When Smugmug Says "Unlimited Storage", They Apparently Mean It

[Jason Dunn]

<div class='os_post_top_link'><a href='http://www.dgrin.com/showthread.php?t=24847&page=2' target='_blank'>http://www.dgrin.com/showthread.php?t=24847&page=2</a><br /><br /></div>When a company says they offer "unlimited" <i>anything</i>, I always take that promise with a grain of salt, because what they really mean is <i>"we'll offer you unlimited resources until we start to lose too much money on you"</i>. A perfect example of this is <a href="http://www.westhost.com/">WestHost</a>, a Web hosting company that was home to Pocket PC Thoughts for half a year or so. They offered me unlimited bandwidth, and this is back when I was on shared servers and bandwidth was costing me $200+ a month. I gladly took them up on their offer, but within a few months they were telling me I was using too much bandwidth. :roll: Their integrity was a matter of gigabytes.<br /><br />Apparently, not so with Smugmug. They offer <a href="http://www.smugmug.com/price/index.mg">unlimited storage</a> even with their basic $39.95 a year package. Given the constant climb of megapixels, image sizes get bigger and bigger every year - making this a bold claim on the part of Smugmug. Well, it seems someone decided to take Smugmug up on that promise. Here's the <a href="http://www.dgrin.com/showthread.php?t=24847&page=1">message</a> from a user named <i>bl8ter</i> that started it all:<br /><br /><i>"I am currently considering joining smugmug, but have a serious problem. Over the last 2 years I have amassed 2484.98 GIGS (yes that is 2+ terabytes) which is stored over way to [sic] many dvds. Now if my calculations are correct it would take me 103360 hours, 12 minutes and 4 seconds under optimal connections to load my albums. I have a cable connection with a 60Kb upload rate."</i><br /><br />And here's the <a href="http://www.dgrin.com/showthread.php?t=24847&page=2">response from Smugmug's CEO</a>:<br /><br />"Wow, that must be close to 500,000 JPEGs! Quite a collection - I can't wait to see them. So we've always said "unlimited storage" and we mean what we say. We're happy to take your photos and host them, but we need a little time to prepare. Just so you know, this is something like a $20,000 first-year commitment for us in terms of disk space, power, cooling, and physical space. You'll basically have two complete RAID arrays to yourself in our datacenter. Of course, you'll only pay your $30, $50, or $100 per year, depending on your account level. Again, we're happy to do it - but I want to be up front here and let you know that we need to order some equipment and get it installed to accept your photos. <br /><br />We're not geared for accepting 2.5TB overnight. We'll also be buying extra image processing machines just for your batch of photos. Luckily, once yours are done, everyone else at smugmug will get to benefit from them, so I don't consider that a cost to host you. Does that sound fair? Can we ask you to hold off while we order and install the equipment and power required?"<br /><br />Is that an impressive customer service attitude or what? Most companies would have said "Look, when we say unlimited, we mean within reason!", but Smugmug took it in stride and simply asked for time to gear up for the task. That impresses me to no end - there are many companies that could learn from a corporate attitude like that. Maybe someone should tell <a href="http://www.digitalmediathoughts.com/articles.php?action=expand,9590">BonusPrint</a>.<br /><br />[As an aside, I have to wonder about someone who shoots that many photos - he's either a world-class photographer that manages to make <i>every</i> shot fantastic, or he's someone with an <a href="http://topcondition.com/images/mymindfield/obsessive_compulsive_disorder.htm">OCD disorder</a> that can't selectivey delete his images to cull the good from the bad. You decide. ;-)]

[Lee Yuan Sheng]

Off-topic:

OCD disorder (http://topcondition.com/images/mymindfield/obsessive_compulsive_disorder.htm) that can't selectivey delete his images to cull the good from the bad.

I'm going with this one. Assuming he shoots RAW, with an approximately 12 megapixel camera, that's an average of 300+ photos a DAY. No Pro I know keeps that many photos. Some might shoot that many (some less-skilled pros shotgun and hope a few stick), but generally a lot get thrown out at the end of the day.

Even with a MF back, that's still 50+ photos a day, and the MF photography simply isn't like that of 35mm-based photography; it's a more measured and slow-paced style. I simply can't understand how one person gets to shoot AND keep so many photos.

EDIT: I just read through the thread, and he shoots with 8 megapixel JPEGs at an average of 6.2 mb per file. A quick calculation shows 500+ photos a day on average.

:werenotworthy: :werenotworthy: :werenotworthy:

[Chris Gohlke]

A quick breakdown

500,000 in 2 years
250,000/year
685/day
28.5/hour (assuming shooting 24hrs/day)
or
approx 1 picture every two minutes

I'm thinking something is not quite right. :silly:

That said, given the good PR this will give them if this story gets spread, probably not a bad investment on their part.

[Jeremy Charette]

Actually, my girlfriend works in the photo business in New York City (she's a makeup artist), and this doesn't surprise me. I know several photographers who have raid arrays in a closet, and backups in a remote location. One I can think of offhand has over 5 TB worth of LaCie drives in his walk in closet in the studio. Everything is catalogued and well organized, and he never deletes anything. Another wedding photographer I know has only been at it a couple years and already has over 1 TB of photos in storage.

