I'm currently a Pictage user with no major issues or concerns at the moment. I have found that Pictage offers more to the wedding / portrait photographer than just hosting, but at the rate of $100mth or $1,200/yr I have to ask myself can I get the same service at a better rate?

Collages.net offers a 12 month plan with unlimited events with unlimited images for $699. The question that I have is, does Pictage provide me with $500 more in services and goods. Keep in mind that the $699 fee is a one time payment. Does Pictage offer or plan to offer a discount for upfront payment?

I would like to hear from those that are hosting their events with vendors other than Pictage, specifically your likes and dislikes as well as what advantages or disadvantages other vendors have when compared to Pictage.

Thanks,
Ryan

worth a look

There are threads about this that you can go through. But beware -- they tend to get heated.

We were with Collages.net for several years and they were very good. Fantastic customer service. They're the best out there for what they do. In My Opinion, of course. We ended up taking it all in-house but I still recommend them. Really a top-notch company.

We have been using Pickpic for two years, and recently upgraded to their latest version which is awesome.

You pay a one-time fee of $1249 and you keep 100% of all sales from your launch date forward. You will have to get a webserver account and an SSL, but that's not much either. We pay $14 a month at WESTHOST.com

All the best,

Aj

And you fulfill everything yourself.

It's easy to find cheaper alternatives (digilabs.biz for example) - but there are none that offer the same range of products that Pictage does (not to mention unlimited uploads and archiving).

Hi,

Adam, can I ask you a little about what you mean re "in house". I have just slaved over a hot keyboard to build our site (my first!) in Flash, and I was considering the possibility of an online print ordering system.

So, the client pops into our site, clicks on the images they want, and we order the prints. Any thoughts on this route?

I would be grateful to hear from anyone on this. Umm, should this be a new topic?

Hugh

I can answer for Adam, since he isn't up yet.

We started using PickPic in May. It is the shopping cart for photographers that Andre mentioned above. We upload our events onto our own site. We receive the orders then fulfill them ourselves. We were already self fulfilling with Collages, we were just having to pay them for the hosting and a percentage of the orders. Once we purchased PickPic, we quit using a third party for hosting. We were already set up to accept credit cards ourselves, because we accept them almost daily in our business for session fees and orders that people place in person, so we didn't have to change anything about that. We did have to switch where we hosted our website, but actually it ended up costing us less than we were paying previously for web hosting because the place we were using before was pretty pricey.

We had previously gone the route of using Pictage for a year to fulfill everything for us, and it was not a good match for us. We had too many quality control issues to have it be a good option for our business. We had ended up spending so much time working out those quality control issues, that it really wasn't saving us any time. I would rather spend that same time fulfilling orders. I realize it is a great option for some businesses, it just isn't for us.

Also, our business is a little different than many wedding photographers. We primarily focus on portraits and most of our sales are done in person with our customers, not online, so we are ordering prints almost daily for our customers anyway. It really isn't that big of a deal to order the prints for online customers when we already are placing other orders.

Lynn, I really appreciate you taking the time to write all of that. Thank you so much. Hnn, Adam obviously has a good plan - stay in bed and let you do the typing!!! :-)

Thanks again.

Hugh

Wow.... Andre J de Saint Phalle... that is the coolest name ever!

Collage.net have improved a lot in what they offer. They have a pretty slick client interface too, but what turned me off was that they limit how long you can have an event to 60 to 90 days only, and 90 days if you pre-paid the entire year, if not, is only 60 days!. That is something you have to keep in mind when you decide.

ok, just bit the bullet and purchased PhotoCart. Let's see how it does!!!

Hugh

I was with Pictage for a while, in the midst of the time when everything was goign wrong (a lot of people probably rememeber that!) and then went to Collages.net for over a year, and now I'm back with Pictage, and I couldn't be happier with the decision.

I did some cost analysis when I made the switch (which I can't find right now) but keep in mind that Collages.net charges you 15% commission, while Pictage is 10% commission. Multiply that over the amount of reprints you do, and you'll see how close the two monthly fees are.

