Fotomerchant 3 introduces a collection of exciting new features and also brings a suite of brand new pricing plans that are tailored to grow with you and your photography business.

Let’s grow together

The Fotomerchant 3 pricing plans represent a dramatic shift in the thinking and approach that we have traditionally had as a business. In essence, the new plans are about the photographer journey, where the value and benefits available at each level are tailored to suit the business level of the photographer. Therefore, as a photographer grows their photography business, Fotomerchant will be ready for them with the tools they need to succeed.

The New Pricing Plans

There are many benefits that come with the new plans, but we also understand that cost is often the strongest factor in the decision process. Therefore, lets go to the bottom-line and take a look at the economics of the new plans:

NOTE: The pricing reflected above is no longer available and subject to change.

With our billed yearly option, Fotomerchant customers can now save up to 22% on their overall month-to-month costs when they choose to pay for a full year in advance. This level of saving represents up to two and a half months of a Fotomerchant subscription and is our way of thanking you for your commitment to us – which we think is just awesome!

Our Transaction Fees are also some of the most competitive in the market, rewarding businesses with reduced transaction fees as their sales volume grows. We have outlined the sales per month thresholds that best suit each plan to ensure a cost-effective choice for your photography business.

The following example demonstrates why sometimes a higher priced plan can save you money in the long run:

Jane Love Studios earns $500 a month in online sales. On the Start plan this equals to $75 in transaction fees and $7 for the Fotomerchant plan cost, for a total of $82. However, on the Grow plan this would be $40 in transaction fees and $14 for the plan cost, for a total of $54. This is an overall saving of $28 each month. While the Grow plan is higher in price, the overall savings from Transaction Fees make it a far better choice for Jane Love Studios.

If you would like assistance in calculating the best plan based on your sales volume, please contact our friendly support team for assistance.

Lets now dive into the new plans individually to understand their strengths.

Get started with START

A good place to start building your photography store!

The Start plan is a good place for a beginner photographer to begin their journey with Fotomerchant. This plan is packed with the essential tools that make it super simple to create an online website and start selling from day one.

The Start plan contains all the core features that make Fotomerchant websites great – unlimited storage, galleries, photo uploads and website pages and bandwidth. Powered by Amazon Web Services, your fully hosted website will be available across the globe at lightening fast speed. We also utilise an amazingly fast content distribution network to ensure that your images load super quick.

With the addition of mobile friendly themes, your photography can be browsed from any mobile, tablet or desktop. Did we forget to mention that your websites are also mobile commerce ready? With the levels of mobile and tablet internet traffic growing rapidly each year, your mobile friendly and commerce ready website is sure to benefit your bottom line.

When it comes to selling online, it also doesn’t get any easier to impress customers than with the professional quality of direct fulfillment of products. Thanks to the large variety of products on offer from our amazing print lab partners (Burrell Color Imaging in the USA, BOND and NULAB in Australia), your customers will have the ability to order physical products such as prints, canvases and framed products. Printing and shipping of these products is all managed by our sophisticated order management system so all you have to do is approve the order.

Shoot for the stars with GROW

All you need to start selling online.

Built on the strong capabilities of the Start plan, the Grow plan brings additional benefits to the table to help grow online sales revenue with Digital Products. Digital Products are fantastic when paired alongside physical products such as those available through our direct fulfillment print lab partners. With the Grow plan you can now add this product to your online store to add value and convenience to your customers when shopping online.

We have also included the tools necessary to support your growing customer base. Keep detailed notes on your customer interactions and never miss a beat by offering a professional service to your customers. Blog to inform your customers about your latest projects and get in front of your customers online with publishing to social media.

The Grow plan also introduces detailed visitor metrics which allow you to gain a much better understanding of what your website visitors are doing when they use your website. What is your most popular gallery? Where are you visitors coming from? Are your social network campaigns working for you? With visitor metrics you have visibility on these key measures.

Conquer every obstacle with STREAMLINE

Next-level features to grow your sales.

