Zenfolio Avis 324

I have been a Zenfolio user since early 2013, but I'm closing my account.

Zenfolio charge me a yearly fee to display my pictures so they can be made available to my photography clients. However in recent years they have been quietly archiving the galleries (including the thumbnails) so that nobody can view them.

It is possible to restore galleries from the archive, but this takes around 12 hours per gallery. If your galleries were organised into collections (Eg a wedding collection divided into Prep, Ceremony, Group photos, Reception), each gallery is now on its own in the archive; separated from collection. What a mess.

If you are a professional photographer who requires an online gallery to show your years of experience to future clients, Zenfolio is not for you.

Denise was great he helped me straighten out some things on my webpage by explaining and showing me

Archiving Galleries was a nightmare. Thanks God, everything is restored now. Please keep going as is....

Calm instruction, really helpful. I don't know of another business where you can link directly to a person so quickly and get instruction with a clear path to further assistance. Its really quite excellent. Thanks Zenfolio

I don't even have enough good words to say about Alex!!! He is THE BEST!!! The BEST of the BEST!!! I've been working with him off and on to create our new website for about 5-6 months and he's been absolutely AMAZING to work with!!! I would give him 10 stars if I could--he is an absolute ROCK STAR and helped me create the website of my dreams in Zenfolio!!

I’ve had my website on a few platforms over the years. A friend of mine hosted their website with Zenfolio which convinced me to give Zenfolio a go. I was not disappointed. Really easy to use platform, lots of templates to choose, uploading is easy as well as creating specific pages for my images. Customer support is excellent too, very efficient responses to my queries. Also I think the pricing is just right too. Very very pleased with the whole experience.

Alex is my contact with Zenfolio and has been a blessing for my business. He has taken the time to help me build a website for each phase of my business and the results are astounding. The platform is easy to navigate and do basic updates on a daily basis as needed. If you utilize all the tea provided by Zenfolio, you will have the opportunity to go far beyond your imagination. From the knowledge of the representatives, to the constant updates, they are always striving to improve so you are able to run your business as flawlessly as possible.
There are a few things that could be improved on even with all the positives, such as a gift card that can be used more than once if a balance remains. Also being able to pull photos from multiple galleries for purchase instead of having to do individual purchases.
With all that being said, I would and have recommended Zenfolio to all who are looking to build a website that is multipurpose.

Best company in the world. Extremely happy!

Love the actual interface, the ease of publication and most importantly the fantastic person to person assistance I have received from Alex, who has been incalculably helpful in resolving issues, answering questions and providing suggestion in improving my gallery presentation.

The rep I talked with was patient and easily able to figure out what I wasn't seeing. I had a Zenfolio account a number of years prior and it seemed at that time that navigating the site was more intuitive that it is now. Granted, I haven't spent as much time getting acquainted but it is easy to miss finding where certain "buttons" are that activate what one might like do change or add to a particular area of the website.
But the rep was kind and followed up with ideas and I was able to achieve changes I wanted to make. Thank you.

The gentleman that assisted me, Alex, I believe, was so knowledgeable and helpful. Not only did he resolve my issue, but he also gave me some recommendations!

Needed help in reconciling monthly billing charges; several staff members sent replies by the next day and solved all my issues and concerns.

Where do I start - firstly AVOID Zenfolio. I have moved to Pixieset after 10 years of being a loyal Zenfolio user.

Zenfolio implemented an archive system, so photos just over a year old get moved there and it takes the best part of a day to recover them - they say up to 12 hours, which is a day to me as nobody will check in the middle of the night. I have found photos in portfolio galleries being archived, despite marking them up to never be archived. I maybe on an unlimited storage plan, but is far from that. I needed to access some photos urgently in a Portfolio gallery, I couldn’t so had to dig the hard drive out.

If a gallery is archived, the thumbnail for the folder disappears, so looks very unprofessional, and appears to a customer as an empty folder.

Had problems with password protected galleries, because a main folder contains archived folders, the whole main folder password can’t be changed, each individual folder has to be changed one at a time.

Annual fee is £366, but they also charge 10% commission on sales, plus you have PayPal fees on top. In addition there are extra fees on downloads - 9p per image up to a max of 99p.
So a £20 order of 5 digital downloads has a commerce fee of £2.73, plus 9 pence per image download fee, 88p PayPal fee. So profit is £17.27

Pixieset has zero commission, for the same order of 5 photos for £20 you just have the PayPal fee of 88p, so profit here is £19.12.

Zenfolio are taking £1.85 extra per order. That soon adds up to hundreds of pounds a year in unnecessary fees - I already paid the annual fee!

There have been no improvements in the 10 years on the classic plan, the website I subscribed to is actually worse now than than a decade ago because of the ‘archive’. If a customer wants to see some old photos straight away, they can’t. It is such a backward step.

Customer support is often slow for replies, even then, they can’t answer properly because the system has gone to pot.

The platform in general - when working fine is very user friendly to both me and customers, but Zenfolio have ruined it with their cost saving measures. If the classic plans are too costly to run, just discontinue them and admit you can’t offer what subscribers pay for.

10 years and I am gone. I used to recommend zenfolio to many, now its the opposite, don’t waste your time trying them out. Try others like me who has gone to Pixieset (other providers are available). By moving to Pixiset I will save around £600 a year with no commission and a lower annual subscription cost.

Also, I suspect they have been inviting people to write reviews as there has been a number of 5 star reviews in a short space of time. I suggest reading them all, not just the recent ones.

The support staff always answered my questions and provided accurate answers and assistance.

very helpfull team .

you have gone over and above my expectations. alex has been THE BEST design help person i could ask for. he's excellent....our likely stories just really got started in december - lots more planning than we expected and the site is great....so thank you everyone at zf!

I loved my web page with Zenfolio!
The choice of templates is excellent, and they are extremely customizable.
Thank you.