When comparing SpiderOak vs SmugMug, the Slant community recommends SpiderOak for most people. In the question“What are the best file sharing services?” SpiderOak is ranked 8th while SmugMug is ranked 16th. The most important reason people chose SpiderOak is:
Thus you have a single service for all of the things.
Specs
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
Pros
Pro Combines cloud syncing, storage service and backup client
Thus you have a single service for all of the things.
Pro Available for many platforms
The Spideroak client is available for Linux, MacOS, Windows, Android and iOS.
Pro Incrementals
SpiderOak updates only that part of the file that has changed, saving bandwidth and time.
Pro Zero knowledge
Data is locally encrypted before uploading to Spideroak. They cannot recover your data even if they wanted to since it is stored in encrypted state on their servers.
Pro Unintrusive
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.