Also, remember that Pictage offers free payment processing. I've saved over $700 in cc processing fees alone in the last six months that I've been back with Pictage, so there's your price difference right there.

I will say the Collages.net does have the most killer interface out there. Their servers that support that interface, however, are kinda slow.

Just my thoughts

-Jeff

I was with Pictage last year for almost a year and I hated it. It's not that they did anything wrong or that I had any major problems, they just weren't a great fit for me. I actually LIKE self-fulfilling. I was having all orders shipped to me for QC and re-packaging anyways so it takes me maybe 5 more minutes to order from WHCC.

I got the Easy Photo Sales cart a few months ago and I adore it. The best thing is that it's totally customizable to my website, so everything is branded the same. And it was a 1 time $100 purchase. All I pay now is paypal cc fees.

Don't get me wrong, I think Pictage has a really awesome business model and I'm glad it works well for so many people...it just wasn't for me.

I have been with Pictage now for 6 months. I love their product line. For me that would be hard to replicate that in a self-fulfilment flow at this time. I don't mind paying for hosting and for fulfilment, but one think it concerns me a lot is the shipping cost Pictage charges my clients.

One thing that has keep me in the past from going the slf-ful. models is that every shopping cart out there is ugly and seems made by programmers and not by designer. We are in a visual art business and everything we do should reflect an awesome design look. That is a plus for Pictage and Collage.net. They both have work to design an attractive website.

Hmm, well as I said earlier, bit the bullet and bought PhotoCart from Picturespro.com, as somewhat recommended by an earlier poster in another thread!!! Thank you!

Having spent the past few hours tweaking this app, I have to say it fits perfectly into my site. The ability to drop a header into one of the html pages meant I very quickly had my own site menu system in place, with the PhotoCart dropped in below.

I take the point that many carts are ugly - but I have to say, I REALLY like this one. It is not a general purpose cart, it is a specifically designed cart for photographers. And that makes ALL the difference. Print sizes in drop down menus with customizable prices etc makes this a hit for me.

Anyway, check out the cool demo online, and if anyone wants to know more, I am happy to share my experience so far, little as it is. :-)

I was one of those people recommending PhotoCart before, so I'm glad to see that you like it!

Here is where I'm at:
- I don't have the $$$$ for PickPic, even for as highly recommended as it is.
- When I was considering it, PickPick had a 45 day wait for install. I had PhotoCart up and running (not yet customized, but running) within 15 minutes of purchase. It was no harder to install than WordPress. Not a lot of Geek-Fu required.
- Thanks to PhotoCart, I made an extra $90 on my very first order made through it over what I would have made if the client placed the order with Pictage.
- Getting my prints from WHCC and delivering them to me gives me more quality control.
- Getting my prints from WHCC and delivering them takes more time.
- Pictage spams my clients with emails. Clients don't like that. (they have told me so.) There doesn't seem to be any way to stop that.
- Pictage spams them with emails, so sometimes that reminds them to place orders. I need to remember to email the clients through PhotoCart, it isn't automated.
- Pictage offers great products like Willowbooks, but I can get those from other vendors. The down side to this is the time involved signing up with vendors, getting price lists, getting everything set up.
- There are fewer billing issues when working with vendors directly. Within 6 months of working with Pictage, I had messed up accounting statements.
- I do not like that when my clients have gift certificates to use, they still have to pay insanely high shipping rates.

Editing PhotoCart was quick and easy for me, it saves me money, and I have been very happy with it. My clients have given me positive feedback on it. So two thumbs up from me!

Christine

I have to say that of all the ones I have check Photocart looks nice. And the price is not bad. It has a tons of features. I haven't seen Pickpic (is almost like a secret organization there... no trial no demo... what up with that?... But, If I were to go the shopping cart route I think it would be Photocart.


For those who use it... how much customization can you do to the customer interface?




