else?

-Winn

[ginger_55]

And I just raised mine. I used to have trouble uploading them. Now something has been "improved", and it seems I can upload anything. Are you seeing more large files now?

I will lower mine back to a 10 immediately!

Will that help both of us? Financially, I mean................no I am not that selfish, not in public, forget that I asked.

g

[Bodley]

We get a lot of JPEG 12 images, which means they basically have no compression. If we stored them as JPEG 10, they'd be 1/3rd the size. Research shows that no one, not even with a fine eye, a lupe, and images with hard lines, can tell the difference between a print made from 10 or 12.
Guilty as charged!:D Everything I've read says that compression is a :nono for JPEG. Also each time a JPEG is saved, compressed, data/detail is lost.

Seems as though saving at 12 vs 10 for larger prints would make a difference.

Maybe more education for the unknowing (me) is in order.:noob

Greg
(emoticons, especially :D , provided for Winn)

[GerryDavid]

ginger_55, before you mentioned that yoru paying for a webshots account that you dont use, just to not loose what you have there. You could always go view each picture at the original size and right click/save as and copy each back to your hard drive, if you cant find the cd that they were uploaded from. This way you would have them and can canccel that account, if you wanted.

Some people are saying that $100 or $150 isnt that much money for the pro account, for what you get. which can be true, but there are different people here. For some this is a great price for what they are using it for. They have possibly hundreds of gb's of pictures being stored *over estimating* and use almost all thier bandwidth each month. They sell a ton in prints and a fraction of the print sales actually pays for the account. Then there are others that probably dont even have 1gb stored, barely use a fraction of thier bandwidth a month, and dont even sell prints. They got the pro so they could link a domain to it, or customize it. For some perhaps just to add the watermark. So the extra $50 is rather expensive for this group of people.

As to the guy that has the pro account simply for the watermarks, *sorry, your name is on the previoius page so I cant easily get it from this screen* why dont you just add the copyright/watermark to the images yourself in photoshop or some other program?

[winnjewett]

...:D ... :nono ....:noob...
(emoticons, especially :D , provided for Winn) Thanks! I got a laugh out of that. I guess it would have been faster to simply say, "http://dgrin.com/images/smilies/yelrotflmao.gif"
-winn

[ginger_55]

I remember that jpeg thing and 10 vs 12 being discussed, and probably here, as indistinguishable, but I just thought it was an interesting fact.

Not a financial reality. It would be nice to cut costs, if no one minds.....

Sometimes, if something is cut that is not needed, or is avail but not used unless really wanted for reason, there are fewer complaints than when costs are raised.

The jpeg size is not that important to me. To others it might be, so it maybe should be there, but it would not bother me at all to use 10, as I had been before uploading became so easy.

Some of us need to be hit over the head with the practical use of facts, like if you keep doing this we are going to double your rates. My decision making skills might come into play then. Now if you take away the black background, or my Christmas banner...................there might be a problem.:D (emoticon for me) (as a tool for communication):thumb

Kind of like me sitting here saying I am thirsty and hoping my husband decides to get me a drink.

g

[ian408]

Kind of like me sitting here saying I am thirsty and hoping my husband decides to get me a drink.

Metaphorically speaking of course.

Ian

[NikonGirl]

I'd like clarification on the "grandfather" issue.

1) I understand that only current users who renew their account will be grandfathered So even though I just renewed a few weeks ago, I'll have to renew again to keep my "grandfathered" status, right?

2) Are new users who sign up within the new 30 days eligible to be grandfathered? If so, will they have to turn around and renew their account just like any "current" user?

2) Once a user become grandfathered, are they grandfathered for all account levels, or just the one they renewed?

3) I know a few people who have Smugmug account and never read this forum. How will they be notified of the price increase, and will they also have an opportunity to be grandfathered?

