Tuesday, June 24, 2008
SmugMug Launches SmugVault Service
Posted by Jason Dunn in "Digital Home Software" @ 12:00 PM
"SmugMug has always allowed everyone to upload an unlimited number of web-displayable files - JPEG, GIF, PNG, and MP4 - but to date we haven’t been able to accept the RAW files generated by modern digital cameras. For years our customers have been asking, begging, and pleading for us to let them upload their priceless archives. I’m happy to announce that day has come! SmugVault is a new SmugMug product that lets you upload all the RAW, PSD, BMP, and TIFF files you’d like. And not just those - we’ll accept XMP sidecars, PDF files, Word documents, Excel spreadsheets, video archives, and anything else you might want to store with your photos. What’s more, we’ll bundle your files together for easy, intuitive browsing and safe retrieval."
SmugMug does a great job storing my photos, so this seems to be a natural extension of that service. Here's what I'm not so sure about though: I did the math and to store 100 GB of data with SmugVault, it would cost $22/month. With Carbonite [affiliate] or Mozy, I can get unlimited data for around $5 per month. So what's the value in paying $22/month? My guess is that services such as Carbonite and Mozy are making money in the overall picture (losing money on the 100 GB users, making money on the 5 GB users), whereas the 15 cents per GB that SmugMug is charging is a per-GB profit plan. Backing up your data is hugely important, but I don't see the value in SmugMug's offering for people that have more than 20 GB or so of data to back up. What's your take on this?
