Type of site Image Hosting Service Alexa rank 1,551 (July 2016) Founded 2002 | Website www.smugmug.com Commercial Yes | |
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Headquarters 67 E. Evelyn Ave, Suite 200
Mountain View, California, USA Owner Chris and Don MacAskill Founders Don MacAskill, Chris MacAskill Profiles | ||
Step 1 of 5 create a gorgeous photography website with smugmug in 90 mins
SmugMug is a paid photo-sharing website and image hosting service which allows users to upload both HD photos and videos to their SmugMug sites. Launched in 2002, the company offers a toolset which facilitates the selling of digital and print media for amateur and professional photographers.
Contents
How to build a professional photography website portfolio with smugmug
History
SmugMug was founded by father and son Chris and Don MacAskill.
The company was started without any venture capital funding, and for a time was run out of the MacAskill family home. In a 2007 article, the LA Times wrote:
"They started on a shoestring budget in 2002, not moving into real offices in Mountain View, Calif., until April. Before that, the MacAskills and their employees set up shop in the five-bedroom home of Chris and his wife, Toni. Engineers bunked two to a bedroom. Blow dryers and vacuums routinely blew circuit breakers. Barking yellow Labrador retrievers chased tennis balls up and down the stairs."
Features
SmugMug offers four different account levels, each with a different subset of features
Storage
In 2010 two petabytes of photos were stored on the Amazon S3 service.
Privacy and security
SmugMug has options to allow control over the privacy and security of published photos. They have support for both account-level and gallery-level passwords, as well as hidden galleries.
There is also a friends and family social networking interface for members of the service to use, which allows sharing of photos limited to people known to the publisher.
Professional services
In conjunction with their print service, SmugMug has created a service aimed at professional photographers. Professional accounts have the ability to add custom watermarks to their photos. They can also sell prints and digital downloads of their photos through the SmugMug interface with their own pricing.