[tmlphoto]

I'm glad you mentioned it here. I saw an earlier mention you made of this, and changed my jpeg settings accordingly.
I have been uploading JPEG 9 images for quite some time now. Faster upload and no visible loss of quaility to my eye. I have prints up to 16x20 that look fantastic with a 6MP camera. Not an issue for me, but I don't really have a sense of what kind of reaction you might get from your varied customer base. Likely not a really big issue for most I would guess.

[onethumb]

I'd like clarification on the "grandfather" issue.

1) I understand that only current users who renew their account will be grandfathered So even though I just renewed a few weeks ago, I'll have to renew again to keep my "grandfathered" status, right?

2) Are new users who sign up within the new 30 days eligible to be grandfathered? If so, will they have to turn around and renew their account just like any "current" user?

2) Once a user become grandfathered, are they grandfathered for all account levels, or just the one they renewed?

3) I know a few people who have Smugmug account and never read this forum. How will they be notified of the price increase, and will they also have an opportunity to be grandfathered?

We've gone over this before, so maybe we're not making ourselves clear. We want to be clear, so here's another attempt:

All smugmug accounts will be grandfathered, for as long as we can do it (years, at the very least), at their current level at the time of the price change.

If you sign up now, upgrade now, etc, you're "locking in" that price so that next year, when renewal time comes, you renew at your current rate, not the new rate.

If you sign up or upgrade *after* the price increase, you'll have to pay the new prices.

Clear as mud?

Don

[NikonGirl]

Even if it wasn't clear as mud, I wouldn't dare ask another question at this point. Sorry I didn't get it before.

Thank you for your response.

[onethumb]

Even if it wasn't clear as mud, I wouldn't dare ask another question at this point. Sorry I didn't get it before.

Thank you for your response.

Yikes! I think you misunderstood me. :)

If you've got more questions, bring them on! That's why we posted here, so our hardcore customers could ask the hard questions (and set us straight!) as they do all the time.

Hit us with whatever you've got.

Don

[JohnR]

If you sign up now, upgrade now, etc, you're "locking in" that price so that next year, when renewal time comes, you renew at your current rate, not the new rate.


Don


And I just paid my yearly 2 months ago! So this means I have to pay $99 again before May 30th in order to lock it in at that price? :dunno

I'm afraid that I may have to cancel my account next year at the $149 cost. :cry

[flyingpylon]

I believe the policy is:

If you're a current customer, you're grandfathered in at your current level. It doesn't matter when you signed up or when you renewed.

If you're not yet a customer and you sign up after the deadline, or you upgrade your current account after the deadline, you are subject to the new prices.

However, note that I'm just a customer, I don't speak for Smugmug.

[JohnR]

I believe the policy is:

If you're a current customer, you're grandfathered in at your current level. It doesn't matter when you signed up or when you renewed.

If you're not yet a customer and you sign up after the deadline, or you upgrade your current account after the deadline, you are subject to the new prices.

However, note that I'm just a customer, I don't speak for Smugmug.


I hope you are right!

Wish Baldy or others associated with Smugmug would clarify this for me.

[winnjewett]

I hope you are right!

Wish Baldy or others associated with Smugmug would clarify this for me.
I believe thay have clarified this already. Here's what Don said recently:

All smugmug accounts will be grandfathered, for as long as we can do it (years, at the very least), at their current level at the time of the price change.
I don't see any other way to interperate this other than 'ALL smugmug accounts'.

-winn

[Mitch]

Hi John

I too am just a user, but...
I hope you are right!

Wish Baldy or others associated with Smugmug would clarify this for me.
Here is what onethumb said in an earlier post.

We've gone over this before, so maybe we're not making ourselves clear. We want to be clear, so here's another attempt:

All smugmug accounts will be grandfathered, for as long as we can do it (years, at the very least), at their current level at the time of the price change.

If you sign up now, upgrade now, etc, you're "locking in" that price so that next year, when renewal time comes, you renew at your current rate, not the new rate.

If you sign up or upgrade *after* the price increase, you'll have to pay the new prices.

Clear as mud?

Don
Hope this helps

Mitch

[BenV]

Did I miss the post where you mentioned what day the prices are going to rise?

