Printroom.com questions

I can tell you my experience thus far, though it may not directly answer your question. I signed up with PR last month.

Pros:

-an "account manager" is assigned to me; he's been prompt with answering calls and emails; it's nice having the same person to contact.

-custom storefront; I submitted .html and a stylesheet to match my website; PR allows for this service for a fee, though my account manager did not charge me.

-PR has a history with newspapers and has serviced the Miss America Pageant; they've been around as a fulfillment/delivery service for awhile and have options such as back printing prints and selling editorial or personal use licenses for digital image downloads.

-they sell "photo passes" or certificates you can buy upfront and take to the wedding, etc. to give to people so that they visit the storefront; they try to help you use their services to market your work to increase print sales.

-cool photo gift options you can include in packages.

-inexpensive annual, not monthly, fee.

-they invite you to conferences and give discounts for those.

Cons:

-user-interface on the proprietary software, PSM, needs improvement; took me longer than I'd like to figure the program out, and I still have a list of questions, though I consider myself an avid computer user.

-browser side account does not communicate real time with software, so if you change a gallery on one side, it won't tell the other--gets confusing and time consuming to change galleries.

-browser upload feature needs to improve to a batch upload option for full-size images; on the consumer side winkflash.com has "Transporter" which does a great job uploading several hundred images and continuing when the server times out; I'd like to see PR add something like that.

-they market 300MB space limit, which is also confusing, but is for thumbnail images; basically PSM is a batch conversion software that creates thumbnails of your images; if you are selling all proofs to a Bride/Groom then you'll have to upload all full-size images, which would eat up your space in one sitting. They tell me to upload to a print server or mail a CD, but I'd like a better upload feature for full-size images and for them to change their size limit to full-size images -- not thumbnails; I would be willing to pay a bigger upfront annual fee for that option.

-their market seems to be geared towards the Portraiture market; it seems they have few high volume wedding photojournalist photographers, though I think this is a market they want to penetrate.

Regarding your question on prints, my only concern with PR is that they did not cut my sample prints correctly, so the full-bleed prints had a white line on the top. I told them that this is unacceptable because I don't want my customers ordering non-border images and getting them with thin white lines. Also, the white border is more thin than 2 of their competitors with whom I'm familiar.

Basically I'm sticking with them for now because I like the personal contact and that I was able to customize my storefront. I'm giving it a period of time to determine if their quality meets my standards.

I think they are working on changing the User interface design on their website; hopefully they'll improve their software so that photographers have an easier time utilizing their services.

Hope the info helps!

I've been a Printroom customer for three years and just signed up for Smugmug tonight. Overall, I've been pretty happy with them, but lately I've had several issues with people having difficulty ordering. It seemed to start when they changed their layout, but it could be a coincidence. I have to admit, I placed a few orders for customers who were having trouble and I found it complicated and time consuming. Some points from my perspective: -Their customer service is great.

-I've only had a few complaints about their prints, but they corrected them for free.

-The Photopass is nice, but can only be used on one order. I give 50 - 100 4x6s to the couple depending on the package and it can be a lengthy process to order 100 4x6s at a time. I wish they could bank the unused portion for future orders. The nice thing about the Photopass is that you pay your price for the prints.

-I haven't had anyone complain about paying shipping. I explain in the ordering instructions that shipping may vary depending on the size of the order, so it is impossible to include it in the Photopass.

-I never got around to customizing the storefront, mainly because you have to pay for it. I like to change things up, so I didn't want to have to pay each time I made a change to the color scheme of my site.

-I went to Smugmug because I like that customers can see a larger image and they look clearer and brighter. I don't know if it's the compression Printroom uses, but they aren't as sharp as Smugmug.

-I haven't had any problems with their software. It has nice features like batch renaming. I also like that you get notifications of orders so you can upload the full size image.

There are a lot of nice things about Printroom, but the main reason I switched is the nicer look of Smugmug and the ability to customize easier. I'm going to keep Printroom until the end of the year for the existing weddings, but everything new will go to Smugmug.

Hope that helps.

Sam

Thanks to Sam and Dena for taking the time to give me such helpful and detailed answers. I haven't researched Smugmug, but I will look into it as well as printroom. I will mostly be using a service for child portraits. One thing I didn't like about ordering from printroom is that you can not order a glossy and a matte print in the same order. I ordered samples for my catalog and I had to place 3 orders to get a glossy, matte,and pro black & white photo. Do you find that the quality of prints from Smug mug is good?

Kevin,

I've tried a few of these services. I've been on Smugmug now for about a year. This gives me everything that I've wanted. they have a lot of options to include using your own web address. so it looks as if you are doing all the work.

good luck

Another thing to consider with shipping costs is the location of the print lab and the location of your client service region. For example I am near the Seattle area and offer photography services to the Pacific Northwest Region. Smugmug uses EZ Print labs, which ships from Georgia. If Smugmug also uses UPS, and my client is located in Seattle, then they will probably pay a pretty penny to ship their order to their location.

This is one of the reasons I opted for Printroom; their lab is in California, and they ship USPS, which tends to treat packages much better than UPS (my experience). My clients will pay less and get their packages more quickly as the point of departure for their shipment is closer to them.

So, though this post is a couple months past, I have a confession to make: I signed up to smugmug last month. My reason for switching were in the list I and Sam gave at the beginning. Also I learned that having a nice user-interface for your online proofing gallery may have more selling appeal and give customers more confidence to order from you. Printroom's UI was below par: gray background, only thumbnails could be presented, and teeny tiny navigation buttons.

There are things I'd like smugmug to add to their services, such as proof books (which Printroom has but smugmug doesn't), the ability to create my own template for the galleries to match my smugmug homepage and business site colors, and the option for borders! smugmug does not currently offer white borders.

Still, their service has been great (ie helpful and friendly) so far, and I now have all my backlog galleries uploaded and arranged. I'm keeping printroom till the end of the year (paid the $99 and they offer proof books), but will probably not renew.