A company called Smugmug is launching an advertising-free photo subscription service today.
Smugmug offers Mac users two options for uploading photos to their personal galleries. The first is via a drag-and-drop Java application that’s compatible with Mac OS X and Mac OS 9.x. This method is recommended for uploading multiple photos simultaneously. Alternately, Mac users can upload photos individually with a standard Web browser.
The company was founded by a father and son team, Don and Chris MacAskill, after months of trying to find the best place to share pictures with friends and family. Don MacAskill was the first non-founding employee at Best Internet (now Verio). His father, Chris MacAskill, was a founder and the CEO of Fatbrain.com (which was purchased by Barnes and Noble).
Smugmug.com features include a customizable look and feel, unlimited photo album hosting, bulk uploading, video sharing, personal URLs, and traffic reporting. The site is scalable, so you can add new albums, and upload hundreds of images with a mouse click.
“Power users” can control almost all layout and aesthetics, including comments, personal URLs and custom subcategories. You can replace the Smugmug logo and navigation with your own identity, add your own footer, customize colors, backgrounds, scripts, and style sheets.
Smugmug offers three levels of membership, standard, power and professional. The costs are US$29.95, $49.95, and $99.95, respectively. See the company’s pricing page for details.