flickr
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SmugMug made room for the photograph.
A motorcycle forum, a family’s savings, and a stubborn belief that people would pay for their pictures. How SmugMug turned photo hosting into a working photographer’s business.
SmugMug
SmugMug is a paid photo and video hosting platform that helps photographers showcase, share, protect, and sell their work. Founded in 2002 by father-and-son team Chris and Don MacAskill and bootstrapped without venture capital, it built a subscription business around customizable portfolio sites, password-protected client galleries, unlimited storage, and built-in print and digital sales. In 2018 SmugMug acquired Flickr, adding tens of millions of community photographers, and in 2022 the two brands launched the nonprofit Flickr Foundation to keep historically significant photos accessible for the next 100 years.