Wednesday November 11
 
15:14
 
Goodbye Flickr, Hello Zenfolio

I’ve been a Flickr Pro subscriber for 17 months now and my frustration with the service has become so strong that despite having 7 months remaining on my subscription, I’ve bought a new account with Zenfolio.

So what’s wrong with Flickr? In a word: speed.

I currently have 60,415 items uploaded to Flickr, which isn’t even half of my photos. With that number of photos:

• Clicking on “sets” at flickr.com takes 55-65 seconds.
• Clicking “organize” at flickr.com and then “Sets & Collections” takes a good 6-7 minutes before the page will respond, with intermediate errors of “A script on this page is unresponsive, do you want to continue?”
• Once I’m in “Sets & Collections” dragging sets into collections is more painful than being hit on the head with a big stick
• Flickr uploader for Lightroom frequently times out getting the sets list
• The iPhone app times out when I try to view the sets on my account, downloading none of them

Flickr is supposed to be unlimited so it shouldn’t behave like this. Obviously its indexing system is just plain awful – it can’t handle large numbers of photos.

In honestly, I shouldn’t have renewed after the first year. By that stage I’d already given up organising my sets – which are created automatically by the Flickr uploader for Lightroom – into collections because of speed and bugs. I’d also given up trying to get my back catalog uploaded. But I let the account get to expiration without researching anything else and I didn’t want to lose access.

Now 18 months down the line, the service has just become completely unusable to me. It just can’t handle my photos.

So I started researching online and found Zenfolio.

$40 a year (see below for a discount on that) gives unlimited storage and two features I really love:

1. It keeps my photos a tree based folder structure, same as my PC – no collections/sets crap

2. Using the zensync command line uploader, it will recurse through my photo folders and upload any new photos automatically. All I need to do is run that script after copying photos to my PC and all the new directories and photos will be uploaded. I even altered the zensync php script to convert my RAW files to JPEGS before uploading. (There’s also a windows uploader where you can right click on any folder and send direct to Zenfolio.)

I could do with being prettier – smugmug looks nicer but I just found the web interface buggy – but otherwise, I love it. My photos are all finally organised the way I want – folder structures – and uploaded with one “fire and forget” command.

Despite having 6 months left at Flickr and thus wasting half a year’s pro subscription, I wont be uploading to Flickr anymore. I tried contacting the helpdesk about the speed and the replies back were just useless.

Zenfolio offer a 14 day trial. If you use my referral coupon code DE6-43F-DJY then you get a $5 discount off your first year, even after using the trial. I also get $5 from Zenfolio – but that’s not why I’m recommending them. I’m recommending them because the service is solid and fast – unlike Flickr.

Zenfolio discount coupon code: DE6-43F-DJY

$5 off any membership, even after using the 14 day trial.

The coupon never expires.

If you want a $5 discount on SmugMug use SzCGdhqMQdixI when signing up or click here - you’ll get a discount and I’ll get nothing (because I have not paid to join SmugMug and I can’t use credits unless I do), but that’s cool because if you prefer SmugMug instead of Zenfolio, I’d rather you got the discount than miss out.