When comparing Shutterfly vs SmugMug, the Slant community recommends SmugMug for most people. In the question“What are the best cloud photo storage and portfolio services?” SmugMug is ranked 3rd while Shutterfly is ranked 9th. The most important reason people chose SmugMug is:
By simply dragging and dropping various content blocks (such as menu, galleries, social buttons, text) around it's possible to quickly and visually lay out the site. Customization options are context aware. So, if a gallery is open, gallery customization options will be shown, if a page is open, page customization options will be shown. To change the look of the site there are multiple themes available that can be further customized by changing HTML & CSS.
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Pros
Pro Used by a lot of sports teams for free photo gathering
Pro Easy to use, powerful website customization options
By simply dragging and dropping various content blocks (such as menu, galleries, social buttons, text) around it's possible to quickly and visually lay out the site. Customization options are context aware. So, if a gallery is open, gallery customization options will be shown, if a page is open, page customization options will be shown. To change the look of the site there are multiple themes available that can be further customized by changing HTML & CSS.
Pro Good SEO
SmugMug automatically pulls photo metadata such as keywords, descriptions and captions, and inserts them in appropriate places in the webpage so that search engines can properly index them. If that information is not set before uploading, it can be added via back-end as well. Also in the back-end it's possible to set site-wide metadata and custom URLs to further optimize.
Content still needs to be dispersed via social media, blogs, forums, etc for it to show up in search results, but SmugMug has a well polished codebase that takes search engines into consideration and won't hinder content's exposure potential.
Pro Intuitive drag & drop backend
SmugMug has a drag and drop interface that allows organizing photos into folders and galleries, adjusting how they're displayed, setting privacy preferences, editing meta keywords and descriptions, etc in an easy to use manner.
Pro Galleries and folders can be password protected
A gallery or a folder and it's sub-items can be given a password that will be asked when trying to access them.
Pro Reasonable commerce options with fair sales commission
It's possible to sell digital downloads of photos and videos as well as prints. SmugMug takes 15% of profit on sale.
Pro Visitors can be allowed to upload photos
Anyone accessing a gallery using a specifically crafted URL can upload photos to it.
Pro Good branding options
Watermarks can be added to photos, printmarks to prints, and branding can be applied to orders (shopping cart, thank you prints and stickers).
Pro Engagement and feedback tools
Photos can be shared, commented on and liked.
Pro Business account users can set passwords that give access to the backend
It's possible to set an assistant password that gives access to the backend (with some limitations). Very useful for letting someone trusted upload and arrange photos. The assistant won't be able to delete photos or galleries, customize the site or access private folders.
Pro Custom domain support
To use a custom domain a "Power" pricing tier or higher is required.
Cons
Con Hard to download photos
Downloads are limited to single photos, not full albums.
Con No Lightroom integration
Shutterfly apparently has or had an API for uploading photos, but the only Lightroom plugin to do so is outdated and crashes while trying to upload.
Con Poor site design
There are multiple "silos" in the site with different user interfaces for the same function, and with different bugs in each. For instance, trying to import from Flickr the support person had me navigate to the Flickr connection UI via Create Photo Book (which actually worked, but didn't give me an easy way for others to draw from my Flickr-hosted photos), because the "Connect to Flickr" function in the main upload screen was broken. Albums in "My Photos" have drastically different capabilities compared to albums in "Shared Sites". This leads to confusion and completely unhelpful support/help documentation.
Con Can't designate self as print provider
Con Lacks an integrated blog system
