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.