I've tried a wide variety of photo sharing sites and services over the years, from home grown galleries I wrote from scratch by myself, to various PHP-based services (from dAlbum to Gallery), and the ubiquitous social services (Facebook, Picasa, and flickr). But until now, none have filled my basic needs:

• Cheap
• Unlimited
• Full-size image storage AND retrieval
• Customizable
• No ads

Last week, I took a look at SmugMug, and came away impressed.

I'd seen SmugMug before, back when I was toying with the idea of selling some of my photos professionally. SmugMug differentiated itself from all the other stock photo sites in that your content isn't filtered or approved by the site owners. What you post is what you sell at whatever price you want. That intrigued me, but without a quality DSLR, my photos simply weren't of the caliber that I'd even consider selling.

So, when I was researching the options out there for my own personal hosting and backup needs, SmugMug struck a pleasant chord in my memory.

How does SmugMug do against my requirements? Let's take them point by point.

• Cheap -- Yup. $5 a month or $40 a year, and the referral codes can help reduce your renewal costs even more.
• Unlimited -- Yup, and not just for storage, but unlimited uploads and downloads, too!
• Full-size image storage AND retrieval -- Yup, up to 24 MByte images, and with the Power subscription, you can also upload HD videos, and store RAW files in the SmugVault.
• Customizable -- Wow, is it customizable! From the huge library of built-in themes to the ability to craft your own HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, as well as point your own hostname to your SmugMug page, you can make the site look like whatever you want.
• No ads -- Huzzah! Just my content, and nothing else!

SmugMug also offers RSS and Atom feeds, links and embed codes, full-screen slideshows, a beautiful Lightbox implementation, flexible and dynamic window resizing, a variety of security settings, and mobile views and apps.

Check out my SmugMug page at alphaman.smugmug.com. You can see a good comparison grid of the different levels of service they provide at their features matrix. Even better, try out the service for free for 2 weeks by using this link or just entering my code, 9qvo8x59h8F5Q during checkout, and you'll get $5 off your order if you decide to join (and I'll get a discount for my next renewal, too!) The trial gets you 100% of the features of the site, including unlimited uploads (I uploaded more photos during my 2 week test subscription than Go-ogle's Picasa allowed me to upload for free after using their site for nearly 3 years!)

I seriously like SmugMug. I just signed up for a full year's contract, and am uploading the rest of my photos to the site now. If you're a photog or an aspiring one, or just someone who wants to make sure their family photos will be there after the next tornado or other disaster, I'll bet you will, too!

Oh, one more thing: if you're an iPhoto user, you can get a very nice and simple add-on exporter, Aaron Evan's SmugMugExport. You can also find the iPad SmugMug app in the App Store, as well as the iPhone/iPod SmugShot.

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