The SmugMug Blog

We’ve once again slashed SmugVault pricing to the floor.

This news comes soon after we upped the limit on your video files. Since big files and archiving go hand in hand, we thought it’d be nice to make it cheaper than ever to backup your original videos in your SmugVault.

Here’s the spiel:

• We dropped the storage fees from $.14/GB/month to $.125/GB/month – that’s cheaper than what you’d get through Amazon S3!
• We nuked uploading fees to your Vault. Zip. Zilch. Nada.
• Downloading from the Vault back to your computer is now just $.12/GB, not $.16/GB.
• SmugVaults can hold files up to 3 GB apiece, in virtually any format.

We’ve said it a lot, but Amazon S3 is the gold standard in internet storage and they’re the brawn behind SmugVault. Anything you archive in your Vault has 99.999999999% durability.  In other words, if you store 10,000 files in your SmugVault, on average, we’ll lose just one every 10 million years.

Think you’ll live that long?

You can view Amazon’s Simple Storage Service pricing here.

Set Your SmugVault Settings

Also remember that we do process all display copies of your SmugMug videos and we don’t store your unprocessed original video files in your SmugVault until you enable it. So make sure you open your SmugVault settings and choose “Archive Videos” to take advantage of the safest backup imaginable.

Finally, keep in mind that any files you archive in your SmugVault are visible (and retrievable) just to you, the logged-in account owner.

Fire, flood, ninja attacks… there’s a million reasons why we love SmugVault and think it’s way safer than keeping files on your computer.

More about the incredible, indelible SmugVault:

• SmugVault and how it works
• Amazon’s S3 pricing
• Bigger, longer videos
• SmugMug’s accepted files (or, what doesn’t need a SmugVault)

You Ask. We Deliver.

We made a sizzling change that we think you’ll like: Your videos can be up to 20 minutes long and 3 GB in size. Double the action, triple the fun.

20 Minutes and 3 GB of Video.

Since we made video sales available to Pros, we heard you ask: “Why can’t you make videos longer?”

While we still recommend you keep your clips short for the best bang for your buck, you can now sell your videos with tons of extra bonus content – 20 minutes and 3GB of it, right from your site.

How to Do It:

We highly recommend our HTML5 uploader in Chrome to upload your mightiest videos.

Need Chrome? Download it free from Google, then click the Upload button when you’re logged in at SmugMug. Choose HTML5 and just drag and drop your video files into the box.

Finally, get your gear wishlist ready. With new 20-minute videos, we bet your Pro sales will go nuts.

Comments? Raves? As always, give it a try and drop us line if you need a hand.

Read up on these features:

• All about Video at SmugMug
• What files we support
• How to upload photos and videos
• Video download sales
• How to cash in on your Pro Sales

It’s Christmas in May! You can upload, store and retrieve virtually any file in your SmugVault for a fraction of the old cost.

Oh, yes. The measly $1 monthly service charge remains the same, but now:

• Storage is only $.14 per month, per GB. (Old cost: $.22)
• It costs only $.11 to upload each GB into your Vault. (Old cost: $.30)
• It costs only $.16 to download each GB back to your computer. (Old cost: $.51)

What’s this mean for you? If you uploaded an 8G CF card full of RAWs into your Vault and then retrieved them one month later:

Your old bill would be $9.24 .
Your new bill will be just $4.28 .

Best of all, this isn’t a limited-time promotional offer. Thanks to price drops from Amazon and a shiny new uploading infrastructure at SmugMug, we expect this lowered price to be permanent – until we drop it again.

That’s right.  Over time, we’re going to do our best to keep the pricing as close to Amazon’s S3 pricing as we can.  More technical info about SmugVault is right here.

Why SmugVault is Awesome

The SmugVault gives you safe, reliable, flexible and unlimited storage tacked right on to your existing SmugMug account. You’re already familiar with our interface and galleries so it’s a breeze to use. And remember that your archives are not visible (or downloadable) to anyone except you, the logged-in gallery owner.

The SmugVault can hold virtually any file up to 1GB apiece, and if you upload a TIFF and JPG version of the same image into your account, we’ll archive one and display the other to your visitors. But they’ll be bundled together for easy access in your Vault.

And when we call it a Vault, we mean it.  Thanks to Amazon’s S3 service, which powers the storage part of your SmugVault, anything you archive in your SmugVault has 99.999999999% durability.  In other words, if you store 10,000 files in your SmugVault, on average, we’ll lose just one every 10 million years. More details.

In fact, you can even skip the JPG part and just upload your RAW file. We’ll automatically generate a full-sized JPG that you can share – and sell – on your site.

Listen Up, Pros!

Hot tip: After a shoot, just drag your RAW files into the uploader and call it a day. Your client can browse the gallery and buy the prints she wants. When the order hits Proof Delay, you swap them with edited versions. This way you only have to edit a few required images, not the whole set.

Whatta timesaver! And you’re backed up, to boot.

Grab Your Vault Now

This is a perfect time to give the SmugVault a try. Get one right from your Control Panel, under the Settings tab where it says “SmugVault”.

Your regular galleries are great for our standard JPG, PNG and GIF files but if you’d like a little extra oompf, it’s easier (and cheaper) than ever to get your whole life backed up.

Yanno, just in case.