Flickr vs Picasa vs Smugmug

Couple of months ago when I landed in Oulu for Student Exchange Programme, I was hunting for an online gallery to store my photos. I chose Smugmug after weeks of consideration but might consider switching to Picasa at the end of 1 year because of the hefty price that Smugmug charges.

Basically here are the things I noted throughout my weeks of consideration.

Flickr [$24.95 USD]

Pros

• API Support
• Large Community
• Video Support

Cons

• Ugly interface

Summary
Most photography enthusiasts have at least 1 or 2 photos in Flickr. Flickr is so popular that no other galleries can compete with it. It has a large community that users can tap on, giving comments, joining groups and sharing photos with other people around the world that has the same common interest. However the interface is not the most pleasing to eyes. Browsing of photos could be a problem for non-Flickr users because of its unique way of browsing that is uncommon to many. Therefore, the API support of Flickr could be very useful to developers as they can create their own galleries, hosted on their own website, with pictures linked from Flickr. This will remove the only Flickr con of ugly interface.

Picasa [$5 USD - 20GB] Prices increase linearly.

Pros

• Google’s product
• Offers Picasa software for easy photos manipulation and uploading
• Synchronization between folders and galleries
• Very cheap, around $5USD for 20GB of storage

Cons

• Average looking interface

Summary
Looking at how successful Google products are these days, one will not easily brush aside Picasa as it is a Google´s product. Picasa Web Gallery, together with its own software, Picasa, this has to be the best combination of the 3 galleries highlighted in this post. You can do simple red-eye reduction, cropping, resizing and many more with Picasa. Synchronization between folders and online galleries are possible too! This way, you do not have to upload new photos manually every time a new photo is taken.  Everything is done automatically. What’s more, it’s only $5USD per year for 20GB of storage!

Smugmug [$39.95 USD]

Pros

• Themes
• Configuration of CSS and site is possible
• Video support can be added by paying more

Cons

• Expensive
• Lacking community
• Default uploading is done through browser interface

Summary
Smugmug adopts a template system where users can choose how they want their galleries to look like by using predefined templates. With higher prices, one can also edit CSS, header, footer of the gallery. However, all these come at a hefty price! Uploading is done through browser interface with their rather buggy JAVA software. Other uploading alternatives are available too but they are done up by other users and has no official support from Smugmug.

I hope what I provided above is useful to you.

If you are interested in getting Smugmug at a $5 discount, do use my coupon code 3d5s/RztXI1rg.