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Archive 2017 · Disappointed in Zenfolio

  
 
Bearmann
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p.1 #1 · p.1 #1 · Disappointed in Zenfolio


When I joined Zenfolio several years ago, they were just starting out. At the time, their promotion was that if you joined before the end of the year, your yearly fee would be locked in for life, i.e. no further price increases. Since that time, Zenfolio has been purchased by new owners. The new owners have chosen to break the promise of the original owners and increase the yearly fee. I know that when public companies buy another company, they are legally obligated to assume the current liabilities as well as the assets. Of course, morally, you would expect this also. The price difference is not significant. It just leaves a bad taste in my mouth.


Dec 08, 2017 at 05:12 PM
Zenon Char
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p.1 #2 · p.1 #2 · Disappointed in Zenfolio


Just goes to show Adobe is not the only company that changes it's mind. I know many were not happy with the perpetual LR licence statement. No business can make indefinite promises. I'm not backing them, it is just reality. I really liked Zen but cancelled my subscription last month. It was more than I needed and was thinking about other options for the last 6 months then I got a free website with the Adobe plan. That motivated me.


Dec 08, 2017 at 05:41 PM
Zenon Char
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p.1 #3 · p.1 #3 · Disappointed in Zenfolio


Oh yeah did you see what Photobucket did? $40 a month for 3rd party hosting and linking images. Long time member and I had the second level plan for $9 a month. I have a lot of images there and when I want to post an illustration, etc I just do a screen grab. I joined here so I can upload. Money better spent. I went back to the free basic plan at PB.




Dec 08, 2017 at 05:54 PM
adamx12m
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p.1 #4 · p.1 #4 · Disappointed in Zenfolio


Zenfolio is a huge pile of crap, but haven't found a decent alternative for my needs. They made these checkout improvements and it's worse, terrible mobile support, and just slow. I know everybody needs something a bit different with photo galleries, whether it's hosting a few galleries, selling picture art, or hosting tens of thousands of sports photos for sale, or great mobile support, or 3rd party fulfillment services, or whatever else. Zen is just average at all of these if that. Any conversion to something new will be painful, especially dealing with redirecting old url's which I've never seen anybody support except DIY platform.

I'll be glad to see some other opinions other platforms besides smugmug, photobucket, and photoshelter.




Dec 08, 2017 at 10:28 PM
Imagemaster
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p.1 #5 · p.1 #5 · Disappointed in Zenfolio


Probably not as much of a rip-off as what Extensis Portfolio did to their clients. Went from about $40 to several hundred dollars for a forced upgrade.


Dec 09, 2017 at 02:06 AM
ELinder
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p.1 #6 · p.1 #6 · Disappointed in Zenfolio


I'm a Zenfolio user who sells event photos thru them. I don't like many of the changes they've made lately and am considering setting up my own site thru Square when my renewal comes up next year.

Erich



Dec 10, 2017 at 08:16 PM
Bearmann
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p.1 #7 · p.1 #7 · Disappointed in Zenfolio


Thank you for your comments. It's sad that keeping your word has so little value with some companies these days.


Dec 14, 2017 at 09:15 AM
Zenon Char
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p.1 #8 · p.1 #8 · Disappointed in Zenfolio


I'm not defending anyone of them but it is business in the fast paced world we live in. No one can promise anything forever. New owners so they decided not to follow the previous owners policies so not much you can do except find a different service. Look what Photobucket did in the last 6 months. $40 a month for 3rd party hosting and image linking. I can't that place lasting very long.

I worked in the same job for over 30 years. 3 takeovers and mergers. They always promised no one would lose jobs.



Dec 14, 2017 at 09:48 AM
ozmoses
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p.1 #9 · p.1 #9 · Disappointed in Zenfolio


Zenfolio is definitely sucking today! Uploading to galleries has been anywhere from 5x to 500x times slower today which means many hours delay in getting links to clients. Generally, Zenfolio has really met my company's needs, but when they suck, they definitely suck. Communication is terrible from them where there are problems as well.