Professional photographers don't ever throw photos away. You never know when you may need it again. Now that digital is mainstream in this business, that's more true than ever before.

[marlof]

I told you there's a reason to like Smugmug. Their Customer Service is the best I've ever encountered.

I do hope not too many people are like this one, since Smugmug will honor their "unlimited storage", but they are able to up the prices if things get out of hand. Which I'd understand: after all, they are just a business trying to make money to feed their families. But so far, in my opinion, you can't beat Smugmug price/quality ratio.

[sojourner753]

this sounds like a great deal.

I guess I'm just confused as to how this company can remain profitable as they grow.

A $20,000 commitment to accomodate a single customer? Thats 200 months before they break even.

What if other customers with similar needs show up?

Is my math off?

[Chris Gohlke]

Law of averages, most people will never do this and the positive PR they will get from this guy is worth the cost.

On that note, I went to sign up for their service and there is a space on the sign up form to enter a discount code from when another user refers you. Any current users want to refer me? PM me or post here and I'll PM my e-mail address.

Thx

Update - got a few codes. Thanks

[Jason Dunn]

A $20,000 commitment to accomodate a single customer? Thats 200 months before they break even. What if other customers with similar needs show up?

As Chris said, it's a law of averages. This guy, if he's legit, will lose them money. But in the agregate, over all the customer they have, most probably only use up a few GB for all their photos, if that. They make the most money on all the people that pay for the service and hardly use it at all.

And the way storage costs are dropping, they'll always be ahead in the end, even if they lose money on this one customer. It's the principle of the thing that impressed me - that they were willing to take the hit in order to keep their promise of unlimited storage. That's integrity.

[follick]

Of course, at the upload rate he was quoting:
Now if my calculations are correct it would take me 103360 hours, 12 minutes and 4 seconds under optimal connections to load my albums.
It would take him over 11 years to upload these photos. By that time the storage costs will be much lower.

[mathiaspettersson@msn.com]

If he sells alot (read: ALOT) of prints they could possibly make money on him. I think their comission is 15%.

[follick]

Look, if he uploads pictures 24/7 at the rate he gives, he will be uploading about 200GB a year. This will cost SmugMug what? a few hundred dollars a year? Less as storage prices drop in future years.

Will SmugMug make money on this customer? No. Not for many years at least, but I'm not seeing $20,000 in costs here either. That would be realistic if he was going to upload 2.5TB overnight. That's not what the customer was talking about doing.

This was an overblown advertising oriented response to a customer request for a much more modest accomodation. It's good customer service but deceptive advertising.

[Jason Dunn]

Look, if he uploads pictures 24/7 at the rate he gives, he will be uploading about 200GB a year...This was an overblown advertising oriented response to a customer request for a much more modest accomodation. It's good customer service but deceptive advertising.

It doesn't seem like you actually read the thread. In the very first post, the user with all the photos says:

"Secondly I have full access to a full DS3 connection (90+ megs/sec) which I could use to upload..."

He talked about his much slower cable modem connection because he was concerned Smugmug would do upload bandwidth throttling, which they do not, so if this guy is for real he'll be using a DS3 connection to upload - which means is he really does have a 90mbps DS3 (my research says DS3 is 45 mbps), that's a pretty impressive 5.6 MB per second.

That's 336 MB per minute, 20.16 GB per hour, and 483 GB per day. Suddenly that's not so impossible, and definitely not "deceptive advertising". He could theoretically be done the whole upload in 5 days.

Research before you start throwing accusations.

[mathiaspettersson@msn.com]

There now, play nice boys.

follick, since thiss was posted on SM's own board I doubt it was a promotional effort. Basically all readers are already customers.

[follick]

My apologies for just looking at the numbers in the front page article. However, after reading the thread all the way through, it still doesn't look like he intends to dump this much overnight.


This sounds very fair... Just so were on the same page I will not be able to upload 2.4 terabytes in one session. I only have 200gigs on my computer and a 300gb usb drive. Some 90 percent of my images are on DVDs will need to be restored to my machine for uploading. Its also going to take me some time to put these in albums and properly tag them. If I remember correctly the java uploader will only send 100megs at a time, and im not going to sit in front of my computer for 7 days straight uploading them all at once. I travel quite a bit and this will done over the next few months.

Also, of course this is a promotional effort. It's gotten them good press here. The best kind of advertising is excellent customer service.

[rainforest1155]

Also, of course this is a promotional effort. It's gotten them good press here. The best kind of advertising is excellent customer service.
That's right! In fact in the near two years of being a smugmug member I haven't seen a single AD for smugmug. The first time I heard about smugmug was on a photography forum. That catched my eye and had a hard time to choose between smugmug and pbase.
User opinions and news articles are a lot better way to get your name out and this goes especially well when your customer support is on the right track.

The newest report from smugmugs CEO Don (http://www.dgrin.com/showpost.php?p=244008&amp;postcount=49) was that the servers and storage devices are in place. According to him they'll be ready in a week or two.

Sebastian

[mathiaspettersson@msn.com]

That's right! In fact in the near two years of being a smugmug member I haven't seen a single AD for smugmug.

Hey Sebastian, good to see You oustside of DGrin!

Malte