When comparing SmugMug vs Pixpa, the Slant community recommends Pixpa for most people. In the question“What are the best cloud photo storage and portfolio services?” Pixpa is ranked 2nd while SmugMug is ranked 3rd. The most important reason people chose Pixpa is:
Pixpa offers unlimited storage and bandwidth for your photographs on all the plans.
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Pros
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.
Pro Unlimited storage and bandwidth
Pixpa offers unlimited storage and bandwidth for your photographs on all the plans.
Pro Beautiful themes for professional photographers
Pixpa has more than 20 pre-built multipurpose themes for creative pros.
Pro Allows password-protected galleries
Pro Integrated blogging
Pro DIY pagebuilder for creating custom pages
Pixpa offers drag-and-drop functionality for creating custom pages. There are more than 300 pre-built, ready to use content blocks for building a custom webpage on a site.
Pro 12 gallery layouts
Choose from multiple gallery layouts to showcase your work the way you want.
Pro Responsive websites for mobile
Works on all mobile devices.
Pro No coding required
Drag-and-drop interface makes it easy to build a professional website.
Pro Cost-effective
All plans allow unlimited images and bandwidth.
Pro Fast and secure
All websites are hosted on secure and scalable cloud infrastructure ensuring up-time and fast delivery.
Pro Easy WYSIWYG editor
The PageBuilder offered by Pixpa is very easy to use and has custom content blocks which can be incorporated in any custom page you build for your website . The Drag and Drop functionality is helps here as well.
Pro Client proofing
Pixpa allows you to create private galleries for clients. It gets pretty easy for clients to select images and give feedback. The service allows easy workflows.
Pro Brilliant SEO capabilities
Supports automatic sitemap.xml generation, automatic robots.txt generation, meta data for each page or sub-page on website, SEO friendly URLs, optimized images with proper alt tags and description.
Cons
Con Can't designate self as print provider
Con Lacks an integrated blog system
Con The web builder currently supports desktop only
Pixpa websites are responsive and work well on all mobile devices. The website builder though is optimized to work on desktops.
Con Third-party account required for commerce
Unlike many other solution, there's no built-in commerce solution.
Con Inconvenient website building
No drag and drop or WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) editor is available for building the website. All properties have to be set and saved in the backend before it's possible to view the result that in and of itself has to be viewed in a separate browser window. Getting a site just right takes a lot of back and forth between refreshing the preview window and editing details in the backend.
Con Expensive
Pricing starts at $10 per month for the Starter Package up to $20 per month for the Plus Package. Yearly billing offers a discount of 20%.