There’s been some chatter about the slipshod practices of photo sites who lose precious content. Naturally, this makes photographers wary about their options while raising the all-important question: “Where can I park my pics?”
If you’ve never heard of SmugMug, are still seeking that perfect photo-mate or are just curious about our approach to the matter, know this: Your photos are safe with us. We promise.
Here’s why:
- All SmugMug photos and videos are stored at Amazon S3 for their 99.999999999% durability. If you’ve uploaded 10,000 photos at Smug this means on average, Amazon will lose 1 pic every 10 million years. Think you’ll live that long to find out? We accept that challenge!
- Deleted stuff falls into a queue, not a void. When you nuke photos, videos or galleries and then change your mind, we can undo it if you ask us quickly. Lots of Smuggers write to us after accidentally (or hotheadedly) deleting content and we love delivering good news.
- We’ll hold your spot for a few months if you’re kidnapped by aliens, fall into a time warp or just forget to renew your account. After all, you might change your mind or reappear… and we’re always pleasantly surprised at how many people really do.
- For everything else, there’s SmugVault. It’s our Amazon-backed, iron-clad archival service for the non-garden variety files that you want to keep. PSD, RAW, TIFF, DOC… You name it, we’ll take it. There’s even an option in your Vault preferences where you can set the number of days to hold your deleted files before they’re actually trashed.
And don’t think for a second that just because you’ve got a free trial account that you’re immune to these safeguards. Even after your trial is over, we keep your goods for several weeks so you can decide that yes, you do want to join us.
These are just our current practices and it may change one day, but we hope that you get our drift. After all, SmugMug is a paid service; We work our fingers sore so that you get stability, reliability and all the latest bells and whistles in return for that paltry $5/month. While it’s not possible for us (or anyone) to guarantee 100% safety and we will eventually close old, unused accounts, we go the extra mile to make sure your photographs aren’t lost.
If you’re unsure of how your existing photo service measures up, give us a try. SmuggLr quickly funnels your photos in to safety.
We’re photographers, too, and that kind of uncertainty would just kill us. Yikes.
Here’s to staying safe together,
The SmugMug Family
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