Smugmug
vs.
Flickr

Using the sliders, set the importance of each aspect.
Choozza will then find the best product for you.

Smugmug

2
Technical Support
2
Privacy
2
Photos Organization
2
Photo Tagging
2
Free Account
2
Extras
2
Customization
2
Low Cost
2
Community

Flickr

Smugmug

Smugmug is an online photo storage and sharing website, with many options and many perks for photographers of all levels. The website has a family feel about it, and is very customizable to fit all graphic tastes.

Flickr

Flickr is Yahoo!'s website for online photo storing and sharing. The website is huge with millions of users and offers free accounts alongside the paid service.

Technical Support

Smugmug lets you ask for support on their Digital Grin forum or by email. Both forum answers and email response time are consistently within the same day, most of the times in less than a few hours.
Flickr's support team normally responds to emails within a few days. This is considered quite good in the industry.

Privacy

Smugmug lets you hide galleries on the Internet in a way that makes them invisible to Google or other search engines. This makes them almost impossible to view for persons who don't know the specific gallery's URL (web address). This used to be a problem because those URLs could be guessed. But Smugmug changed the way they are created now (the problem may still occur for older galleries). You may also password protect all or some of your photos.
Photo sets can be protected so only family and/or friends are able to view them. Sometimes you may choose to grant people 'guest passes' that let them view an otherwise private set until you decide to deactivate the pass. You may also protect individual photos. Note that you can only designate people with Yahoo! Accounts as friends and family in Flickr, which may make it a bit more difficult for them.

Photos Organization

Smugmug is quite good at organizing photos into galleries. The site offers a three-layered hierarchical organization, made up of categories, sub-categories and gallery, which most users find quite convenient and well-organized.
Flickr employs the concept of photo sets and Collections. You group related photos into sets, and related sets into collections. This is in effect a two-layered hierarchy.

Photo Tagging

Smugmug lets you tag photos with keywords, and also integrates with Google Maps API for geo-tagging. You can then search the photos by combinations of these keywords or locations.
Flickr lets you tag photos with keywords, and also integrates with Yahoo Maps for geo-tagging. You can then search the photos by combinations of these keywords or locations.

Free Account

Smugmug does not have a free account. It has a fully functional trial account for two weeks, but after that it's pay or go elsewhere.
If you don't want to spend money, but still want your photos on the web, you can start a free Flickr account.. The account is limited in the number of photos it holds (newer photos make the older ones disappear) and you can have only three sets, but most of the rest of the functionality is still there. The free account has a monthly upload limit of 100MB, and a maximum of 5MB per photo.

Extras

Smugmug has many nice add ons. It lets you order your photos on DVD (or cd) for an extra fee. The PhotoRank feature lets you thumb-up or thumb-down every photo. Smugmug has a site-wide "popular photos" page where the best-ranked photos are displayed. Power users can personalize the site completely, and, using their own domain name (which is an option) can be seen to not use the site at all. Smugmug is very geared towards professional users. The power and pro accounts let you sell photos and prints, disable right-click on photos (making it more difficult for users to save them to their computers) and watermark the photos. Photo prints may be ordered directly from Smugmug.
Flickr has a lot of add ons, but not as nice as Smugmug's. It lets you order your photos on a DVD (or cd) for an extra fee. You may also order DVD Slideshows, photo books and many more media options with your photos on them. The 'Favorites' option is a nice perk, letting you save photos you stumble upon as 'your favourites', in essence letting you create a personal online photo album from photos other people share. You can also browse other people's favourites. Photo prints can be ordered through Flickr's partnership with Target Stores.

Customization

SmugMug has many ways for displaying photos. Its default method, of presenting a large photo side by side with thumbnails of the other photos in the gallery is very simple and intuitive. This way the photo you are viewing always remains in context. Apart from that, Smugmug has far better control on how your site looks. There are many themes you can choose from, and each gallery may have a different theme attached to it with different colors and layouts. Professional users may use Smugmug as their photo platform only, and in essence create a site of their own design that rides Smugmug's engine and looks completely different. This site may also have a domain name of its own. Smugmug lets you choose a subdomain of your choice (e.g. choozzaphotos.smugmug.com)
Flickr is very basic when it comes to displaying your photos. It has one view which resembles Smugmug's default view, but both the photos and the thumbnails are a lot smaller. Flickr does not have customized themes, but the default theme of the site is very clean and appealing.

Low Cost

Smugmug is more expensive than Flickr. Its standard annual fee is $39.95 per year. For power users the price is $59.95 and Pro accounts pay $149.95. Users get unlimited space and bandwidth. In Standard and Power accounts there is a size limit of 8MB per photo, but this is more than enough for most photos out there. The Pro account has a limit of 16MB per photo. Smugmug does not allow uploading videos for standard accounts. Power and pro account get to upload videos of 2.5 minutes, 5mins or 10mins - depending on quality.
A Flickr account costs $24.95 per annum. For this fee you get unlimited bandwidth, upload, and storage of photos. There is a size limit of 10MB per photo, but this is more than enough for most photos out there. Flickr also lets you upload videos, but it has a 90 seconds limit on these.

