Photobucket

[NDG]

As of yesterday Photobucket has eliminated free Third Party Image Hastings, they are now charging $399 annually, which is just plain crazy. It really upsets me because I have thousands of pictures dating back at least 12 years that will never be access.
What other image hosting site do you recommend?

[tolakram]

imgur has worked very well for me.

http://imgur.com

It's free now but there's always a risk. I used to use imageshack but it eliminated all free hosting and started charging a reasonable fee so I stuck with it. Then they suffered a major outage and raised fees so I switched. You can't get something for nothing so be sure to look into cheap paid services that may not host an image but will save them like an external hard drive in case you lose local copies.

[NDG]

imgur has worked very well for me.

http://imgur.com

It's free now but there's always a risk. I used to use imageshack but it eliminated all free hosting and started charging a reasonable fee so I stuck with it. Then they suffered a major outage and raised fees so I switched. You can't get something for nothing so be sure to look into cheap paid services that may not host an image but will save them like an external hard drive in case you lose local copies.

Thank you! So I guess photobucket is just catching up to other sites that have started charging for hosting

[tolakram]

Thank you! So I guess photobucket is just catching up to other sites that have started charging for hosting

Yea. My impression is a lot of these older sites used to make money selling hard copies of photos and have not transitioned well to online photo hosting. Imgur has social tools attached to images and that appears to be their main revenue stream for now. Frankly I'm not sure how most of these 'free' sites stay in business.

[wxman57]

Your internet provider may have web hosting. Comcast stopped allowing web hosting a few years ago. I recently acquired a domain at Go Daddy so I could have a place for my web pages and images.

[NDG]

imgur has worked very well for me.

http://imgur.com

It's free now but there's always a risk. I used to use imageshack but it eliminated all free hosting and started charging a reasonable fee so I stuck with it. Then they suffered a major outage and raised fees so I switched. You can't get something for nothing so be sure to look into cheap paid services that may not host an image but will save them like an external hard drive in case you lose local copies.

Thank you! So I guess photobucket is just catching up to other sites that have started charging for hosting

I didn't mind paying around $50 annually for extra storage on my account but that $399 annual fee for hosting is a bit too much, IMO. I could see that for business related Cos will not paying that much but individuals like me that this is just a hobby is very expensive.

[WeatherGuesser]

People really should look into webhosting accounts. For $10/mo or less (often a lot less), you get all the space most people would ever need, FTP access, plus your own email addresses that you van create at will. You host your own images and have much moire control over where they're displayed. There are some album software packages also that can be installed on your webhost, many of which are free.

[Kalrany]

Some people like to have someone else deal with coding and backup and such. I am one of them. We have an account at smugmug.com. The basic plan is unlimited photos, drag and drop interface, password protect options, easy archiving, autobackup, integrated print lab options (which are pretty cheap quality prints), and download options, all for about $4/month (<$50 annually). We have had the service for years and love it. Both ourselves and our family have bought prints and I have had a couple of photo albums printed that are very professional looking.

In terms of what someone interested in having links for places like storm2k, the pluses are easy archiving, backup features, and unlimited space.

[Kingarabian]

Imgur and TinyPic are your best bets right now in regards to free service.

Imgur is hands down the best and easiest to use compared to any site, free or not free.

TinyPic is free with an easy UI but the only problem is they make you watch an ad to upload a picture/video.