I read "in the next 30 days or so". It's the "or so" part that concerns me. I am seriously considering a pro account and will out of town during much of the time between now and the 28th (the 30 days), so do I need to decide NOW or can wait until I get back?

BenV

[Baldy]

I think you're safe. We are busy right now!

[dirtbikejunkie]

This has already been stated several times, but...

I think increasing the normal user's rate will decrease the # of new customers dramatically.

I have no problem paying an extra $10 a year now that I am a smugmug user, but I believe a year ago when looking for a service I would have not accepted a $40/year fee and chose pbase or one of several others.

A lot of my friends who take photos use the freebie services (webshots, photobucket), and it's hard enough as it is with the current price to convince them it's worth paying over the freebie sites. I know once they join and use the service for a while they will understand, but cost is usually the determining factor on something like this. I even offer to kick back my referral savings in cash to some of my friends to try and convince them to join.

[jberd126]

I have to agree with dirtbikejunkie about losing potential new ones because the price is out of reach - especially for those ones that are used to getting everything for free.

If prices are going to rise irregardless, how about an introductory rate for the newbies? This could be limited to the standard user but it would help attract the pro and power users, but I would guess that would be less successful.

This thread is quite long and I haven't read every post so I hope this wasn't being repeated.

-J

This has already been stated several times, but...

I think increasing the normal user's rate will decrease the # of new customers dramatically.

I have no problem paying an extra $10 a year now that I am a smugmug user, but I believe a year ago when looking for a service I would have not accepted a $40/year fee and chose pbase or one of several others.

A lot of my friends who take photos use the freebie services (webshots, photobucket), and it's hard enough as it is with the current price to convince them it's worth paying over the freebie sites. I know once they join and use the service for a while they will understand, but cost is usually the determining factor on something like this. I even offer to kick back my referral savings in cash to some of my friends to try and convince them to join.

[Doug Munn - JLM PHOTO]

We absolutely LOVE SmugMug and we'll re-up our pro account at renewal time.

Jerri takes on the order of 1000 pictures a weekend and we store 80 percent on SM.

Doug

[HamsterGirl35]

Don,
I am a newbie here and tempted to sign up with SM as trial to begin with, but, after 7 days, (I guess the new subscription fee takes effect June 1st?!) what price will I be getting? (I am thinking of getting power user account)

Thanks for the clarification in advance.

HamsterGirl35

We've gone over this before, so maybe we're not making ourselves clear. We want to be clear, so here's another attempt:

All smugmug accounts will be grandfathered, for as long as we can do it (years, at the very least), at their current level at the time of the price change.

If you sign up now, upgrade now, etc, you're "locking in" that price so that next year, when renewal time comes, you renew at your current rate, not the new rate.

If you sign up or upgrade *after* the price increase, you'll have to pay the new prices.

Clear as mud?

Don

[HamsterGirl35]

Anyone???

Don,
I am a newbie here and tempted to sign up with SM as trial to begin with, but, after 7 days, (I guess the new subscription fee takes effect June 1st?!) what price will I be getting? (I am thinking of getting power user account)

Thanks for the clarification in advance.

HamsterGirl35

[Andy]

Anyone???


you'll get the old rate.

[HamsterGirl35]

I am confused........Andy.....
here's more of my questions,
When I first do the 7 day trial (how does the system know which subscription do I want? e.g. standard or power?)
What happens to the following scenarios:
Assuming new rate starts June 1st:
if I sign up today, May 28th, after 7 day trial, tial ends over on Jun 2nd and what rate will I get
a) if I decide to go with standad package?
b) powe user?

urgent help would be good...^_^

HamsterGirl35





you'll get the old rate.

