Wednesday, January 27, 2010

Printroom Review

Company name: Printroom

Website: http://printroom.com/

Printroom is another integrated solution created to solve both frontend and backend photographers’ issues. This company entered the market in year 1999, so it has a solid experience in the industry. Printroom provides photography products, web services and pro lab solutions. The overall number of offered features is divided into groups which make up 3 levels of membership – Classic (Free), Pro ($10/mo or $99 yearly) and Premium ($20/mo and $199/yr).

Choosing a Classic plan you get 300MB image hosting, custom HTML storefronts, print offering, pro photo lab and galleries to display your photos. Pro account gives you an opportunity to create a customizable Flash website, link images to Facebook, create slideshows and gain some more options. Upgrading to the Premium membership level you get premium support, custom photo and gift product templates, e-commerce plugin, possibility to build flash websites for customer events, etc.

There is a live preview of the flash homepage tool available, so you can play with the admin interface right away – no registration required. Of course, I couldn’t miss this opportunity and took a look at the admin panel. At first, I was pleasantly surprised with the editing environment – it’s completely WYSIWYG-based. You just fill in necessary data into the small pop-up window and all changes are immediately displayed on the page, no need to click on “preview” button or switch to another window. That’s pretty cool. However, I was not that impressed by the system’s functionality. In fact, it offers rather limited opportunities: 15 images in the slideshow, 3 content pages, no ability to upload a background image and boring design elements that can be fully customized. Hopefully, the general site building application is more flexible and well-executed.

I browsed several websites built with Printroom application and all of them have very simple, primitive designs. But I guess we should take into account the fact that Printroom is not a full-blown flash photo website CMS, and as a part of integrated photography business solution it works quite well. Unfortunately I didn’t find any testimonial section or forum on their website, it would be very useful to know what professionals think about solution provided by Printroom.
If you are on the lookout for a serious business organizing solution, examine Printroom carefully and decide whether it might fit your needs.

Pictage Review

Company name: Pictage

Website: http://www.pictage.com/

Pictage is a complex solution for professional photographers, which includes image hosting, printing and sales solutions. It’s geared mostly at wedding photographers and covers various features a photographer might need both online and offline.

Among Pictage’s major features are: online proofing, end-to-end order fulfillment, full album solution, photographer directory, professional lab, slideshows and album design. Unfortunately, you can preview neither website samples, nor admin interface of online proofing and slideshow solutions. To get an access to the product demo you have to register and email to the Pictage assistants.

If you want to become a Pictage member, there are two plan options available – Pictage Lite and Pictage Pro. The first plan includes 10 basic features, including unlimited event and image upload, online proofing, complete order processing, Pictage in-house pro lab and others. This package costs $199 yearly and right now they have a discount period which allows you to pay $99 for the first year. Pictage Pro package contains some more advantages, such as two free directory listings, fully automated payment solution, multi shooter sub accounts, slideshows and album design service. A more advanced plan will cost you $99 per month. (now you can pay only $19/mo for the first 6 months). You can view the complete feature comparison and pricing on the official company’s website.

You can see that Pictage is a rather expensive service, but the number of specific photographer oriented features makes it worth to be taken into consideration. The company was founded in 2000 and by this time it has developed into a powerful and comprehensive solution for professional event photographers. It has its own community and judging by numerous testimonials we’ve found on their website, Pictage does justice to itself. If you are a wedding or reportage photographer, you can consider Pictage as a tool for organization your business workflow.

Tuesday, January 26, 2010

OtherPeoplePixels Review

Company name: OtherPeoplePixels

Website: https://otherpeoplespixels.com

OtherPeoplePixels (OPP) provides both Flash and HTML website templates for photographers and artists. All templates are customizable and don’t require professional skills in coding.

On the company’s official website you can find a step-by-step presentation of the system, glance through the design previews, browse live websites built with OPP, familiarize yourself with the prices and sign up for the 14 day free trial.

