Best photo hosting sites... and why?

After the great Photobucket fuster cluck I'll be looking for a new hosting site, as many others will also. Hosting my own will eventually happen but I want back in the game asap to replace the PB pics and start new build threads. Researching sites has turned into a blur.

Several sites have been mentioned here and other forums: Google photos, Amazon Prime, Flickr, Imgur, Smugmug and Onedrive to name a few.

Doubt I need more storage than 1000 pics max, that could change tho. Some videos too. I'd only use the new hosting site for forums and build threads so 3rd party required. I don't mind paying a reasonable fee/ year for what I need. No super-duper premium storage plan tho, casual use w/ 3rd party for now.

So, what do y'all use and recommend? Goods and bads? Cost/ year? Limitations?

TIA

how good is prime? I have it, but I do not make use of all the perks that come with it

I'm testing Smugmug this week. It seems pretty decent so far.

Stampie said:

Stampie wrote: Ok so here's the deal. I registered www.photoberkit.com today for the GRM community to have a place to host pictures. It currently is running on my personal hosting site. I truly want this to be a community run site and to achieve those means I wish for volunteers from the GRM community to take control of the site. I am willing to help for up to a year in order to get it along. As I said right now it's running off my personal web hosting mainly because I'm a cheap SOB. I was one click away from dropping $100 for separate hosting this afternoon but I couldn't do that without knowing that it would work for us. Because I have limited space and bandwidth I need to limit the initial users to 20. Tactical Penguin gets the first spot for coming up with such an awesome domain name. Please respond here if you would like to be a user. Please also let others that need this sign up first. Meaning if you don't have an immediate need let those that do have the first spots. I started with Coppermine because it's free (see cheap SOB above) but Chevereto mentioned before in this thread might be a possibility later on. Please at this time keep the image hosting for GRM community purposes and please keep any image uploads in good taste. Any questions or people wanting to sign up respond below.

This was in the "can we make our own hosting" thread that paralleled the "photobucket berked us thread" maybe give it shot?

I host my own on my own domain. Full control, no surprIses when the free hosting site du joir goes tits up. I just use FTP to transfer files, but it wouldn't be a big deal to write some scripts to make it friendly.

I'd be happy to set you up with an account. I really want to get an idea of bandwidth and storage requirements before moving the hosting to an unlimited account.

Toyman01 wrote: I'm testing Smugmug this week. It seems pretty decent so far.

From the forum sites I'm on Smugmug and Flickr are probably the most user mentioned alternatives as they tell it on the PB debacle topic.

Have to wonder though w/ the mass exodus of users from Photobucket to other sites if there will be any implications down the road. Tens of thousands of users w/ prolly millions of pictures gotta go somewhere.

Keith Tanner wrote: I host my own on my own domain. Full control, no surprIses when the free hosting site du joir goes tits up. I just use FTP to transfer files, but it wouldn't be a big deal to write some scripts to make it friendly.

I'll get domain eventually. Short term, just a site to get back on my feet posting.

Feels like E36 M3 to be outta the game w/ project season at full tilt.

Stampie wrote: I'd be happy to set you up with an account. I really want to get an idea of bandwidth and storage requirements before moving the hosting to an unlimited account.

That's an option too. I'd only plan to be in short term, maybe six months till I get domain n that. I'd be around 500 pics storage. Currently had 60-70 pics on GRM w/ duplicates on a few more sites.

In reply to fasted58:

Sent you a PM.

fasted58 wrote:

Keith Tanner wrote: I host my own on my own domain. Full control, no surprIses when the free hosting site du joir goes tits up. I just use FTP to transfer files, but it wouldn't be a big deal to write some scripts to make it friendly.

I'll get domain eventually. Short term, just a site to get back on my feet posting. Feels like E36 M3 to be outta the game w/ project season at full tilt.

Only takes about 15 minutes to get a domain and hosting set up. I like Bluehost. Do it now, it saves you having to do cleanup later next time a host disappears.

fasted58 wrote:

Toyman01 wrote: I'm testing Smugmug this week. It seems pretty decent so far.

From the forum sites I'm on Smugmug and Flickr are probably the most user mentioned alternatives as they tell it on the PB debacle topic. Have to wonder though w/ the mass exodus of users from Photobucket to other sites if there will be any implications down the road. Tens of thousands of users w/ prolly millions of pictures gotta go somewhere.

That was probably some genius millennial MBAs idea to monetize third party content. Something something UBER of photohosting something.

Watch out for Flickr they are owned by Yahoo and now Verizon. Yahoo is still shedding money and Verizon likes to make money no matter the long term cost. So they could go the way of Photobucket too.

Really your own domain is the safest way to do it. I hear a lot of good things about owncloud if you buy the domain and want a more usher friendly interface.

I'd argue imgur is a close second in stability.

Use pair.net for hosting, You can even have your own forum or shopping cart. Very well connected, excellent uptime, full backups.

I use Joker.com for domain registration for price and political location

DO NOT use Godaddy or other sites who register your domain and rent it to you.

