Smugmug Vs Zenfolio

Smugmug and Zenfolio are two top of the line photo hosting services for professional as well as hobby photographers who want to sell their photos online or create a photo store or just have a photo web site of their own without having to do the technical stuff that goes with building, maintaining websites themselves.

Photo hosting sites like Smugmug, Zenfolio and others do the technical heavy lifting so the photographers can focus on their craft. Both the services of course aren’t free and offer multiple plans with different price points.

No two services can be the same. So are Smugmug and Zenfolio. Here is a side by side comparison of the professional level plans from Smugmug vs Zenfolio, that will help you decide which may be the right choice for you.

Similarities

Basic features between the two services are almost same. Some of the similar features are

Unlimited bandwidth, unlimited upload, unlimited storage, no ads are same between the two.
Can sell both digital products and photo products.
No ads, pop ups
Use your own domain
Watermark & Copyright features

Differences

Differences between the Smugmug Pro plan and the Zenfolio plan are mostly at the advanced level.

Price:

The Smugmug Pro plan costs $149/yr vs the Zenfolio Premium Plan which cost $100/yr. So there is a price difference of around fifty dollars per year. But don’t let price be the only the deciding factor when you are comparing the two. So read on.

Service Fee:
When you sell photos from your site, you will pay a service fee. That fee varies between Smugmug and Zenfolio.

Zenfolio – 12% of profit on custom products 8% of digital products
Smugmug – 15% of the markup

Photo Gallery Customization:

Smugmug offers more customization features than Zenfolio. Smugmug has 50 themes or layouts to choose from plus it lets you import your own CSS for complete control over your websites look. Smugmug allows fully changeable header and footer including the ability to use your own logo.

Zenfolio offers fewer themes and doesn’t allow css import. So your layout and styling choices are limited to the available layouts. You can user own logo and you can change some text in the header but you can’t change the header and footer file completely.

Breadcrumbs in Site Navigation

Breadcrumbs are site navigation links like ‘folder >Subfolder 1 > Subfolder 2′ for your users to know where they are at and how they came to the current page. If they want they go back to one of the previous pages easily. Its a usability feature that helps your site visitors a great deal.

Smugmug only has 4 levels vs Zenfolio which has no limit as to how deep your breadcrumbs can go.

Usabilty:
How easy is it for you to to upload, organize and create photo galleries in your photo site?

Zenfolio is easier to use than Smugmug. Zenfolio is relatively new and was built with a Web 2.0 look and feel from the start, where as Smugmug has been there for some time and they have evolved over time. It can be a little cumbersome to navigate. Doing a simple task may take some time and may need to be done at 3 different place to accomplish one thing. Zenfolio has all the controls in place and is intuitive to use.

Order Fulfilment:
The Money Part, you need someone to fulfill your orders!

Smugmug uses Bayphoto and EZPrints for their order fulfillment. You can choose either of the two to fulfill your orders.

Zenfolio uses Mpix.

All three are reputed national services. But again they aren’t the same. So you will need to do some research as to who you like the best.

Custom Coupons

Both Smugmug and Zenfolio offer the ability to create custom coupons and use them as a promotional tool to distribute among your potential customers.

Accepting Payment on your Website

Both the services accept major credit cards from buyers placing orders on your web site. Zenfolio accepts Paypal but Smugmug does not, which can be an issue for some.

Overall Smugmug vs Jenfolio Verdict

Smugmug wins in customization, strong community (forum), customer service, themes/layouts and Video support

Zenfolio wins in Price, profit margin, usability, custom permalinks, and payment option (accepts Paypal)

That said we just want to point out that Zenfolio does have excellent customer service and also have a strong and friendly user forum. But Smugmug, having been there longer than Zenfolio, has worked very hard to build a reputation for its customer service and support. Their COO who is a photographer himself is very active in other photography forums. But if you decide to go with Zenfolio, don’t think that you will get any lesser support there.

Free Trials:
Both offer free trials for you to check them out before deciding. Follow the links below to give both or either a try and see for yourself.