I’ve subscribed to the OPP in order to check what advantages this provider can deliver. From what I saw, OtherPeoplePixel is a quite accessible and handy service that enables to create photo websites with no big efforts. The website management system is designed in a minimalist way – it’s a vertically scrolling list of hyperlinked text divided into categories. There are 12 flash template themes to choose from. Nice thing that OPP guys don’t pretend to offer a world-saving service – when you are about to select a flash design for your website, they honestly notify you that flash-based skins are not the best solution for SEO and your site may not appear in the search results for your name or other keywords. OPP recommends you to choose HMTL templates instead.

Admin panel for HTML template differs from the one for flash photo template. It’s shown as web page sketch with captions for each page segment. You need to click on those captions to edit a certain section. This system reminds a website builder and looks fun to work with. I loved the variety of default fonts that can be applied to the website title. Tag cloud available in each section editor considerably simplifies the process of better solution search.

OPP is a hosted solution, so you can’t host your website on your own server. However, you are free to choose a domain name, you can order it at OPP or buy it anywhere else. There two plans available – Standard and Multimedia. Both packages are almost equal: ability to upload sound and video artwork and bigger space for content is what makes Multimedia plan differ. With this, Standard price plan will cost you $16/mo or $160 per year, while a more advanced Multimedia package costs $26 monthly or $260 yearly.

OPP is definitely an option to keep in mind. Of course, it’s not the most affordable solution I’ve seen, but if spending $160-$260 yearly sounds good to you, OtherPeoplePixels website management application is worth your attention.

ReadyPhotoSite Review



Company name: ReadyPhotoSite

Website: www.readyphotosite.com

ReadyPhotoSite is a combination of nice user-friendly designs and powerful backend. This photography website management system was created by a team of photographers, designers and flash developers to satisfy both the design and functional requirements of photographers and people of art seeking for stylish, professional and still easy to update portfolio.

ReadyPhotoSite photography websites do not require any professional skills to manage the photo galleries or add content on pages, all you’ll need is a computer with your photos and the browser to login to the admin area which gives you full control over your website.

ReadyPhotoSite is pretty new on the market. Presently they offer 6 websites design to choose from and plan adding 2 new designs every month starting January 2010 so we can expect a great collection of designs available quite shortly. The list of functionality offered by ReadyPhotoSite includes text pages builder (to create and manage unlimited number of text pages), menu and background management (you can change the order of the menu and set a separate background for every page), unlimited number of photo galleries (you can edit your photo on the fly and enable/disable save, enlarge and watermark options) and video galleries (upload video from your computer or point to an external location). There are news and events editors available, as well as password protected galleries and Paypal based shopping cart allowing sell photography online. They also plan changing the structure of the code to be 100% indexable by the search engines and thus same SEO friendly as usual html/css websites.

ReadyPhotoSite offers 3 packages to choose from: basic ($99), advanced ($149) and ecommerce ($199) and there is no other additional fees involved (installation is free). You can choose your own hosting or order domain name registration and hosting service from ReadyPhotoSite for $100.

According to website testimonials and online reviews we managed to find they have great customer support. You can also order design changes to the website chosen and they will be performed at a small fee. There are also special promos available all the time, like holiday discounts and 20% discount if you have an old photography website and exchange it to the new one by ReadyPhotoSite.

There is a free7 day trial available where they will create a test website for you to play around. The functionality is not limited and you can try all the features available.

Overall, ReadyPhotoSite websites are nicely designed, have great functionality and are 200% affordable. The only thing I can think of is the small number of website deigns available at the moment, let’s hope they’ll have more in the nearest future.

Thursday, January 21, 2010

Zenfolio Review

Company name: Zenfolio

Website: http://www.zenfolio.com

Zenfolio is a well-know company providing web space for photographers to organize, display and sell their photos online. With Zenfolio you can create an HTML photo gallery with integrated proofing system and individual Flash elements. It was launched in 2004 and has gained many fans since then. Let’s see what Zenfolio can bring to photographers.

To check the application, I’ve registered and create a trail account which will expire in 14 days. The website management system is versatile enough, nice feature is that it displays a step-by-step guide so you could feel cozy and not get lost. When creating a page you can choose from 10 page layouts and 20 themes. You can switch among themes and layouts whenever you want. This is surely a nice touch. In general, design themes look a bit outdated, there are few really nice though. Zenfolio template galleries are rather flexible and quick to update. However, if you want some powerful customization mechanism, Zenfolio is not what you are looking for. What I didn’t like is the layout schemes, most of them are vertical and you have to heavily scroll the page in order to browse photography collections and website sections. This method has been often discusses lately and many experts consider it to be unusable. I’ve browsed photo website built with Zenfolio and I can agree with this point – galleries look a bit cluttered and navigation is inconvenient.