[Andy]

I am confused........Andy.....
here's more of my questions,
When I first do the 7 day trial (how does the system know which subscription do I want? e.g. standard or power?)
What happens to the following scenarios:
Assuming new rate starts June 1st:
if I sign up today, May 28th, after 7 day trial, tial ends over on Jun 2nd and what rate will I get
a) if I decide to go with standad package?
b) powe user?

urgent help would be good...^_^

HamsterGirl35

urgent? then email help@smugmug.com

but it's pretty clear... just sign up and you'll get the old rate, no matter which account you choose, standard or power. :deal

[HamsterGirl35]

Great, I will email them,
thanks Andy.

HamsterGirl35

urgent? then email help@smugmug.com

but it's pretty clear... just sign up and you'll get the old rate, no matter which account you choose, standard or power. :deal

[zedEL]

Hi to all,
I'm not registered with smugmug yet, but this increase got me by surprise as well. Wanted to register for a Pro account.
After thinking over, here is my "analysis" on the current price situation.
If to divide $150 by 12 months, you get $12.50 per month.
Now, if you compare this price with regular webhosts' plans, $11-$13 give you a good plan with quite many features, including a shopping cart, static IP(not everybody),...etc.
If to compare the features that Smugmug offers and continued improvements, $12.50 looks like a very good offer.
On the other hand, to pay $150 at once, it's not an easy thing to do for many of us.
So, what I propose to smugmug, is to offer what all webhosts do: TWO ways of paying - slightly higher monthly payments, say, $13-$13.50 OR quarterly payments of $50.
This way it will be much easier for everybody.
I think it's a win-win proposal.

[Shima]

When will the increase take effect? My dad will most likely be signing up (hurray! another converted) and I told him "sooner than later before the prices rise!" how much time does he have to sign up before the prices jump?

[colourbox]

I think the last post to mention it in this thread said that they had become too busy to implement the price hike when they had originally planned so that we are all safe for now. I hope and expect that they will send out a general announcement (that is, to the thousands of members who don't know about this thread) with plenty of notice before they pull the trigger. Given their past record of integrity I am certain they will let everyone know well in advance, but of course I can't speak to what exactly they're going to do.

[Ben:::D]

This is probably unmentionable but if you don't ask you don't know...

We get a lot of JPEG 12 images, which means they basically have no compression. If we stored them as JPEG 10, they'd be 1/3rd the size. Research shows that no one, not even with a fine eye, a lupe, and images with hard lines, can tell the difference between a print made from 10 or 12...


What research? Is there any source you could reference? (No offense intended, but if you are challenging Adobe et. al., seems like you ought to actually back it up.) :deal .... :ear

_____________________

And for what's it worth (probably not much at this point in a 10 page thread:huh), I agree that raising the base price for entry-level accounts is risky in terms of attractiveness to un-seasoned customers. I certainly haven't done the research, but know for sure that IF I wasn't concerned about co-branding or printing costs, Flickr or pBase or one of the others would certainly look attractive vs. $40. Again, just my $.02. At this point it's two things that are keeping me around
1) Printing. Love it. Works great every time. and...
2) The amazing, super-awesome, kick-ass, best-in-the-world hands-down customer service

('cuz I gotta admit, Flickr is a lot more fun :(: )

[Andy]

('cuz I gotta admit, Flickr is a lot more fun :(: )

what's more fun about it? :ear

[Mike Lane]

what's more fun about it? :ear
This is pretty fun: http://metaatem.net/words/Flikr%20api
This is neat: http://www.marumushi.com/apps/flickrgraph/
This is pretty cool: http://www.mappr.com/
This is totally sweet: http://krazydad.com/colrpickr/
This is ... well ... mostly just kind of strange: http://krazydad.com/defacement/
Not sure if flikr really helps with this, but it may be easier to collaborate: http://krazydad.com/squaredcircle/
Rad: http://krazydad.com/metascope.php
This is unreal!: http://www.deviousgelatin.com/montager/

I certainly haven't seen anyone do anything like that with smugmug. Those are all fun but would I necessarily want my pics to be used for that? Not really. Although I would like to be able to create a photo grid for my blog or my sm site and some other things that it looks like you can get flikr to do.