Oct 25, 2018 at 09:59 PM
adamx12m
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p.1 #10 · p.1 #10 · Disappointed in Zenfolio


ozmoses wrote:
Zenfolio is definitely sucking today! Uploading to galleries has been anywhere from 5x to 500x times slower today which means many hours delay in getting links to clients. Generally, Zenfolio has really met my company's needs, but when they suck, they definitely suck. Communication is terrible from them where there are problems as well.


Pretty much have to upload during off-peak hours. It's become much worse over the past year, I've got plenty of bandwidth with fiber but Zenfolio continues to suck period. I just uploaded 30 photos an hours ago (10:30am) which took nearly 10 minutes.

For people who sell photos, need to have plenty of storage space eg. sports, weddings, flexible layout mods, mobile app integration, and a reasonable monthly price, the choices are crap. Aside from building my own solution which I could do, just limited options. Can't wait to get rid of zenfolio.




Oct 26, 2018 at 11:38 AM
dgdg
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p.1 #11 · p.1 #11 · Disappointed in Zenfolio


Bearmann wrote:
Thank you for your comments. It's sad that keeping your word has so little value with some companies these days.


It is disappointing, and not uncommon. So it goes....
Put your money where your mouth is and walk.
I was disappointed years ago with poor resolution of my uploaded Zenfolio images. I switched to SmugMug which was far superior. They have a special uploader which will automatically transfer your Zenfolio files to Smug Mug. Run the app and go to bed.



Oct 26, 2018 at 12:58 PM
jharter
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p.1 #12 · p.1 #12 · Disappointed in Zenfolio


I have a Zenfolio website for my photos.website.

I don't sell anything and just use it for galleries that I share and a place for others to see my photos. Cost is pretty reasonable. I can upload as much as I want. Setting up the website is easy. I wish the quality of the viewed images was better (my photos look better on screen at the 500px website for example).

Are there website hosting services that offer unlimited storage and easy setup with a higher quality of display than Zenflolio? By higher quality, I mean both image quality and user ergonomics (not having to make multiple clicks to see successive images for example).



Oct 28, 2018 at 09:56 AM
butchM
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p.1 #13 · p.1 #13 · Disappointed in Zenfolio


dgdg wrote:
They have a special uploader which will automatically transfer your Zenfolio files to Smug Mug. Run the app and go to bed.


They also offer a free Lightroom Classic publish services plugin where you can upload jpeg versions of your galleries directly without having to export jpegs and running the independent uploader app. Very efficient.



Oct 28, 2018 at 10:04 AM
Zenon Char
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p.1 #14 · p.1 #14 · Disappointed in Zenfolio


Anyone who has LR Classic has access to a free website. You can import LR collections. Since they are synced any changes you make are updated automatically, so I have been told.

Dropping Zenfolio pays for the subscription. I don't sell either so I don't how good this would be for business. I'm not sure what Behance is but I think it is a photographers linkedin thing. I just this update massage.

https://medium.com/@AdobePortfolio/5-new-features-to-adobe-portfolio-17894d48cd43

https://mpc.photos



Oct 28, 2018 at 10:19 AM
Dustin Gent
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p.1 #15 · p.1 #15 · Disappointed in Zenfolio


I had Zenfolio 10 years ago for several years, but the prices kept going up and the customization was not that great. I get emailed ALL THE TIME for 50% deals. Still, that would make it $120 a year or something.

Will probably go with the option of having a custom website built.



Oct 28, 2018 at 10:39 PM
retrofocus
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p.1 #16 · p.1 #16 · Disappointed in Zenfolio


Bearmann wrote:
When I joined Zenfolio several years ago, they were just starting out. At the time, their promotion was that if you joined before the end of the year, your yearly fee would be locked in for life, i.e. no further price increases. Since that time, Zenfolio has been purchased by new owners. The new owners have chosen to break the promise of the original owners and increase the yearly fee. I know that when public companies buy another company, they are legally obligated to assume the current liabilities as well as the assets. Of course, morally, you would expect this
...Show more

I still have to find a decent commercial photo portfolio website which does not annoy me. I am also with Zenfolio, and I am using it now since more than 8 years. I first went with the full version allowing watermarking and direct sales from my site but later decided that it was not worth the money spent on an annual basis and went back to the standard/cheapest option with more limited space. Until a year ago or so, the standard version offered too low amount of storage space for photos IMO - I was able to cope with it because I was vested there for years, so every year I received a tiny storage space upgrade which brought me to a moderately decent level. Zenfolio still sucks sometimes when uploading compressed photos in JPG at certain times - it takes too long IMO to upload a batch of 12 to 20 JPG files with 5 MB each. Zenfolio improved a bit here compared to years ago where it was really bad, but it still is by far not ideal.

