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?

[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]

Originally Posted by 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?

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

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

kc7dji

[Andy]

Originally Posted by kc7dji

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

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

kc7dji

tinfl.

[wxwax]

Originally Posted by andy

tinfl.

[Andy]

Originally Posted by wxwax

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]

Originally Posted by andy

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

Ah, standard internet patter. I mean, sip.

[Baldy]

Originally Posted by rainforest1155

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

Correct. 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 . We can at least hope for years.

[DJ-S1]

Originally Posted by Baldy

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...

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

[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]

Originally Posted by Baldy

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

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.

[{JT}]

For as long as we can, but not forever.

Originally Posted by Mike Lane

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]

Originally Posted by {JT}

For as long as we can, but not forever.

Copy that and you guys rule.

[jfriend]

Originally Posted by 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

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]

Originally Posted by jfriend

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]

Originally Posted by wxwax

Ah, standard internet patter. I mean, sip.

off topic but seemingly helpful

www.acronymfinder.com

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

http://www.acronymfinder.com/af-quer...AAFL&Find=Find

FWIW,

XO,