I am thinking about using zenfolio to host my snapshots of family and friends but it would appear that it is more geared towards people who are selling their photographs for profit. So I am wondering if zenfolio is a bad choice for me? I am going to use mpix regardless of what image host I use which is why I am looking at zenfolio in the first place.

Thanks for any responses

-Shaddix

Absolutely it's a great choice for hosting for family and friends!

You can go with an unlimited account, which does NOT include the shopping cart for selling, but gives you unlimited amounts of space so you can upload all of your pictures without concern of running out of space.  It gives you a more elegant display of your photos than any of the other sites (my opinion) at only $40.00/year.  (and if you use someone's code when you sign up, you'll save $5.00 off the first year.  Ask anyone here, they all have a code they will supply you.)

Plus you have the Zenfolio support and community.  Support is FAST and very helpful, and the forum community is the best people in the world, from all over the world, and all will help you with whatever you need.

Hope you will give serious consideration to Zenfolio!  It's the best!

shaddix:

I am thinking about using zenfolio to host my snapshots of family and friends but it would appear that it is more geared towards people who are selling their photographs for profit. So I am wondering if zenfolio is a bad choice for me? I am going to use mpix regardless of what image host I use which is why I am looking at zenfolio in the first place.

I agree - I use zenfolio for personal and family snaps and it's wonderful for that. No ads, and you have great control over who can see and download your pictures. And honestly, for $40 a year it's a huge bargain just as backup for my digital photo files. I'm about to upload a bunch of photo files just for storage, they won't be viewable by anybody. My box.net account, which is brilliant and affordable secure online storage/sharing for document and data files, would become very expensive if I wanted to put all those big photo files into it too. For $40 a year, unlimited upload capacity, zenfolio is a bargain if only for secure online storage. 

I love being able to customize access to certain galleries. In the past, as a favor to friends after their mother passed, I scanned a bunch of her old slides into digital form and uploaded the pictures into a password protected gallery on my zenfolio page, then sent them the password. My friends appreciated having access to them, and being able to download them, in that manner. (I took them off my zenfolio page after a few months.) Along the same lines, I recently put some old family photos on my zenfolio page in a password protected gallery to share with some faraway cousins.

You can see my amateur happy snaps at http://saunders.zenfolio.com - it's probably a good example of a personal vs. professional use of zenfolio.

I use it for both.

If you go to my webpage, you can see what I have available for sale.  But my family photos are hidden from view, and all I have to do is send the right link to family members and with a password they can access and download any photos I have taken.

I particularly appreciate not sending huge photo files by email.