OK, so I signed up for the trial at zenfolio and I like everything about it. Except the upload speed. Does anybody else have issues with this? It's telling me 9 hours for 132mb. That's only a 57 photo engagement session. If the numbers bear out I'm looking at several days to upload a wedding and that just won't work.

OK so I stepped away for a bit and it started uploading a lot faster. I'll have to upload another session to see what happens, could have just been a temporary internet issue.

I've been using Zenfolio for a few years and my biggest issue is upload speed. Having said that it may be more to do with with my satelite internet connection which is not very fast.

I thought I was having those issues too.... but then I realized that if I plugged my external directly into the pc and not the monitor usb port the speed increased significiantly.

I'm uploading off my internal hard drive, no USB 1.0 issues here. I have a larger session that I'm going to send up tonight to see if I have the same problems. 12 hours is acceptable because I can start it before bed and have it done in the morning. 3 days is not acceptable.

Keep us updated, I'm seriously considering Zenfolio!

What kind of upload speed do you have? I regularly upload batches that are around 500mb and 4-6 hours is about normal for me. I'm on att 6 meg highspeed which has 512kbps upstream

Well, I thought I was 512 up, but I just double checked and I'm capped at 256 up. May be time to upgrade my connection.

Just did some quick math and figured that with 256k upload speed it should take 5.5 hours to upload 500mb. I have a large test batch that I'm going to send tonight... I'll let you know how long it takes.

An update for anyone interested. I uploaded an 800mb session overnight and it took about 9.5 hours. At my connection's theoretical limit (256kbps), the fastest upload time possible is 8.88 hours, so it appears as though it is an issue with my internet connection, not an issue with zenfolio. I'm going to move forward with implementing zenfolio as my proofing and online backup company.

Oh man, I just signed up with Zenfolio, and I started my first upload, 360 jpegs, around 11:45pm, and it appears that it's going to take until around 3:30 tomorrow? I have a fast connection.
This sucks.

We also just signed with Zenfolio and the upload speed is horrendous. I've even tried the LR plugin to export directly to Zenfolio and it isn't any faster. But that is our only complaint...

I'm pretty sure it isn't a problem with zenfolio. Do you know what your upload speed is capped at? Most ISPs cap it pretty low.

How do you figure this out? I'm not... computery. Ha ha.

That makes 2 of us and I've been in the IT field for 25+ years

I just uploaded a small gallery - 107 photos, roughly 250MB and it took about an hour using their image upload. Not really sure how to measure that from my work site though...

Mine's still rolling along... I've got a half hour left, so it'll be finished a bit before 3:30.
The upload was 2.2 GB. Is that really huge? I dont' feel like it is.
I could upload an event this size to pictage in 6-8 hours...

That said, Zenfolio has been prompt with their email replies regarding this. The guy said it might be because I'm farther away so the info has to travel through more routers (uh..) and that they are always trying to improve their speed. They might also do a speed test with me.

Your ISP should be able to tell you what your limit is. To figure out how fast it is in reality, you need to do a little math. Take the 250mb example. First we need to convert that to kilobytes...

250mb x 1024 = 256,000 kilobytes

Now we need to figure out the time it took to upload in seconds.

60minutes x 60seconds = 3600 seconds

Now to find out kilobytes/second...

256,000/3600 = 71.1 kilobytes/second

But wait, broadband connections start at 256kbps that seems really slow right? Not quite. ISPs list their services in Kilobits, not bytes. So we need to convert that to kilobits per second, which is simple as it's a base 10 conversion... just move that decimal place one to the right. (Yes, I am aware that there are 8 bits in a byte... it's still a base 10 conversion when talking about internet speed).

So you're uploading at 711 Kilobits/second. Since this is the case I would predict that your upload speed is capped at 768kbps on your current plan.

Using the above math we can figure out if this is a reasonable speed or not.

2.2gb x 1024 = 2252.8mb
2252.8mb x 1024 = 2306867.2kb

1145pm - 3:15pm = 15.5 hours
15.5hours x 60= 930 minutes
930 minutes x 60 = 55800 seconds

2306867.2kb/55800 seconds = 41.3 kbytes/s
41.3kbytes/s x 10 = 413 kilobits

I'd estimate your line speed is capped at 512kilobits upload speed. 80% of peak over the course of 15 hours is good performance, remember you're paying for a max upload speed, not a guaranteed upload speed.

If you're exporting full quality jpegs you might try a slightly lower quality jpeg export. Dropping from level 12 to level 11 you won't see any loss of quality in the print, but there's a drastic difference in file size.

Wow... thanks for doing all that math, ha ha. Intense!
God I hate internet service providers. My monthly fee just got raised to $45/month. Just for the internet. No phone, no cable tv... they are ripoff artists.

No problem. I know that the $45/month plan here is in fact a 512kb upload limit, so it appears as though the numbers bear out correctly. I'm not sure why it's faster with pictage unless their uploader compresses before sending.