Community

Smugmug's community is really its digital photo forum: "Digital Grin". In there, users share their photos, give and receive feedback.
While Flickr's community are usually amateurs, many of Digital Grin members are professional photographers and give free, valuable advice. Other forums on Smugmug deal with advanced photography techniques and tools such as Photoshop. On top of it all, Smugmug provides communities for users with similar interests , which are a bit like Flickr's groups.
Flickr is all about its online photo sharing community. The site lets you join a medley of groups in a social networking manner. Photos uploaded by group members get more views and comments, so if the social aspect is important to you, groups are crucial in Flickr. Flickr is usually beter for "being discovered" and have your photos found by people. This sometimes can lead to financial deals, and makes Flickr a good starting place for aspiring photographers.

Smugmug

No extra images

Flickr

No extra images

Smugmug

Average rating: 4 / 5
based on 49 customer reviews
Feel factor: 6


Christmas gift

(Score 3/5)

My sisters are really lame...they never let me know if they liked this or not. Sorry...

Posted on: 2010-02-01
By coffee lover



Very pleased with quality and price

(Score 5/5)

This digital frame is not the most expensive on the market, but it does the job just great and the pictures look good enough to have this running in my husband's office all day to show off his family! It does not look cheap - it looks like a nice quality one to the average person watching the pics.

Posted on: 2009-12-03
By S. Elder



Great frame for the price.

(Score 4/5)

This digital picture frame seems to be well-built and functioned perfectly out of the box. The on-screen menu is easy to use with both the on-board controls and the tiny remote. The screen resolution leaves a bit to be desired, but again, for the price it is pretty good. It also does not include any built-in memory, but a 2G SD card is under $10 these days, and that will hold thousands of pictures. There is also no computer interface, so the memory device must be shuttled between the frame and the computer to add pictures. There is no special software required, just transfer image files to the memory card. And there are lots of funky transition effects to choose from in slide show mode. I use this frame in my office to display a slide show of ads for my business, and I love it.

Posted on: 2009-09-08
By K. Kauffman



My mom loves it!!!

(Score 5/5)

I bought this for my mom because of the flexibility it offers. My mom has a MAC and this gives her the ability to use a SD adapter and a SD card to load all the pictures she wants and put the card into the picture frame. A lot of the picture frames are not MAC compatible, or do not state if they are. She is very happy with her picture frame and I'm glad that she can easily use it! I'm very happy with my choice.

Posted on: 2009-08-17
By K. Oldakowski



Nice photo frame

(Score 4/5)

I am impressed with the picture quality. I loaded up to 400 pics on my USB drive and it works really great. It has various slide show features. Calendar is also good but picture size becomes small.

I would give the frame 5 stars if they add mp3 support and video




Posted on: 2009-08-11
By Mohan R. Pindyala

Flickr

Average rating: 4 / 5
based on 107 customer reviews
Feel factor: 11


good, but not that good.

(Score 2/5)

I've always been a Sony fan, especially with their cameras. Sony products tend to be well built and intuitive, which I've always found with their cameras, and so I have been willing to pay the high price charged. I do feel though that Sony's usual high quality, high functionality and ease of use hasn't been carried through to their frames.

When I got this out of the box I noticed it took me ages to figure out some basics, a lot of the menu system is counter intuitive, so i kept having to go back to the user manual to figure out what should be really simple.

I find the control buttons on the back are in a really bad position and i always get fed up operating the frame with the button on the back that I can't see.

The two biggest problems are this though:

1. The screen is the wrong shape for standard photos! My sony camera shoots images in 4:3 yet the frame is 16:10. This means that the high price paid for the frame results in only part of the screen being used. seems a waste.

2. doesn't play video. i know that to many people this doesn't seem like a big issue, but my Sony camera takes video which i can't view on my frame.

the above two issues make my frame only partially useful in displaying what I've taken with my Sony camera. I have a NIX frame as well and I have to say that the NIX frame seems to have addressed all the above issues: it's controls are very easy to use and intuitive, the menu system couldn't be easier to use, the screen is about the same quality as the Sony - but it's 4:3 format, and it plays video. In fact the version I bought for my mom even has an internal battery. I just wish Sony would make a frame that matched the camera i bought from them. It seems that other brands like nix are stepping up to the plate.

Posted on: 2010-05-09
By L. Hill



digital photo frame

(Score 5/5)

Purchased this as a Christmas present to go along with the sony cybershot camera. Great frame. Arrived on time and in great condition

Posted on: 2010-04-05
By Judy A. Shaughnessy



Super picture displays

(Score 5/5)

Bought as a gift and I am very satisfied with it. Very clear pictures, better than the originals. I used a SD card (2G) for better flexibility in loading photos, and this works well. Loaded digital & scanned pictures and the image quality is almost the same, which surprised me. Lots of display features that can be changed with the remote. "Great unit".

Posted on: 2010-03-31
By Nit Picker



Great gift for grandparents

(Score 4/5)

We got this for my in-laws, and it works reliably and was not hard to load with pictures or set up. The grandparents love being able to see a slide show of the kids, and it's easy to add new photo files any time. This is the best frame of its type out there.

Posted on: 2010-03-08
By C.W. Knits



satisfied with sony

(Score 5/5)

The digital photo frame made a great gift. We're happy with the clarity of the pictures. Easy set up and multiple options.

Posted on: 2010-02-25
By K. Fonville

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