Despite some limits in design, Zenfolio has an obvious advantage – you can store full-size photos with no need to restore, plus you can easily organize images into different groups, galleries and collections. For all this the system provides rapid image loading and navigation. By means of right-click protection and watermark, Zenfolio also works well in terms of protecting your images. Built-in shopping cart allows photographers to sell their photos online, the e-commerce feature is implemented very well here. Fullscreen slideshow function is good for showcasing photos.

Taking into account the price, which varies from $25 to $100 per year, Zenfolio pays off well. “At Zenfolio we believe that a beautiful photograph requires an equally impressive viewing experience.” You are absolutely right guys, but “impressive viewing experience” is not your strong point. Zenfolio shows an excellent quality/price ratio, nothing more, nothing less.

Pixelpost Review

Company name: Pixelpost

Website: http://www.pixelpost.org/

Pixelpost is a niche open-source application for effective photo blog management. This is a quite neat service that does exactly what it says. If you want to regularly post your photos on the web like a blog, Pixelpost sounds like a great solution.

Among the features offered by Pixelpost are smooth install assistant, fancy admin stuff, multi-lingual support, addons and spam filter, feed options, free template gallery and others. No doubt, the major and the coolest thing in Pixelpost is that it’s free and open source. Therefore, this application is very flexible and customization-friendly. You can browse the Featured Sites category to see Pixelpost in action. You can also look through the template gallery and read user reviews that will help you make the right choice.

It’s good that you can look at the system before download it. It has a simple, easy-to-handle interface which made a positive impression upon me. If you don’t have professional skills in web development, you will make pretty well using the basic template and pre-built functionality. Of course, a uniquely designed, featured website will require some more advanced knowledge. However, you can always consult experts from the community – Pixelpost has its own forum. Besides, they provide users with necessary documentation.

You can read the information on releases, updates and other application related reviews in Pixelpost’s blog. Bugs and fixes are also announced there and like in any open-source projects, bugs happen sometimes. As for hosting, you can host your photo blog with any provider that meets the requirements of Pixelpost.

In conclusion I’d like to admit that if you are looking for a full-blown CMS or regular blog solution, Pixelpost is not for you. But it’s a brilliant photo blog solution that takes specific requirements for this type of websites into consideration. Pixelpost can be used by both beginners and pros - it’s open source so the level of customization totally depends on your technical savvy.

CreativeMotionDesign Review

Company name: CreativeMotionDesign

Website: http://www.creativemotiondesign.com

CreativeMotionDesign offers customizable flash websites for photographers. The service brings a positive impression, so let’s look more thoroughly at what this company offers.

There two main website template categories available: Classic Gallery and Elite Gallery. The first one consists of 9 designs to choose from, $95 each. For this money you get customizable design, unlimited pages, free blog, FTP storage, multi-track music player, iPhone friendly HTMl mirror site, client upgrade account and splash page. The service provider also promises you will experience an easy content management, which you can by the way test during a free 10 day trial. To check the system from the inside, I’ve signed up for the trial period. Everything looks fine in general, however, I think it’s sort of exaggeration to call section “Design Settings” when it contain only Logo, Company name and Font settings. In spite of rich feature-set mentioned above, everything looks much plainer when you enter the CMS. Thus, I can’t rearrange menu bar, I can only choose its position on the HTML version of the website. Besides, you don’t have much to do with pages, too little options are offered.

When we move up to the Elite Gallery, we see 11 design themes to choose from. Each one costs $295. Designs have a minimalist, clean style which corresponds to the modern trends well. The list of features is now enlarged with proofing/shopping cart, video page and editable backgrounds. Neat options, indeed, but not sure whether this addition equals $200 value.

