Zenfolio vs. 500px

Hi,

I'm looking to have a longer term place to show my images online, but I don't want to go to the cost and grief of building a site of my own from the ground up. I have been looking at both Zenfolio and 500px as the most likely candidates, so thought to ask here of other people's experiences of either or both of these sites.

500px seems interesting intuit it has a lot of different genres of photography and there is a lot to look at. What I like about it is the ease of uploading images and it seems to be reasonably easy to have different categories etc. The images look good on the page. There are a lot of fine photographers who present their work there. Although there is a "free forever" pricing category - what you actually get for this seems a bit vague. What I don't like is the "social media" aspect - when I post an image, I don't want to receive a dozen emails/notifications telling me what a "great image" it is!

Zenfolio looks pretty good, offering a more structured site without a great deal of cost. Previously they seemed to have more of an orientation towards selling of prints of the images from cards to coffee mugs and all sorts of other junk that no-one in their right mind would ever want. That seems to have changed a bit, and they appear to be marketing themselves differently now.

On either of these sites, how important do you think it is to add a copyright notice to your images - is either more prone to image theft than the other?

Really looking forward to your views and comments...

Thanks, Gerald

My opinion is stick a small copyright notice on all your pictures, it probably won't stop them getting stolen at all but unless you do one of those overly obtrusive across the middle of the image ones or semi transparent ones repeated through the image it won't help. I think if we worried about Copyright theft all the time no one would post such nice images to the web. I tend to keep my images at a low 1024 pixels wide but some togs aren't afraid to post at 2048px wide which will allow for sharp viewing on the iPads retina screen and other tablets.

Good choices for sites btw.. I like 500px I view it often and occasionally post though when I often find my images hit popular pretty quick these days. Im not sure it's due to the quality of the images but more people seem to stalk new images hoping for likes and comments back. Perhaps Im just being modest though? Either way your concerns are a little justified though you'll only get notifications through the 500px site or Phone App if you get likes, comments, favs and these options can be changed.

Zenfolio is ok, it's a bit more like a true website home as you can have BIO pages, blog pages ect. I find it a bit time consuming to upload images to however, least the way I like to do it. it's also not free and perhaps not always so cheap, a tip if you do come to the end of your years membership, email them to say you want to cancel and they'll offer you a discount to stay. I didn't want to stay as I found myself not using the site so I cancelled anyway.

Another good option though a little dated in design is Pbase. It's been around for years but displays images nicely if you set original size, you can make your main page as simple or complicated as you like ( to a degree), it's quick and easy to upload to and it's cheap to use. There's plenty of customisation without it being difficult to get it looking right, it's quite simple in design. here's my site on there http://www.pbase.com/acwildlife . It's nothing fancy but it does me, I just need to make sure I keep it a bit more up to date really.

My main hosting site for my images over the years has been flickr. I've built up friends on there, almost everyone I know posts to it, including some pro's and it's got a good community element. However I'd think twice about relying on it as a permanent home for your images as yahoo ( who own it incase u didn't know) tend to fiddle with it a lot and break stuff or totally change it often to the dislike of many users. It is however a good place to get noticed.

I've been with Zen 2 plus years now, which is a record for me, cause I'm always changing.
As far as copyrights, the one thing I like Zen is the option to have them add your copyright
automatically. Use to be a pain doing it myself, but now I let them do it.

There was a price increase for mpix, so I had to raise my prices a little, but its a piece of
cake with the way Zenfolio does it.

What I don't like is and what I don't understand is they make uploading kind of a pain.
For some reason they require Chrome. I can still upload using their old way, but its slow.

I had Smugmug before which I customized myself, but that got to be a lot of work, especially
if they implemented something that would negate my programming. So I switched to Zen
and basically let it run itself.

Doug

I have been with Zenfolio now for about 2 years and have to say that I am quite happy. It's quite easy to navigate and, if you have questions, they respond to their e-mails quite quickly. You have an option to have copyrights put on all of your images if you desire. I believe the Zenfolio is more of an actual website that 500px which I think is more of a forum, although you can store images there.