Packed with additional business capabilities that photographers will be sure to love, the Streamline plan is all about business efficiency and promoting higher sales volume. Packages make it dead easy to bundle a mix of products into one convenient price. If you also need to offer an entire gallery of downloads with a simple and quick user experience? Then 1-Click Products is just what you need! Packages and 1-Click Products are a flexible and convenient way for customers to bulk buy from your online store.

When your photography business is ready to tackle the fulfillment of your own products and services, Self Fulfillment Products make it super simple to do so. Whether you are bringing your print operations in-house, offering bespoke products like Mugs, Magnets, Gift Vouchers, Calendars and Limited Edition Framed Prints, or offering tailored services to your clients, Self Fulfillment is your one-stop-shop.

Build on the marketing power of your brand and entice additional sales and up-selling through your online store. With custom Coupon Codes and Volume Discounts you will be primed to reward your customers and build loyalty to your online brand.

The Streamline plan also gives you access to our Live Chat support team. Our Live Chat team is there to answer any questions you might have about your account and to help you with the day to day operation of your website. The Live Chat widget will appear in the bottom right of your account, just click it to start chatting with us!

Unlock god-mode advantages with AUTOMATE

Pro-grade tools to scale your business.

Leveraging the full potential of the Automate plan will almost feel like cheating at your favourite computer game by turning on “god-mode”. Best suited for high sales volume photographers, the Automate plan provides the levers necessary to turn your online business into a hands-off sales and product fulfillment engine. With an industry leading 2.5% Transaction Fee the Automate plan also guarantees maximum profits from your online sales revenue.

We have also packed in additional capabilities to make selling online much easier when dealing in high sales volume. With Advanced Account Search capabilities you will be able to filter through the thousands of orders in your account with ease and quickly bring up customer information when needed. Automated Order Processing and Smart Shopping Cart become a powerful combination to ensure the products available in your online store’s shopping cart are best suited to the image on offer, ensuring hands-off fulfillment once the order is placed.

If you are an event photographer that deals with potentially hundreds, thousands or hundreds of thousands of customers at any given time, it is crucial to your online success that customers quickly find their images amongst the crowd. Our event search capabilities can therefore help you maximise the sales opportunity of these events.

We also understand that to ensure the success of your sales campaigns that your website needs to be able to handle the onslaught of traffic that email campaigns can generate. Through our Account Management support, our engineering team will work with you to plan and prepare infrastructure and capacity to gracefully support the demands of your email campaigns.

Important Digital Product Changes

Digital Product downloads are fast becoming the most popular way for photographers to deliver quality products to their customers. We absolutely love Digital Products because they provide almost immediate satisfaction to customers through the fast digital delivery of purchases. As the volume of digital products grows rapidly month-on-month, so have the strains increased on our business for processing, storing and delivering thousands upon thousands of digital products each day. When dealing with ever increasing volumes, we also want to make sure that each order is given equal priority in being processed and delivered in a timely manner.

Digital products are also a long term responsibility and commitment from Fotomerchant to our photographers to make these digital files available to their customers for days, months or even years at a time. These digital files can also be downloaded by a customer any number of times and can total anywhere from a few Megabytes to tens of Gigabytes overall. To date we have been able to absorb the costs associated with this but unlike a traditional print or canvas product for example, digital products have an ongoing maintenance cost for the life of the product in our system.

To ensure the business viability of digital products, while continuing to provide fast processing and quick delivery, we are introducing a Wholesale Digital Processing and Delivery charge of $0.10 per Megapixel (MPx) to the Automate Fotomerchant 3 pricing plan. To demonstrate this cost, a 4 MPx digital product (our most commonly sold digital product to date) would incur a Wholesale Digital Processing and Delivery charge of $0.40.

The Wholesale Digital Processing and Delivery charge is external to the retail value of the digital products sold. It can be considered in the same way you would treat the wholesale cost of printing an image through our print lab partners or through your local print shop.

We also understand that additional costs are never desired, but as business owners to business owners, we hope that you understand the necessity for us as a business to require this change.

Information for existing customers on Fotomerchant 2

The cost of your existing Fotomerchant 2 subscription has not changed and the release of the new plans above have no impact on your account’s billing. The price point and features you have today will remain exactly where they are and into the future.