All flash photo templates have website statistics feature and are SEO-optimized. Uh-oh, gotcha CreativeMotionDesign! After we’ve tested a couple of your websites (http://tarastatonphotography.com/ http://www.peterkarp.com.au/) we found no SEO-friendliness there. Intro page is the only page that is indexed by Google, but this is surely not enough. However, Blogspot blogs attached to the sites are indexed, but this is not fair – all blogs appear in Google index and it’s a cheat to call this “SEO-friendly”.

Flash photography website templates by CreativeMotionDesign look great, but when it comes to the content management system, it’s not that rich. As a result, you don’t have many possibilities in terms of website customization. In case you like the template as it is and don’t plan to apply many changes to it, CreativeMotionDesign can be a decent solution for you.

Monday, January 18, 2010

Evrium Review


Company name: Evrium

Website: http://www.evrium.com

Evrium offers manageable website software for professional photographers. It has 2 software packages to choose from – Fluid Galleries 2 Basic and Fluid Galleries 2 Professional. These products are geared at creating and managing a standalone photo website. You can choose whether to host your website with Evrium or any third-party provider. This is surely a positive moment.

Let’s take a closer look at each of the products. In the provided product duo, Fluid Galleries 2 Basic is more affordable. The number of features provided includes 15 image galleries, 40 photos per gallery, visual customization area, copyright protection, secure administration login, photo descriptions, 1 font and logo/background upload. As you see, the list of opportunities is quite regular, nothing extraordinary is supposed. Good thing is that you can check the admin system via the live demo. You can preview two example websites as well. Design looks rather boring and so is the CMS itself. Both interface and functionality are rather plain. Basic software package costs $230. This is a one-time fee, you won’t have to pay any monthly fee. Weighing the price and the “stuff” of this solution we see that it’s somewhat overpriced.

Fluid Galleries 2 Professional is a more advanced photo website software solution. Beside the aforesaid options it includes a few more: photo description links, custom pages, editable meta data, 3 fonts to choose from. All this increases the price to $430. You can add more fonts to your website, $20 each. Not that affordable either.

Evrium provides a multi-level support which includes installation guide, help documentary, email and phone support. Unfortunately, no free trial available and we didn’t find a note about money-back guarantee. However, they’ve got a cool offer concerning ongoing saving and rewards for the existing customers. Learn more on their official page.

Evrium offers solid photo site management systems with some basic number of functions and options. Its solutions don’t stand out among competitors neither for the service quality nor for the price. However, if your requirements are not that high and you are not limited in budget, flash website photo galleries by Evrium may suit your needs well.

ITDR Review



Company name: ITDR

Website: http://intothedarkroom.com/

ITDR (intothedarkroom) is an online photography software company offering several web solutions. A product that might be interesting to you in website management perspective is “Dream Package”. It’s a 3 in 1 package providing a consistently designed slideshow, blog and website templates.

There is no anything like template demos or admin panel live preview available on ITDR website. You can only browse the list of sites built with this software and see a sample of the slideshow. We’ve looked at showcase photography websites and frankly speaking, the impression is mixed. First thing that comes to the eye is that all websites look almost the same which is quite strange. ITDR produces website for photographers whose main goal is high recognition of the brand and well-reflected identity. This is certainly hard to achieve via clone-like templates. Next thing we’ve noticed is that all designs have little, centered layout which looks fine only in a full-screen mode. With this, we have to admit that minimalist, light design give websites a contemporary look. Besides, blog designs which also come in the Dream Package look stunning. Much of this is due to the wide content area which is perfect for showcasing photos and a large Flash header against a static design.

Flash websites claimed to be SEO-friendly. We tested a couple of sites (http://www.tracyrasinski.com/, http://www.joshmccullockphotography.com/) and to our opinion this statement is a bit overrated. The images are indexed partially and URLs are not accurate.

The list of features included into Dream Package templates is rather narrow. Among them are flash splash page, large images, virtually unlimited navigation buttons, unlimited content page (it’s left unclear to us if there is only one content page available), unlimited photo album pages, unlimited contact page, customizable colors, mp3/video ready etc. I think that Calendar section and password protected galleries would be great to include. Probably this can be realized in custom website solutions for additional fee of course. If you want to sell your photographs from your site, you’ll have to additionally acquire ITDR’s proofing solution as it’s not included into the Dream template package.