The site still has the same bug when replacing a photo in an existing photo gallery - after uploading the replacement file, the icon of the new photo is still the old one, but shows the correct new one when clicking on the full view of the image. After the gallery site is manually reloaded, the correct new icon of the photo is displayed within the gallery view. If you are not aware of this, you might think that the replacement upload didn't work since the icon didn't change - very irritating! It's the same bug since many years, Zenfolio never corrected it.



Oct 31, 2018 at 07:06 AM
ibcj
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p.1 #17 · p.1 #17 · Disappointed in Zenfolio


Zenfolio did the same thing to me. I was grandfathered in on their upper tier plan. I really didn’t use it much but it was a backup location for my files. Then last year they totally disregarded their agreement and doubled my price.

I would get it if I was using up terabytes of their hosting space, but I barely had 60gb there, my activity was minimal, never bothered tech support and no selling prints. So they were making easy money but decided to Be greedy. I complained and they offered to lower my price back down for one year “as a courtesy”. At that point the damage was done, I closed the account and moved on. Why would I ever continue doing business with a company that goes back on their word to customers that were with them for ten years.

My recommendation is to stay far away from Zenfolio.



Nov 09, 2018 at 10:04 PM
Anthony280ZX
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p.1 #18 · p.1 #18 · Disappointed in Zenfolio


At least for the last two years they have kept my rate the same. I haven't checked what it will be for next year. That said I'm not sure why I even have it. While I have a ton of photos on it (scenic/landscape photography), very few actually visit the site let alone buy any pictures. I'm trying to think what would be a better and cheaper option - just a place to display some of my photos other than Facebook. If anyone wants to buy a print they can email me. I know that some prospective customers have been very confused about the process of ordering through Zenfolio, then just give up. And I have noticed it's taking forever now to upload phots, but I thought it was just from my 9 year old computer that's on it's last legs.


Nov 11, 2018 at 03:14 PM
retrofocus
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p.1 #19 · p.1 #19 · Disappointed in Zenfolio


Anthony280ZX wrote:
At least for the last two years they have kept my rate the same. I haven't checked what it will be for next year. That said I'm not sure why I even have it. While I have a ton of photos on it (scenic/landscape photography), very few actually visit the site let alone buy any pictures. I'm trying to think what would be a better and cheaper option - just a place to display some of my photos other than Facebook. If anyone wants to buy a print they can email me. I know that some prospective customers have been
...Show more

+1. I had the commercial Zenfolio website version for a few years which proved not to be worth for me. I went back to the cheapest option which does not include the sales options. No regrets here because for photos I sold, I was always contacted via email and then dealt with the buyer directly.

Regarding photo upload: it is an ongoing issue with Zenfolio since many years. They supposedly added server capacity at some point with not much improvement in uploading speed from what I can tell. It seems to depend how many other users are up- or downloading photos at the same time - I can tell when I upload a bulk of 10 photos for example (each with 5-7 MB) that all but 2-3 upload quickly and then it can slow down severely for the last few ones. Another annoying thing is the display of the uploaded photos on the site - there seems to run a scanner in the background which is IMO very cumbersome and slow, because it takes often minutes to have just an icon of uploaded photos displayed. Zenfolio never improved here.



Nov 12, 2018 at 08:22 AM
la puffin
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p.1 #20 · p.1 #20 · Disappointed in Zenfolio


I'm with Squarespace and have a few grips. I think one is best off with their own private hosting, but gallery creation, shopping carts, etc... can be a real pain to set up and that's where most of the portfolio hosting sites excel.


Nov 13, 2018 at 04:57 AM
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