Three things I try not to do: write about our competitors, jump to their defence, and risk offending people who could be our customers; but today I’m going to do all three. I want to write about the huge outpouring against Smugmug over their price increase – and suggest a few things you should think about before you jump ship, if you’re with them. I must admit I find these outbursts upsetting, no matter the justification. When I started to use the Net back in the 90s, it was all about support, helping each other and respect. In the world I want to live in, you respect the businesses that support you, and you resolve issues privately or move on. We don't behave aggressively towards each other face-to-face, so why do we do it on the Net? I really admire Smugmug, but they seem to have found themselves with a business model (based on offering unlimited data for a low fee) that is proving unsustainable and stifling their ability to innovate. To resolve that they’ve increased their prices by 67%, which sounds a lot even if it’s just $8 a month. A business mentor of mine said, put your prices up a bit every year so you don’t risk needing a drastic one. That’s good advice, but it’s tough in today’s environment, where most suppliers (us included) are trying to find ways to help their customers by holding prices and setting new price points. But my mentor also said, in his great Texan accent, “Don’t die the death of a thousand cuts”. By that he means, if you need to take action do it courageously. People don’t do this if they fear a backlash. Before you switch to a new supplier, can I suggest you consider one thing? How long before the supplier you’re moving to for a lower price will be forced to do the same? Ryan, for example, blogged about moving to Zenfolio because, although he had a few frustrations, it’s cheaper. But I’m almost certain that Zenfolio won’t be clapping their hands about getting to host Ryan’s data for just US$120-$250 per year (40,000+ images now, and growing until the end of time). There isn’t much profit there, and eventually only cost. So if you’re going to move, do so with your eyes open. We’re all subject to the same economics. Storage costs money, and if you, the photographer, have no incentive to delete anything, then upload by upload, month by month, the hosting company’s profit drops. Wouldn’t it be ironic to see all the clients that Smugmug say are costing them money move to Zenfolio, and Zenfolio having to carry them on a smaller fee base? Chris McCaskill has been quite transparent that Smugmug made a bet and got it wrong. We’ve done our own sums, so we’re not surprised, but then we came later to this game. I think Dropbox has a realistic pricing structure. Relatively expensive but realistic. They charge $49 per month for 500GB, and Amazon’s best price to store that on S3 is $35 per month; That leaves Dropbox with $14 to pay for bandwidth, offices, staff, development and profit etc – not to mention everyone on their free plan! Now if that is their reality, and all hosting providers have close to the same infrastructure restraints and costs, how can anyone miraculously offer unlimited data for $12.50 - $20 per month? The answer is that, for a while, new clients and low data users subsidise high data users, but in the end the maths completely screws up. In Workspace we’ve allowed you to host a website for free, even with a custom URL and no Queensberry branding, and with an active shopping cart. Plus we offer lots of other tools and services. In fact we say we’re in the Usage business, not the Storage business. What we haven’t done is pretend that the cost of hosting doesn’t exist. In the end, if we want our industry to thrive, and for our suppliers to survive and innovate, we need to understand that everything comes at a cost. Kind regards, Stephen PS Next, I guess I'll have to try explain how the big guys can store your data for free!