Customers on either the monthly or yearly billing cycles will continue to be billed at the amount they agreed to when they chose their Fotomerchant subscription. There will be no bill shock come next month or next year when the account renews.

How do the new plans compare against the older plans?

As previously mentioned, there are a lot of changes that have come with the new Fotomerchant 3 pricing plans. Comparing the new to the old isn’t straight forward but to make this process as transparent as possible, we have outlined below the major capabilities available through Fotomerchant and what plans they are now available at.

We ask that existing Fotomerchant users please take their time to carefully consider the new Fotomerchant 3 pricing plans and the below breakdown before upgrading to Fotomerchant 3. If at any point you become confused about the changes or are unsure which plan is best for you, please email our friendly support team for assistance.

E-commerce

• Bulk products are now called 1-Click Products. 1-Click Products are available on both the Automate and Streamline plans.
• Direct Fulfillment Products are available across all plans.
• Self Fulfillment is now a premium feature that is available on both the Streamline and Automate plans. If you were previously having to self fulfill your orders on the Standard plan, please ensure you choose the Streamline or Automate plans to continue to access Self Fulfillment products. Alternatively, you may wish to consider using Direct Fulfillment to help streamline your workflow.
• Packages are a premium business feature that are available on Streamline and Automate.
• Digital Products now have a Wholesale Digital Processing and Delivery Charge of $0.10 on the Automate plan.
• Newly created Digital Products can now only be configured to be available for download for up to a maximum of 12 months from the date of purchase. Digital products that have already been processed as part of an order prior to Fotomerchant 3 will not be affected by this change.
• Digital Products can now be sold without the need for a digital license to be selected.
• Discount Coupons and Volume Discounts are now a premium business features that are available on the Streamline and Automate plans.
• Smart Shopping Cart is available on both the Streamline and Automate plans.
• Automated Processing of Direct Fulfillment Orders, a feature that allows orders to be processed and sent directly to the lab without requiring manual approval is available on the Automate plan.
• Ship Orders to Me This feature allows you to have Direct Fulfillment orders shipped to yourself rather than shipping directly to your customer. It’s available on both Streamline and Automate.
• Image Catalogs This is the ability to apply a catalog to an individual image as opposed to having the image inherit the catalog assigned to it’s parent gallery. This feature is available on Streamline and Automate.
• Minimum Order Value Configuration is available on Streamline. Start and Grow plans have a constant minimum order value of $0.
• Profit / Loss Reports are available across all plans.
• Gallery Revenue Reports are available on Streamline and Automate.
• Gallery Category Revenue Reports are available on Streamline and Automate.

Contact Management

• Customer Groups are available on Streamline and Automate.
• Customer Notes are available from the Grow plan upward.
• Customer Favourites is available from the Grow plan upward.
• Viewing Customer Favourites is available on Streamline and Automate.
• User Accounts This is the ability for a visitor to manually register a customer account on your live site. This is available from the Grow plan upward. New customer accounts will still be created automatically when a visitor moves through the checkout process.

Website

• Social Sharing is available across all plans.
• Animated Sliders are available across all plans.
• Free Domain Registration & Renewals are available on the yearly Streamline, and both the monthly and yearly Automate plans. Domain renewals are now $25 per year across all plans.
• Basic Image Search (Search by labels) is available from the Grow plan upward.
• Description and Tag based Image Search is available on Automate.
• Website Visitor Statistics and Metrics is a new feature that is available on the Grow plan upward.
• Lightroom Exporter is available from the Grow plan upward.
• Password Protected Galleries are available from the Grow plan upward.
• Password Protected Gallery Categories are available from the Grow plan upward.
• Gallery Expiration Support is available from the Grow plan upward.
• Pinterest Business Support is available from the Grow plan upward.
• Facebook Insights is available from the Grow plan upward.
• Hide “Powered by Fotomerchant” Branding This is the tagline that appears in the footer of the live website. The option to hide the tagline is available on both the Streamline and Automate plans.

Support

• Account Management is a new offering that has been introduced to Automate.
• Live Chat support is available on Streamline and Automate.