SmugMug - Store & Share Photos 4+

Auto backup of iPhone pix a breeze

As a casual, non-pro photographer, I’ve been a Smugmug user since the company launched. It’s an intuitive tool for uploading images from my “big” camera to share with family and friends. The desktop interface is easy and sensible and you can tell the UX is thoughtfully created by photographers for photographers. The iOS app is equally easy and the BEST feature for my busy mom life is automatic iPhone photo uploads. I don’t even have to think about it...it just works.

I find that smugmug is far superior to dropbox, which isn’t designed for photography by any stretch and chokes when a folder has too many images.

I’ve also recently discovered that iCloud back up deletes photos in the cloud if you delete them from your phone, creating a problem if you’re trying to free up space on your iPhone. However, with smugmug, once you’ve uploaded a photo, it’s there until you delete it. Smugmug’s iPhone back up organizes images by month into a private folder that only you have access to until you change the upload folder’s settings. No display lags or choking despite the thousands of selfie pix and vids your kids load onto your phone. A few times a year, I open the smugmug app and bounce it onto our Apple TV for an old school family photo night, cracking up as we take walks down memory lane.

I love this pragmatic and feature-rich tool. Thank you smugmug! Thank you! ❤️

Almost there

I was a long time Flickr and Google Photos user. I have to say that Flickr is probably the best, I just don’t feel secure with Flickr being around a long while. This is my first time giving Smug a shot. It has potentials. It’s nice to have the ability to use templates to create photo sites and galleries. I even find it a tad faster to upload batch photos than Flickr or Google Photos.

If Smug can figure this out, they would be perfect! I would love to have the ability to double tap with a single finger to zoom in. I’m a pixel peeper and it’s important. Also would be nice to swipe down on a full photo view to return back to the gallery view. And I’d like to view the exif data without having to reach my thumb far up to the more icon in the upper nav bar. These are basically the mental model that users have towards photo apps. But for some reason, I either have to use two fingers to zoom in and zoom out or at times it doesn’t even let me zoom in at all. Please update this and you’ll have a paying member for life. And I’d actually open the app a whole lot more.

Otherwise, I’m currently paying for storage and a slightly improved upload speed more than anything else.

Locks up constantly & IOS auto back up won’t work.

The app is very frustrating and for what we pay yearly I expect so much more from the app. IOS Auto back up does not work. Nothing backs up from my phone newer than 2018 but it says my backup is up to date and complete. Can only back up one iPhone so my husband is out of luck as well as my teenage daughters. Also have never understood why they limit video size. Sometimes stopping in the middle of something important like graduation isn’t an option but I would really like to still back up these to my site to be able to share with family. Uploads freeze constantly on mobile devices and time out or won’t upload at all. So many errors. It’s extremely frustrating and makes backing up your phone impossible. After you have to scroll through thousands of photos to manually back your phone up it gets tedious and you give up and never complete the back up. I expect more from the Smugmug app but would be happy if it would just work. The prices are increasing but the reliability and ease of use are not. Please fix IOS Auto Back Up. Please allow all family members to back up their phones too. Please fix the upload and crash problems.

Developer Response ,

We appreciate your updated feedback! Please reach out to us at help@smugmug.com - our team would really love a chance to talk to you about auto upload with multiple family members and the other troubles you mention.