The Dream Package will cost you $750 + $9.90 monthly fee for the CMS usage. This is not a hosted solution, your website can reside on your own server that meets the requirements of Intothedarkroom. As you can see, this product is quite expensive and doesn’t contain any bang that could justify the price.

In general, there is not much info to be found on ITDR’s official website. There is no trial period or live demo available for viewing. The company asks you to contact them if you want to learn more about their products or make a purchase. This is not a user-friendly step, and you interest in the offered products should be really strong to go far and contact provider for the details.

Friday, January 15, 2010

iCreations Review

Company name: iCreations

Website: http://icreations.com

iCrations provides web solutions for photographers and creatives. The company offers photo website software named iFolioz. Two others products are iProofz, an online proofing solution for photographers, and editable flash slideshows iShowz.

iFolioz includes two flash website template categories: Standard and Premium. Standard templates include 5 themes to choose from, two splash pages, 5-6 content pages, 20 galleries, testimonials section, music upload, integrated WordPress blog, editable colors and contact page with up to 20 fields. As you see, the functionality is limited and designs look plain and a bit outdated. With this being said, I bet you will be shocked to hear the price - $475 setup fee and $12/mo for hosting. This cosmic price is shamelessly plugged on the category’s main page, looks like iCreations managers are very proud of their pricing policy. You can split the set-up fee into two months though (remember you can try to deceive yourself, but not your purse).

Now let’s have a closer look at the Premium iFolioz websites. The feature list expands here a bit, involving one more entry splash page, virtually unlimited content pages, drop down navigation for your pages, unlimited galleries with unlimited images, calendar section and unlimited video ability. This division has 6 templates to choose from. Designers obviously have put more work into these designs, still the chosen typography, navigation bar design and frames prevent themes from looking really cool. Premium template will cost you $750 set-up fee + $18/mo hosting plan.

iCreations is a self-hosted solution, so you can’t install your website on your own server. However, you can use an existing domain name or register it with iCreations. The company states their every single website is built with SEO in mind. They list a few of their clients’ websites and SEO results they achieved with iCreations. Surely, those results are good, but it would be better if they enabled a showcase gallery which would include websites built with iCreations. This way we could randomly choose a couple and test them for SEO-friendliness.

We didn’t examine the other iCreations products, mostly focusing on their flash photo website solutions. From what we’ve saw, iCreations evoked rather mixed feelings in us. From the one hand, iFolioz flash templates have a solid feature set and decent designs. On the other hand, their designs miss some style and visual appeal and prices are very high. If put into a bit lower price section this web solution would be much more attractive.

Photoidentities Review

Company name: Photoidentities

Website: http://photoidentities.com/

Photoidentities supplies flash websites and web software for visual professionals. There are 2 categories of flash website templates available, Pro Sites and Eco Sites.

The eco-series includes simple photo site templates with a rather limited options and boring designs. There are 7 templates to choose from, you can see a live preview of each. Eco templates come both in stand-alone version and with some additional services included. The template itself costs $100; if you want to host your site with Photoidentities, this will cost you $100 one-time fee + $99/year. Having a blog integrated in your website will cost you $100 more, and if you want to support this package with an advanced SEO, you will have to pay $800 one-time fee + $99 annually. At this point eco templates hardly can be called “affordable”. No doubt, high quality SEO service is worth its price, but would you like to promote a website that is not visually attractive at all? Exactly.

Photoidentities offers some more advanced photography websites grouped into the pro-series. The stand-alone pro site costs $300, while the price for the package consisting of website, blog, basic hosting and advanced SEO is $1,200. The pro website includes such neat features as customizable fonts, backgrounds and landing page, drag-and-drop interface, ability to upload music, video and slideshows, etc. Still, the offered functionality doesn’t correspond to price in full measure. Pro template live demos are not available for viewing, you can browse the gallery of sites built on these templates though.

As usual, we tested a couple of Photoidentities driven websites for SEO-friendliness. http://www.nikowilliamsphotography.com/index2.php and http://jimsandersphoto.com/ shamefully failed the test. Home page data, meta title and keywords are everything that was indexed by Google. Therefore, the built-in SEO feature is implemented on a low level here. Hopefully, guys from Photoidentities do more justice to their “advanced SEO” service which costs from $600 to $1550.