[Andy]

I certainly haven't seen anyone do anything like that with smugmug.

stay tuned, mike ..... :deal

[Mike Lane]

stay tuned, mike ..... :deal
You wouldn't kid a guy with teeth like these would you?

http://home.student.uu.se/hehi1133/Bear%20Big.gif

[Andy]

You wouldn't kid a guy with teeth like these would you?

http://home.student.uu.se/hehi1133/Bear%20Big.gif

i would not indeed :deal

[Angelo]

Wow. How did I miss this post? I would've definitely taken advantage of the grace period to save $49. :cry :cry :cry

[Barb]

Wow. How did I miss this post? I would've definitely taken advantage of the grace period to save $49. :cry :cry :cry
I don't think their prices have gone up yet, have they?

[Angelo]

I don't think their prices have gone up yet, have they?
:dunno

[Barb]

:dunno
well, if you go to the main site like you're going to sign up, the prices are still the same. so i think you are still okay :)

[swcolleen]

Hi. I just wanted to say that I too love smugmug as many others have said. I have been reading these forums since the "down day" the other day and I find it very refreshing to see acutal smugmug workers reply and keep us posted. I have also ALWAYS appreciated their fast email response time-one of the things I love best.

The one thing I would like to suggest and I think others might have mentioned it and I have no idea if its a feasible idea or not but....

I REALLY think it would be a generous move from smugmug to send an automated email to ALL account holders regarding the price increase-with notice too so its not like "buy today not tomorrow" but more like "buy now-limited opportunity before price increas on ...."

I suggest this because had I not stumbled across these boards (I had a username already so I guess I have poked around before but forgotten they existed-now I am hooked!) but had I not stumbled across the thread discussing the down time yesterday, I would not have heard rumbles about a price increas which led me to search the forums for more info where I finally heard about it. I was relieved myself that I had choosen this week to upgrade to pro account from power account b/c I had been procrastinating on it and I would have kicked myself if the prices had gone up before I upgraded-and been upset if I had not had warning but later found out others did.

So I guess what I am saying in my long winded nature.....I LOVE smugmug...support them 100% but I recommend a mass e-mail to all account holders about the price increase to give them notice BEFORE it occurs.

Thanks!!
Colleen:thumb

[colourbox]

Exactly. The price increase is big news...but only in a sub-forum in a thread that rolls off the bottom of the screen after a couple days when nobody posts.

I agree that the base price should not go up, but the upper levels can rise. I just upgraded to Pro, and I don't even sell much (or any, so far), but I think the entry barrier should be kept real low. Once they're in and have more than a week to see the possibilities, I think a lot of them will be tempted to upgrade. I'm certainly in for the long term, especially after Phase 2! Place looks better than ever.

[Andy]

color, colleen:

i've made sure that the folks at smugmug will see your recent posts here. thanks so much for your input, we really appreciate it :thumb

[Baldy]

Good suggestions. My only concern is that we don't make it too promotional because we want to be true to our promise of no ads, no spam.

[swcolleen]

Good suggestions. My only concern is that we don't make it too promotional because we want to be true to our promise of no ads, no spam.
I can understand that but I think as a customer-if I got ONE message that alerted me to an upcoming price increase I wouldn't see it as advertising or spam....I would phrase more like a service announcement to give the current customers the heads up. I just know if I had not upgraded this week (actually before I heard about this price increase stuff-by luck!)I would have been upset to not know anything about it ahead of time when others did just b/c they read the blogs or forums...I always tell myself to go read them but then get distracted and go on to something else!!

thanks for all you do though!!

[landrum]

Good suggestions. My only concern is that we don't make it too promotional because we want to be true to our promise of no ads, no spam.I agree that it would only be an announcement...I certainly wouldn't consider an email of this nature to be spam or an ad even. I have been a customer since October 2003, and I think I've received 2 emails from you guys in that time...not an issue! A mass email with notification would probably be a good idea.