The Photobucket thing appears to be entirely random. My 4 page build thread is completely knackered, but others seem to be okay.

Off to find a different site.

bentwrench wrote: DO NOT use Godaddy or other sites who register your domain and rent it to you.

Umm, what is this piece of paranoia? I don't use GoDaddy - usually Tierra.net - but this seems unlikely. As long as your name is on the registration, it's yours.

I've used Smugmug since 2003, and have had absolutely zero issues. I think I have over 150GB uploaded now. Well worth the $30/yr, or whatever the basic subscription is. Great family business with a helpful staff.

No real limitations as far as storage. They used to have a monthly bandwidth limit, but I'm not sure what it currently is. I broke it a time or two, and they were flexible with letting it slide after seeing my average usage. Plenty of flexibility in displaying your photos in public or private galleries. No issues hotlinking images to other sites. I'm certain there's much more that can be done than how I'm using it.

My Smugmug Site

jde wrote: I've used Smugmug since 2003, and have had absolutely zero issues. I think I have over 150GB uploaded now. Well worth the $30/yr, or whatever the basic subscription is. Great family business with a helpful staff. No real limitations as far as storage. They used to have a monthly bandwidth limit, but I'm not sure what it currently is. I broke it a time or two, and they were flexible with letting it slide after seeing my average usage. Plenty of flexibility in displaying your photos in public or private galleries. No issues hotlinking images to other sites. I'm certain there's much more that can be done than how I'm using it. My Smugmug Site

+1 on Smugmug, they're an awesome business. They're very involved in the photography community, host events at their office, etc. Think of them as being like GRM, but for photography nerds.

I use a combination of Smugmug and my own hosting site. My own site is for "documentation" photos, usually stuff that I shot with my cell phone, mainly for build threads where the fact that I'm linking to it from a forum means I don't care about the UI for navigating to the image directly.

I use Smugmug for my attempts at more serious photography, mostly shot with the SLR. They do a much better job of a photo site navigation user interface than I could ever manage.

NGTD wrote: The Photobucket thing appears to be entirely random. My 4 page build thread is completely knackered, but others seem to be okay. Off to find a different site.

My 5 year Datsun build thread was one of the last to E36 M3 the bed on here and I thought it would be safe somehow.

Rather than finding a new site, I think i'm just done sharing longterm stuff like that. I don't feel like paying or spending days to move everything either.

I just want to say berkeley you to photobucket and I don't know the best way to do it. If anybody has good ideas, let me know.

crankwalk wrote: I just want to say berkeley you to photobucket and I don't know the best way to do it. If anybody has good ideas, let me know.

I was thinking about deleting all of my images on PB (I have them on local hard drive and DVD backup anyway) and downloading up to the free limit of the same image that says "FU Photobucket". I may not be able to 3rd party link to it, but it will use up the maximum of their resources. Really, the best thing to do is just stop using them. Delete your images and account.

In reply to JoeTR6:

Do we have a unanimous answer for the reason for deleting account? Kinda to send them a message?

RealMiniParker wrote: In reply to JoeTR6: Do we have a unanimous answer for the reason for deleting account? Kinda to send them a message?

That's the main reason I did it. I didn't have anything to lose, my stuff is all automatically backed up to Google Photos already. The only reason I started using Photobucket last year was that Google blocked third-party linking.

I like keybase.io. The hosting is kinda glued to the side, but they're free and have no ads. The space is mountable on your computer. Mobile apps exist, but the file manipulation isn't there yet in the app. It's just clean and straightforward. Most of the other "drive" services want to give you an embed code or a link to a webpage rather than simply providing a way to share the jpg.

After deleting pics on PB I was down to 200 from 400. Many were duplicates, like 3-4 of the same pic. Dunno how the berkeley that happened but I didn't copy 'em.

Downloaded the album to my computer the next night. 3-4 a.m. was the magic hour as any tries before that went nowhere. Musta been a lotta traffic on site. At least I have my keepers now.

On recommendation from users here and other forums I started a trial on Smugmug last week and liked it so signed up for the Power Plan at around $70/ year. Android app loads to site easily and the site is better and faster than PB ever was. There's even an associated forum for users, this really is a photo nerd site and I likes it.

And thanks to Stampie for starting Photoberkit and signing me on. I later deleted my account as I didn't wanna be a site hog, some GRM user needs it more than me.

I'll host my own at some point down the road but at least I'm back on my feet again.

So I deleted my account from Photobucket. I had no problem with them wanting to make money on their site, especially considering no one prints photos anymore, but they way that they went about it was the height of scumbag.

I have been reading the threads here, but there doesn't;t seem to be a consensus of another site that is a reasonable cost and allows linking. I have Amazon Photos and Google Photos but neither links to this board easily or reliably. I am OK with a few dollars a month, but it has to work and not harass me with ads for crap that I do not want. Any happy users yet?

Another note on Smugmug... the guy who created advrider (Baldy) and keeps it totally free of advertising built and owned it until last year sometime. When he sold it - he sold it to his children.

Family business. Solid platform and features. Reasonable price. Good peeps.