Zenfolio

Has anybody got any experience with Zenfolio? It's a site specifically geared toward photographers and artists...you upload your images and sell them directly on the site. It's a division of MPIX I believe...once you sell an image, MPIX prints and sends it. It's basically becoming your "middle man" between you and photo buyers so you don't have the hassle of printing and shipping your own stuff. There is of course a fee involved and I was wondering if anybody is using the service and what their thoughts are on it's ease of use, reliability, effectiveness etc... I have my own web site but it is very "basic" and I do not yet offer any sales via the site.

I have switched to them just recently. No complaints. I have only started uploading less than 5% of my images but it seems to be ok. If you are letting them handle the orders to a printer I suggest you run some prints from the printer so you will know what or how to perp your images. I used M-pix in the past so I only uploaded small 768 jpegs to them and keep a full tiff file then output to jpeg and upload it as ordered so I can to sharrpen or adjust to the size print ordered. You don't have to do this it is just my way. I have never made an effort to sell prints and even now the prints sales profits I have go to charity.(I am not rich still working with two kids in college but right now I make enough without print sales). When someone inquires about prints from me I just refer them to my Zen-site.You might want to hear from someone who is working it for income. My zenfolio is linked with the WWW on this post.

Hello,
I use Zenfolio (http://lphotodesigns.zenfolio.com) partly - I link to it from http://LPhotoDesigns.com. I'm almost 100% satisfied. They are still working on direct download capability. On some of my other posts, you'll see some lengthy discussion about "plain" photo cards. In fact, no MPIX-press items (created by the seller) can be ordered "directly" by the customer.
One thing I like is that there are a number of plug-ins for Zenfolio, including a couple Lightroom plug-ins, which is great for me.
You can supply & control your own watermarks. You can "de-label" everything if you want. I know some photographers who have some pretty neat galleries on SmugMug - but that smug mug icon drives me crazy :-).
If you want to do galleries and sell through your own website, you might consider "Shozam" software, with a PayPal account.
If you decide to do either, drop me an e-mail for a referral code (we both get a whopping $5 discount!!).
There are other options, too...it will be interesting to see what you end up going with! Good luck!

We have 2 photography businesses and both use Zenfolio as proofing sites. One is strictly for proofing and the other is proofing and ordering/printing. Both are linked to the main web sites. No real complaints. Print orders are professionally and well packaged when sent out. Print quality compares to other labs and they are always making improvements on the site and increasing features. You have the flexibility to have prints made directly from galleries on the site or, as we prefer, you can be notified of an order and then edit and upload the photo for printing. We've tried many such sites and this one works best for us so far.

I've had no complaints with them either and have been using them for a couple of months. They are not part of Mpix just partnered with them. There customer support isn't bad either. The couple of times i had emailed with a question they replied within an hour.

I've used them for about a year now. Very happy with the service/support and features - customers have been happy, too. I have had the professional level account but am thinking of downgrading this year. I prefer to handle all the orders/printing/shipping myself, so I've turned off the shopping cart and therefore don't need all the extra features associated with the ordering process.

I have used smugmug for several years now and they are good and we have gotten sales from them. But I wanted an easy way to allow clients to buy framed photos and I love MPix's frames (Zenfolio orders are fulfilled thru Mpix). Quality is very good. Interface is harder than smugmug (to set custom pricing, etc.) but not bad. Frames are great. We have the 16 in all our brochures.