[Andy]

notice will be given for sure. in fact, the first notice of this was given back in april 2005 and the pricing still hasn't been changed. smugmug has even said that customers would be grandfathered - protected - read the posts in this thread....

notice will be given - please don't let it ruin your day - it's not worth it, becuase nothing's happening today :D

[rich56k]

notice will be given for sure. in fact, the first notice of this was given back in april 2005 and the pricing still hasn't been changed. smugmug has even said that customers would be grandfathered - protected - read the posts in this thread....

notice will be given - please don't let it ruin your day - it's not worth it, becuase nothing's happening today :D
andy,
wow fast response i had just reread my post and thought it was way too "rough" and had deleted (actually saved to my desktop for future use ...took 20 mins to type!)
again i woke up early and stumbled literally on to the price increase thread and freaked out ...thats just it, to read all the posts in all the threads to stay abreast of whats up is kind of daunting and time consuming ..but if im going to post i guess i should have a look around
this just reinstills the mass notice to ind. affected concept ,its not spam and im sure others agree (re: other posts i did see) and would be appreciated,
sorry to get all in your face like that ,

thanks again,
rich56k

[cyoung]

Crap, I was just debating on whether to upgrade to power user since I just got my wife a P&S that can grab videos. I just want a clarification, if I were to upgrade now I'd pay the new rates correct?

[rainforest1155]

I just want a clarification, if I were to upgrade now I'd pay the new rates correct?
Yes. They planed on doing this for quite some time and also published those plans here and via message to your smugmug account. :dunno

Sebastian

[cyoung]

I saw that message back then, but had no need, but was hoping for the best to see if it was grandfathered into the pricing structure, oh well, one can only wish :rofl


Yes. They planed on doing this for quite some time and also published those plans here and via message to your smugmug account. :dunno

Sebastian

[ankit]

Crap, I was just debating on whether to upgrade to power user since I just got my wife a P&S that can grab videos. I just want a clarification, if I were to upgrade now I'd pay the new rates correct?

I am in the same position as you - I finally decided that it would be nice to upgrade, and have sufficient referral credits to do so for this year, but looks like I'll be paying the new rate if I am to upgrade now.

Any chance of making an exception for us late-comers? As things stand, this seems like a nice incentive to NOT upgrade...

[kwalsh]

I am in the same position as you - I finally decided that it would be nice to upgrade, and have sufficient referral credits to do so for this year, but looks like I'll be paying the new rate if I am to upgrade now.

Any chance of making an exception for us late-comers? As things stand, this seems like a nice incentive to NOT upgrade...

NOTE: REFERAL CREDITS CAN NOT BE USED TO UPGRADE!!!

I didn't read the fine print and got caught on this one. The way it works is referals are only for renewals or gift memberships. If you do an upgrade your credit card will get charged the pro-rated difference between your current level and new level over the remaining time til your next renewal. So, if you want to "upgrade" with referals what you need to do is upgrade just before your renewal date, you'll get charged a few bucks or cents on your credit card and when the renewal happens that will come out of credits. Option two is to abandon your current account and give yourself a gift membership at a higher service level (but you pay the base amount again in referals in this method). So don't get surprised like I did, smugmug charged me a bunch of money all of a sudden and I hadn't read carefully enough. I though I was upgrading on my referals but that's not the way it works :(.

Ken

[jfriend]

NOTE: REFERAL CREDITS CAN NOT BE USED TO UPGRADE!!!

I didn't read the fine print and got caught on this one. The way it works is referals are only for renewals or gift memberships. If you do an upgrade your credit card will get charged the pro-rated difference between your current level and new level over the remaining time til your next renewal. So, if you want to "upgrade" with referals what you need to do is upgrade just before your renewal date, you'll get charged a few bucks or cents on your credit card and when the renewal happens that will come out of credits. Option two is to abandon your current account and give yourself a gift membership at a higher service level (but you pay the base amount again in referals in this method). So don't get surprised like I did, smugmug charged me a bunch of money all of a sudden and I hadn't read carefully enough. I though I was upgrading on my referals but that's not the way it works :(.