Unfortunately, there is no opportunity to check the content management system within the live preview – no trial period is offered.

Photoidentities doesn’t offer a good price/quality ratio. Pro templates are worth your attention, but they are quite pricy – take it into account when examining this website software solution.

Friday, January 8, 2010

BigFolio Review

Company name: Big Folio

Website: www.bigfolio.com

Big Folio grabbed a bunch of world renowned photographers as their customers. The company provides a number of services, including website, SEO and logo design, for creative pursuers. Big Folio’s flash websites go with control panel which gives pretty much features, like unlimited galleries for organizing your photos, video support, customizable contact form, free WordPress blog install, unlimited music tracks and others. Unfortunately, there is no live demo of the admin interface available, so you can’t play around and see the functionality in work. You can take a video tour though.

Designs are done to the T here, indeed. Both standard and premium templates have stylish, modern looking themes. There are 14 templates to choose from, only 2 of them belong to the Standard package. These templates have limited storage space, no videos, only 4 gallery pages and 1 music track. With this, standard template costs $250 setup fee + $15 monthly. I think that’s too much for a great design with quite a regular functionality. They should add some more useful features, a built-in shopping cart, for instance to prove the price. Premium templates cost $450 one time setup fee + $20/mo. You get some more options to control, still not enough to justify the fee.

Big Folio is a self hosted solution, you can’t move your photography website to your own server.
All photography websites are claimed to be SEO-friendly. We’ve checked one of Big Folio powered sites http://beaposer.com/ and it was not that bad. Big Folio states all their templates, even standard, are SEO optimized by default, but it doesn’t happen so in full measure. It seems pretty much in Big Folio service is based on a custom basis which means you need to acquire additional features for your site.

If high quality design is you priority, Big Folio is definitely an option to consider as beautiful website design is their strongest point.
Publish Post

See similar products: ReadyPhotoSite

FlashPalette Review

Company name: FlashPalette

Website: www.flashpalette.com

FlashPalette produces editable flash photography templates which can be controlled via desktop Adobe AIR application. You can both see the live preview of templates and download the admin interface to play with. This is exactly what I’ve done and below is my brief report.

There are 20 templates divided into three categories: Basic, Standard and Premium. Prices vary from $66/$88 for the Basic package, $100/$150 for Standard templates and $250 for Premium sites. Nice thing is that there is no subscription fee required and you can host your website on your own server. FlashPalette doesn’t host websites,although giving a customer possibility to choose where to reside a website would be great.

Basic templates come with weak designs and limited functionality including only 5 text pages, single portfolio with multiple galleries and some limited music options. Templates from the Standard category give a user more features, such as built-in shopping cart, multiple portfolios and custom background. $250 templates are most rich in functions: adjustable images, unlimited images and galleries, different music for galleries and overall site, custom backgrounds and built-in shopping cart. Still, I must say, this is not enough to pay off $250. The overall editing environment within the FlashPalette website management application is not that versatile: you are limited in editing logo, fonts, content pages and website colors. Plus, designs from the Premium category look too similar to those from the Basic one. 3D photo website theme looks cool though.

All templates work both on Mac and PC, although Basic and Standard sites are compatible with 04, 05 PC only and 06 PC only respectively. FlashPalette provides phone and email support and you can also find some user guides on their official website.

FlashPalette is a low-price market segment representative. Hence, it’s a budget-friendly solution. However, you should remember that paying less money you get less functionality and visual attractiveness, so be sure to weigh all the pros and cons before buying this product.

See similar products: ReadyPhotoSite

APhotoFolio Review

Company name: APhotoFolio

Website: www.aphotofolio.com

Customizable flash photography websites produced by APhotoFolio conceal lots of neat features in the pocket. This product caught our attention and we recommend you to check what APhotoFolio offers for your website management experience.

Currently they have 5 template designs to choose from, you can glance through the screenshots and view live sites built with a particular design. Clean, minimalist design style give the templates a contemporary look. No heavy graphics or fancy animations can be found here, your work is the only thing in the focus.

