We're excited to usher in 2018 by releasing a host of changes/features that we've been working on in 2017 and are very proud to release! But before we get into the details on our new features we have to address some major changes to FlashFrame that we’ll be instituting in the New Year.
FlashFrame, which began as simply a tool to crowdsource photography at events has morphed to both support large scale photography for events across the globe and provide a standalone website for the use of photographers to support and expand their own photography business. We believe that the integrated solution that allows photographers to seamlessly work within our models to provide photography at major events and utilize the same tools for their own work, will be the platform of choice in the coming years for both major events and individual photographers.
Starting on Feb 1, 2018 all users will have to begin paying for photo storage if they store more than 10,000 photos. We’ve mentioned this possibility to many of our users though have not instituted billing for it en masse. For many this should not effect things, and it will be business as usual. You can also delete photos to ensure you stay below the free tier.
For every photo past 10,000, we will be charging a flat storage rate of $0.001/photo (based on our server storage costs on the average photo). Since this is based on the average photo size you’ll be getting a great deal for uploading the highest quality photos (under our 4MB max size). Billing will be handled monthly, more on that below. Your first 10,000 photos will be free and you will have the entire month of January to cull your quantity of photos before billing begins in February.
Second, starting Feb 1, 2018, all photographers uploading photos will pay for bib-tagging on images that are priced as Free. We realize this is a significant shift in our pricing structure and we would like to briefly outline our reasoning. Previously we offered the only cost-free online tool to tag sports photography with bib numbers. Our software is cutting-edge and offers a significant speed and scale leap over our competitors who still rely on offshore hand-tagging or rudimentary OCR algorithms. Today as our scale grows and we aim to support the project solely on internal revenue, we must institute fees to offset the computational costs of large scale image processing.
Flashframe will continue to provide the most affordable image tagging on the market. Photographers will be charged $0.009 per image with tags within our acceptable confidence interval. This means that if you upload an image that is untagged you will not be charged. If you upload an image with 100 tags, you will only be charged $0.009. And, if you upload an image that gets tagged with 100 bibs which our algorithms are not sufficiently confident are absolutely correct, then you will not be charged for the tagging of the photo. As a note, our color search and time search algorithms will also be available cost free on the current platform. This is only relevant to images that are available for free download, images sold on the site still have the standard 31% cut taken by FlashFrame which incorporates tagging costs.
As for billing, all current users that intend to keep their photography up and viewable will need to set up a credit card to receive billing. Starting Feb 1 your photos may not be viewable if you have not registered a card on file. The first bill for storage and tagging will be processed at the end of February.
All of our users have been unsubscribed from our legacy payment plans, if you were on a payment plan you may have been already notified or will be notified shortly about this change as well as options for our new plans. Those who paid at a yearly rate will still receive their current support through the end of their current billing year, those who paid a monthly rate will be supported through the end of January.
Great New Additions!
To replace our legacy paid plans we’ve instituted a Whitelabel option with all of our best features rolled into one package.
Priced at $40/Month or $400/Year, the FlashFrame Whitelabel option will allow our photographers to customize their own photography storefront. Complete with your own color styling, image selection, headers, and logos. You’ll be able to manage all of your photography sales and drive your customers to a website that represents your business. Each individual whitelabel will subdomain FlashFrame so that you can have a unique company url and if you so choose, reroute to another domain level URL of your choosing.
On top of whitelabel customization features, our whitelabel users will have unlimited access to our advanced features previously on our Premium plan. Add custom watermarks and stamp photos with either you logo or ones unique to each event. Use our Email marketing tools to boost your photo sales by sending individual emails to each of your potential customers with links directly to their photos. Automatically add bib tag associations so that users can search by name or email in addition to bib number. Lastly while not yet released we plan on including more detailed analytics so that you can track your sales and improve your business. You can check out Griffin and Nate's example pages by clicking on these links!
The Whitelabel Beta will be released effective immediately. We recognize that this beta is an early release and so will offer free for the first two months to early Beta edition subscribers. We would like to improve the final offering based on user feedback before the full release on Feb 1. If you are interested in your own FlashFrame whitelabel site please contact support@flashframe.io with the Subject “Whitelabel Beta Subscriber” and we will get you started on your free trial! We also plan on following up with another blog post shortly on utilizing all of the features of our whitelabel option.
Again I’d like to wish you all a happy 2018. We’re excited for where FlashFrame is headed and are glad you’re all along for the ride. If you have any questions, concerns, or just want to drop us a line, please reach out to upgrade@flashframe.io and we’d be happy to chat.