Ken

This one hit me too. I don't quite understand why they have upgrades constrained so they can't use referrals. Originally, it may have been a cash flow desire, but now that you can gift yourself a new account using referral credits at any level or you can upgrade with one month remaining and use referral credits for the full renewal, it doesn't make so much sense for smumug to not let you use referral credits to upgrade.

I also was surprised when I upgraded to pro and found a charge on my credit card. I'm sure the fine print covers that and smugmug isn't intentionally misleading anyone, but the referral credit system they have leads most people to assume (wrongly) that an upgrade would be paid for out of referral credits.

I wonder why smugmug doesn't want to allow upgrades to use referral credits?

[Andy]

I wonder why smugmug doesn't want to allow upgrades to use referral credits?

They'll get used upon renewal for the account.

[jfriend]

They'll get used upon renewal for the account.

Yes, we all know that.

But given that you're willing to do that and they can be even used to gift yourself an account at any level, we don't understand why referral credits can't be used to just upgrade you directly. You're doing 75% of it, just not the 25% that many of us assumed would be possible. It's your business decision, so we're providing feedback that the current upgrade restriction isn't making sense to us and isn't matching our expectations.

[cyoung]

Oh well, I bit the bullet and just upgraded, I guess I can't go out for lunch for one day :D, its money well spent anyways. I've got to reiterate that I've never seen any other company/site where the CEO, IT Gurus, Support teams participate and talk to their customers as much as I've seen OneThumb, all the moderators, and such do. Great job folks!

[armani]

This must be a joke ?

[armani]

I cant find it here...
http://www.desmurfjes.smugmug.com/help/smugmug-affiliate-program

It would be fair to mention.

[Andy]

Yes, we all know that.

But given that you're willing to do that and they can be even used to gift yourself an account at any level, we don't understand why referral credits can't be used to just upgrade you directly. You're doing 75% of it, just not the 25% that many of us assumed would be possible. It's your business decision, so we're providing feedback that the current upgrade restriction isn't making sense to us and isn't matching our expectations.

Thanks John - as always - for letting us know.

[Andy]

the current upgrade restriction isn't making sense to us and isn't matching our expectations.
OK, so I'll try to elaborate: Upgrades are never an exact or fixed amount. They will vary day by day, and customer by customer (standard, power, pro) and when, in the annual cycle, the customer is upgrading. Say you were a standard customer, $39.95 and decided after a month to upgrade to pro. Do the math - we'd have to apply enough $10 referral credits and then some credit card charge of pennies up to $9.99. Our system just isn't set up for that. Could it be? Maybe. But it's not at the moment. Referral credits are always good for renewals and gifting.

I hope this helps.

[InskiP]

Just wondering when it's time to renew if my card is automatically charged, or will I recieve some kind of notification? I can't seem to remember how it works. And I will be charged the rate I signed up at, correct?

[onethumb]

Just wondering when it's time to renew if my card is automatically charged, or will I recieve some kind of notification? I can't seem to remember how it works. And I will be charged the rate I signed up at, correct?

You'll get an email ~30 days prior to your renewal date, letting you know what your rate is (you're right, it won't change) and giving you the option of cancelling or whatever.

Hope that helps!

Don

[GerryDavid]

I had 4 referral credits and now im down to 1. I have about a month left of my subscription so I presumed the referral credits were auto used, guess Ill find out in a month, hehe.

[nonilady]

do we pay the old rate or the new rate for pro a/c renewal

thanks

[Eric&Susan]

do we pay the old rate or the new rate for pro a/c renewal

thanks

If you signed up before the rate increases you still pay the old rate. If you signed up after the rate increases you pay the new rate. So basically your renewal is the same price you first paid when you signed up.

Eric

[nonilady]

If you signed up before the rate increases you still pay the old rate. If you signed up after the rate increases you pay the new rate. So basically your renewal is the same price you first paid when you signed up.

Eric

thanks :D am glad to know that

[I Simonius]

there is no free lunch.
my econ 101 prof at university taught that to me.

he'd obviously never hitched across the continent in the 70's then!:rofl