There is no admin area demo available, but I’ve watched an introductory video and should admit that administration interface of APhotoFolio’s CMS looks great - there are lots of options and everything is well organized and easy-to-handle. Among the features included are: unlimited pages and portfolios, editable logo, colors and fonts, image captions, blog installation, slideshows, password protected galleries, optimization for SEO and more. This is web based software, so you can control your site anytime.

Guys from APhotoFolio did a great job for SEO optimization of their templates. Each site has an HTML mirror and after a quick test we received the evidence that it’s in Google index. There are also iPhone and mobile phone site mirrors available. Besides, they can optionally install a WordPress powered blog for you at no additional charge. Quite praiseworthy!

Ton of tasty stuff here, don’t you think? This product could be excellent if it wasn’t so expensive. Yes, the price is a fat fly in the ointment. You have to shell out $1000 + $17/mo hosting fee to become a client of APhotoFolio. This is a hosted solution, so you can’t switch to a third-party hosting provider. If you want to change the design, you can do that for free, but just once – the following design switches will be $100.

APhotoFolio is an enjoyable service, but quite a pain for your purse. If you have some extra 1K bucks in your pocket, you may consider this company.

Tuesday, January 5, 2010

LightboxPhoto Review

Company name: LightboxPhoto

Website: www.lightboxphoto.com

LithboxPhoto delivers desktop based software for photographers and artists to display and sell their works online. You can use it as a stand-alone product to build your stock photo gallery, or integrate it into your existing website. In general, LightboxPhoto provides a solid ecommerce website kit, this is definitely an option if you want to create a stock photo store or personal print selling website.

The company provides static image gallery building software divided into three basic packages: Standard, Professional and Enterprise. You can use each of them under two types of license agreement: the Branded License requires the "Powered by Lightbox Photo™ Gallery Software" text and link to remain visible and active at the bottom of the gallery; the Unbranded License enables you to remove visual references to the LightBox Photo, but you must leave metadata and/or copyright information in the code intact. The ability to reject free advertising for the provider will cost you no less than $100. My compliments, a great link building system, don’t you think?

The number of features included in the LightBox Photo software is quite impressive. It includes advanced price management, built-in shopping cart, license agreement checkboxes, image slideshow feature, auto watermark, tax and shipping controls, send “lightbox” feature, expiring download links, customizable gallery templates, etc. All this sounds like a good base for effective online shop management. However, there are some obvious shortcomings in this solution we just can’t ignore. First, there is a serious gap in the number of features included into the Standard version of the product and the other two, advanced packages. I mean that paying $400 for the Standard package I would expect more features to be implemented there, such as SEO optimization, request quote feature and what’s most important, CMS module to edit static content pages. Within the Standard software version you can customize your photo gallery via HTML and CSS only and this significantly reduces the accessibility of the product.

People leave lots of positive feedback you can find on Testimonials page. We’ve checked a few websites built with the LightBox Photo software. The websites look nice in general, just like a regular stock photo website or simple personal photo store may look. As to “SEO friendly URLs” feature we’ve read about on the provider’s official website, a couple of website we tested (www.lanting.com and http://www.jmg-stock-photo-video.com/) have dynamic URL structure which automatically disclaims the SEO-friendliness.

You won’t find much diversity in photo gallery designs offered by the LightBox Photo. As we already mentioned, you need to have some skills in coding to edit the template. You can enquire further customization though. To get an idea about the changes you can apply to the gallery, browse the live demo and example sites in the Customize section. If you want to preview the admin interface before buying the software, you should contact their sales. By the way, we recommend you to do that because no money back guarantee or refund is provided.
Among the advantages the company delivers are free software installation, free support and free updates for 12 months. No doubt, this is a rich solution for your website management experience, but you have to be a rich person to afford it. Just look at the prices: $400 for Standard package under Branded License and $500 for the one under Unbranded License; Professional package costs $600 and $700 respectively; be so kind to shell out $1000 for the branded Enterprise package and $1100 for the unbranded one.

Recap: LightBox Photo is a great solution if you are going to create an advanced stock photography gallery and are ready to put some budget and effort into it. I would say it’s too sophisticated for some less serious, personal photographer needs.