Hi Gerald, just to throw in something else in the mix, I'm quite happy with Clikpic. It's rather comparable with Zenfolio, in that it generates a standalone website in a rather automated way. It has a variety of complete templates to which you can simply upload images and add text, but it allows complete custom control to change every aspect if you're up for it. You can choose to have your site on their domain, or buy your own domain. It includes options for web sales, a guestbook and (at the more expensive subscription options) a password secured part of the website where you can privately share images with clients. Pricing seems comparable to Zenfolio as well.
You can get a free fully functional trial subscription to try things out. If you decide to get a subscription, your trial site will become your actual site, so you don't have to do all the work all over again. https://www.clikpic.com
You can check the site I created with them via the link below in my signature. I customized one of their standard templates.

Hi Everyone!

Many thanks for taking the time to respond to my question - really appreciate it. Good to get your ideas and to take a look at what each of you is doing with your site or sites. Ashley - thanks for your thoughts on copyright marking and good to see your base site - love that Pintail! Doug - you seem to have moved around - maybe that in itself is a good strategy rather than staying with one supplier. I'm a Mac user, so I hope that I would be able to work with Safari on the site - need to look into that. Marina - you stated the obvious that I had completely overlooked in thinking about the difference - community vs. website - got me thinking that maybe there is a role for both. One doesn't want to be carefully tending a website only to find that no-one is visiting - so the 500px does at least give some indication of continuous activity. Jerry - thanks for your suggestion of looking at Clikpics - I had a close look at their site and the pricing looks pretty reasonable - a bit more than Zenfolio, but we are talking quite small amounts really. Not sure I have the patience or skills to do a lot of customisation and remodelling of the templates, but definitely worth considering.

So, what am I going to do, now? Haven't made up my mind completely yet, but will continue feeding the 500px site some images until I get to the "free" limit of 20 images and then see how that looks. And consider having a more extensive set of galleries on a website - probably Zenfolio...

Thanks again for your input.

Best wishes, Gerald

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Gerald Kelberg

Hi Everyone!

Many thanks for taking the time to respond to my question - really appreciate it. Good to get your ideas and to take a look at what each of you is doing with your site or sites. Ashley - thanks for your thoughts on copyright marking and good to see your base site - love that Pintail! Doug - you seem to have moved around - maybe that in itself is a good strategy rather than staying with one supplier. I'm a Mac user, so I hope that I would be able to work with Safari on the site - need to look into that. Marina - you stated the obvious that I had completely overlooked in thinking about the difference - community vs. website - got me thinking that maybe there is a role for both. One doesn't want to be carefully tending a website only to find that no-one is visiting - so the 500px does at least give some indication of continuous activity. Jerry - thanks for your suggestion of looking at Clikpics - I had a close look at their site and the pricing looks pretty reasonable - a bit more than Zenfolio, but we are talking quite small amounts really. Not sure I have the patience or skills to do a lot of customisation and remodelling of the templates, but definitely worth considering.

So, what am I going to do, now? Haven't made up my mind completely yet, but will continue feeding the 500px site some images until I get to the "free" limit of 20 images and then see how that looks. And consider having a more extensive set of galleries on a website - probably Zenfolio...

Thanks again for your input.

Best wishes, Gerald

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You can post more then 20 images on 500pk using their free service I currently have 132 images posted, there is a limit of 20 within a certain time frame but since I only post one image at a time it has never been an issue. I recently updated my smugmug site with their new templates and custom software I am very happy with the way it has turn out and I still have work to do on it. So another option for you to consider here is a link to my 500pk page and my website link is in my signature. https://500px.com/lacy I think you really need to have a custom website and use places like 500pk and flicker as a promotional tool to get your name and images seen.

I have been with Zenfolio for several years. It is a complete site with all the features you might want, including a powerful set of sales options, the ability to integrate video into your galleries and a blog. They have a plug-in for Lightroom in which setting up a new gallery consists of creating a collection, adding images and publishing.

Their iPad and iphone apps synch seamlessly so you can carry your site around on your phone.

Customization services are inexpensively available should you desire something different than the standard options.

They seem to keep current with design trends, although they aren't on the leading edge.