As far as Pictage spamming... It all depends what you call spamming and when you were with Pictage. I believe Pictage has change their policies about email and clients only get emails, first when the event is release, second, when the 2x1 kcick off and when the event is about to expire. They may get other emails if there is a new special offer starting. I have an email as customer of Pictaghe and in the last two month I had gotten a grand total of two emails!!! So, I am not sure if the spamming is really an issue anymore. Plus, after all, you are paying them to market you and how they are going to do it if they don't send emails? That I may want to have control over that is another issue, but the fact is that in today's world we do marketing by email.

Pickpic has a demo available on their site. Also, there have been several photographers, including us who have posted links to their PickPic events. Here is a link to one of our events on PickPic if anyone wants to see it. We haven't done any customization to ours, which you can do.

Self-fulfillment with PickPic is fun! I simply prep the files to my taste and upload them to WHCC.com. They print and ship.

Aj

AJ, would you mind editing your post so the exact $s/costs don't get indexed in Google and used against us in client meetings?

Yes, I seen that demo, but they don't allow to see the admin side or tell you what option it has. I don't know what exactly 1k of software can do for me. When you look at Photocart or Skooks, you can see the admin side and see what you can actually do and adjust into ones workflow.

Also, the installation wait is a negative.

I did Pictage for a year. I am really glad I did. I learned a lot. Was exposed to a number of excellent photographers and was pushed a bunch in my business. The reason it had to end was cost and consistency. I felt like I was paying a lot and having to run around getting things fixed an awful lot. The thing that really killed it was waiting 6+months for a wedding album to be printed. It was nuts.

I did a lot of research and landed with Exposure Manager for my online sales. They allow unlimited uploads, prints are great, handle the fulfillment for me completely, service time is FAST (usually shipping prints the same or next day). They also charge a very fair fee - 99 a year and 10% of sales. When I have had questions, they take care of them quickly and easily. No run around.

I can't recommend them highly enough. No, the interface isn't quite as slick as Collages, but they allow customization to match my site and that is good for me. I would rather have simple, clean, functional and fiscally responsible...

Good luck sorting all these opinions out

I check them out too when I was searching for alternatives. It is inexpensive: $99 a year and 10% commission is very fair. But what bothered me from their website was that under samples you could only see screenshots and you could not experience the interface nor de admin part. For me that is very important because I want to see how it works. Same thing happens with Pickpic. That is what I didn't consider it.

The Trustworthiness factor

But what concerned me most about all this services is that I don't know anyone of those companies. How solid are they? How long they are going to be in business, etc... Anyone can start one of those businesses.

There is a big trust factor involved here. The company has to be dependable, and how can we be certain if it is a faceless internet company? We are giving them our images, we are trusting our reputation, out brand, our images, and allow them to funnel the money we are getting paid to total strangers we have never even met! And, we still responsible for what people buy under our name.

Trustworthiness... I think that is why Pictage is so popular spite of its short comming. The photographers endorsements is what establish that trust. If people like Mike Colon, Denis Regis, David Jay, etc, trust in them, goes the reasoning, we feel we can trust them to. I think that is why they have been so successful so fast. Other services provide testimonials but mostly from unknown people and anyone can buy print ads in trade magazine. As we say here in PR, paper can hold anything you put on it... but does not means that is true

And that is why many opt for self fullfilment (and is becoming so popular)... the trustworthiness factor. They are able to better protect their good name, be by quality control of products or money control. They only rely in companies that have a proven track with them, labs that they have used for years abd have earn their trust and cc processing from people that are reputable.

Think about it, why have people left Pictage? Some would say because the cost but most, I venture to say, for what I read in some of the threads here is OSP, would say because at some point Pictage let them down and they could not trust them anymore with their business. I know they are well aware of this and I am sure they kick themselves in the butt everytime one of their quaility control is compromised. (also a lesson we have to learn for our own business) It is not good to loose clients that will share a bad experience. All the trust they earned by using celebrity photographers goes down the drain by the words of "unknown photographers"... ironic, eeh?

Hi,

listen if you, or anyone, wants temporary access to my Photocart to have a browse around what can be customized, I am happy to discuss it. Just don't change anything!!!!!

Anyway, I really like it. PM if you need help with anything. Christine, thank you so much for the recommendation.

Hugh