I know there's no need for this here on SOC, but..... I believe that @Nancy Hart and I were lamenting the loss of our photos hosted on PhotoBucket because they went to a pay model and our stuff is held hostage. The only reason I use such a site is for linking photos to other forums that do not permit direct uploads, or that only provide the benefit to Paid Members. The site I'm working with now has a $24 membership I'm thinking of paying for some search features and to help them out, but they only offer this benefit at the $60/year level. That kinda makes me feel used. Is anyone here using a free hosting site they are satisfied with and that does not sell their email address all over the place?
Unfortunately, John, there are many sites that will sell your e-mail address without you knowing it. Simply saying it, there are just some things a person can't stop. We use the photo hosting that came with our Windows 10, plus, of which we paid for (lifetime), inPixioPhotoStudio12 and PhotoWorks. Neither of those photo websites are cheap, but a whole lot less than many are. As for us, we don't keep any photos online at all. All are kept on usb's.
Not too many people are willing to offer anything for free anymore. Either they are making money through advertisements, affiliate marketing, or subscriptions, or they plan on building up a user base so they can sell the site to someone who has a profit plan.
Apple iCloud hosts a whole lot of photos and other information free with your Apple account. When you go over the limit, then extra space starts at 99 cents a month, and that more than covers all that I use, and I have over 3,000 photos stored there. Amazon also has a free photo storage, maybe included as part of the Prime package, and so does Google Photos. I have not had any problems with my information being sold, at least that I know of.
I use Imgur.com (sparingly). Figure it will be pay some day. I don't mind paying, but the rates must be reasonable. I have no idea if they sell your email address. I am still in a standoff with Photobucket. They've twisted themselves into a pretzel changing their rates so often. Now they are apparently worrying about recovering a little bit of money from tiny (in megabytes) dormant accounts. So they've retroactively limited the number of images you can save. I don't think they will ever get over their reputation, unless they come up with some feature no one else offers. I've been getting almost daily emails threatening to destroy my images if I don't take out a subscription (which I guarantee will increase drastically later). Today they sent this. Not taking the bait. "Upgrade today for only $3 or manage your account."
I have copies of stuff on Photobucket so I could (1) attach them to forum posts, and (2) share some vacation/event pics with others. Fortunately, my "originals" are on my hard drive. It's too bad...Photobucket used to have a dominant market position. But the way you describe their behaviour, I would be hesitant to give them my credit card info under the pretense of "Today's Low Rate." That $3/month ($36/year) does not include "hosting," meaning you cannot link the files to forums or to anywhere else. (That is the feature they initially killed from the free account.) Even the $4/month says "No Hosting." The $3 plan goes up to $6 after a year. The $4 plan goes up to $8. I did not look any further because you gotta clear your cookies to get out of the Place Your Order page to look at the details of other plane. Not only that, the #Files vs Media Storage (gb) just smells funny. I may as well shell out the extra $36/month to the other forum I'm on and give them the money to truly Host my photos...but then I gotta worry about getting banned.
I looked at a pay account with IMGUR. You have to give them your cell# for account verification purposes for the pay plan.
Thanks. I understand the $3 now. I agreed eventually to pay $18/yr to Photobucket just keep that account alive. I have back up copies also, but the images are on a couple other forums, and I didn't want to destroy some content on those forums. Both are still active. You can't edit later there either. I think $18/yr was a fair price for only using 106 mb of storage.
Or, for a few dollars a month, you can get a hosting account and host them there, along with a website, if you'd like.
That is a good price. So can you link your pics to another forum? I don't mean maintaining the legacy links, I mean doing it today and tomorrow. Do you know if that rate will go up next year?
Oh, I didn't mean from me. I just meant that another option would be to get a hosting account from a web hosting company, the same kind that people host full websites on. You usually don't have to have your own domain for that, although a lot of hosting companies will give you a domain with your hosting plan. Read the small print, though, because it's common for a hosting company to advertise low introductory prices that will rise considerably after a year. There's nothing nefarious about that but it's nice to know what you're getting. More closely nefarious than an introductory price is that some hosting companies offer to give you a domain name with your hosting plan without making it crystal clear that they own the domain name. It's not as complicated as it sounds but yeah, it's probably more complicated than paying a Photobucket-type company.
I'm sorry. I didn't make it clear. I did the $18/yr for about 3 years, ending at least 2 years ago. When they used autopay on my Paypal account to upgrade. That's when I cancelled the Paypal access and paid nothing. They've been nagging for about 2-3 years. They lost the $18/yr because they were so greedy and sneaky.