Overall, I am very satisfied.
Mike
www.mojphoto.com

Don and Mike - thank you both for your input and suggestions. Don, your images are inspirational! Really great and so diverse. Mike, loved your site - you sure manage to get around and take great images in so many fantastic places. Thanks again!

I have seen a reference to creating and adding a copyright line using a brush in PS, but now I can't find it! Does anyone have a reference to this or can give a quick summary of the process?

Thanks and best wishes, Gerald

I'll add just one more vote for Zenfolio for the following reasons. You mentioned the desire to have notification of comments and such. You can set up a contact page on Zen, and also set your subscription to send you email notification for any comments made on galleries or images. For the other important info you need when running a website, I have my site linked in with www.statcounter.com and this gives a wealth of information on many stats for your site. I bought the premium Zen subscription because I wanted to use a custom logo on the site. I also wanted to use the self fullfillment option for selling images. There are of course many web builder sites available. One not mentioned so far that is fairly easy to use is www.squarespace.com I'll invite you to visit my site, and hope you enjoy. www.dwphotoworks.com

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Gerald Kelberg

Don and Mike - thank you both for your input and suggestions. Don, your images are inspirational! Really great and so diverse. Mike, loved your site - you sure manage to get around and take great images in so many fantastic places. Thanks again!

I have seen a reference to creating and adding a copyright line using a brush in PS, but now I can't find it! Does anyone have a reference to this or can give a quick summary of the process?

Thanks and best wishes, Gerald

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I have not set up a brush I just use the type tool as I like to change my copyright color and or size depending on the image. Hold alt and hit the g to get the copyright symbol in PS (option g on a Mac )

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Dave Woeller

I'll add just one more vote for Zenfolio for the following reasons. You mentioned the desire to have notification of comments and such. You can set up a contact page on Zen, and also set your subscription to send you email notification for any comments made on galleries or images. For the other important info you need when running a website, I have my site linked in with www.statcounter.com and this gives a wealth of information on many stats for your site. I bought the premium Zen subscription because I wanted to use a custom logo on the site. I also wanted to use the self fullfillment option for selling images. There are of course many web builder sites available. One not mentioned so far that is fairly easy to use is www.squarespace.com I'll invite you to visit my site, and hope you enjoy. www.dwphotoworks.com

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Dave, you have a very professional web site and absolutely gorgeous work! I hope you'll post here often!!

Diane, I don't wish to hijack this thread, but will mention that I was a member for many years and mostly posted in the OOTB forum. I've even judged the weekly theme a couple of times. I have strayed for while and let the subscription lapse. I do check in from time to time to see what old friends and members are doing. Thanks for the kind words on the images. I hope that Gerald gets the info that he needs from the folks here so that he can make the best decision for him.

Thanks Dave!

Appreciate your input and the good BPN spirit that it is given in!

Best wishes, Gerald

Dave, not a hijack at all -- nice to have you still checking in! Hope you'll become active again some time. It was great to get to see your web site, which I wouldn't have known about otherwise.

500px is very good for image display and security. A copyright notice is probably not needed because their security will stop unintentional or uninformed theft. No security will stop a determined thief.

The free account is good but the very reasonably priced "plus" account has many advantages including unlimited uploads and the ability to organize you images into galleries. Mine is here https://500px.com/myrsphoto/galleries

I, foolishly in my opinion, decided to get a more expensive "awesome" account because it offered website of your own. Here's mine: http://myrsphoto.500px.com/. You may find the "awesome" account worthwhile, but I quickly decided I had mad a mistake. I asked for a refund but could not even get a reply to my e-mail. One of 500px's weaknesses, it seems, is their willingness to deal positively with complaints. Several others have also had problems getting responses to issues. But, overall, I am quite happy with them. Because of the social media function of the site, you will get lots of input when you first post but that will die out within a few hours. It's not really a problem.

If you are looking at Zenfolio for sales purposes, take a look at ShootProof. They have a free level (rather small) and reasonable paid levels plus, unlike Zenfolio and Smugmug, they do not charge a commission on sales. Their only charges are credit card fees and any lab fees you choose. Their websites are rather simple but very functional and easy for clients to navigate. They are connected with some very good labs or you can self-fulfill. You can set up several different types of price lists for different types of clients. Hope this helps.