Good image/photo hosts online - suggestions?

Overread · Aug 28, 2020

So a year or so back Flickr introduced a policy that if you have over 1K images in your account, you have to pay a subscription each year. Thing is that subscription has gone up to £55 per year. My problem is that whilst flickr has been a very good image host to me over the years its not actually giving me, as a user, anything "more" for my money.

It's hosting image, but the social side has all but gone from the site. Most of the groups are pretty much dead save for fans that add images to the galleries, but no conversation or interaction. Even some of the bigger groups are not anywhere near as active as they once were. Even views on photos are quite limited in general.

So I feel as if I'm getting less than I did when I signed up, but I'm having to pay for the privilage.

So I'm considering possibly moving to another image host for the future. I'd still keep the flickr, I'd just cull a few hundred images to take it below 1K photos and then simply not use it for any further uploads.

Are there any good image hosts that you'd recommend that I could shift too? I could shift to imgur - free and auto generates embedding links and is pretty stable. Doesn't quite have the photo details or photo approach though, its far more an image host for vast volumes of "MEMES" and other things.

Space Face · Aug 28, 2020

I'm sill with Flickr but don't use them any more for hosting pics I upload on here. I do that straight from my PC now. I've tried a few in the past including Photobucket and one of Canon's own (I think) but they seem to have fallen by the wayside too.

I refuse to pay a subscription for Flickr, Adobe etc etc so if I reach my 1,000 on Flickr I'll either delete some or open another account and start over again.

I'll be interested to see what recommendations others have tho.

Overread · Sep 2, 2020

Thing is I rather like having a neutral online gallery of photos. It's useful to link to other sites or to share on and lets me organise them how I want. Forums certainly work but that's only for that site and might mean uploading the same photo multiple times; a pain if you then want to swap it out or take it down etc... I can also do things for me - eg leaving notes in the description just for myself (eg ID names for species and such) and not just using it purely for photo display alone.

I can do all that with flickr. I'm also not opposed to paying, but £55 a year is "sounding" a lot to me. It feels like a lot, esp when I'm not in any way a power-user or such getting thousands upon thousands of views a day (ergo generating a lot of traffic and data use). So for me its not the issue of paying, its the service and net worth of what I'm paying for and my gut feeling is that flickr has slipped from value for money to overpriced.

Tropicalmemories · Sep 2, 2020

I'm in the same position regarding Flickr - the Groups are all but dead, so I don't feel I'm getting enough 'value'.

Will be intetesting to see what people recommend.

nmoody · Sep 2, 2020

This isnt a great solution for everyone but does give you a lot of control over everything at the cost of more complexity.

I have been hosting my pictures on my own website site, use a hosting service called siteground.com and then installed Wordpress (which also offers hosting) to setup a website. I opted for siteground over wordpress for hosting because I get more storage space and features for the price. I purchased a domain for myself and have my own little space on the web now that I control the looks and function of. If I get bored of the looks I just change the wordpress theme to something else. If I wanted to add a more robust gallery software than wordpress has bundled such as nexgen gallery it would be a simple plugin install. There are paid and free plugins/themes, im using all free ones as they suite my basic needs. If I ever wanted to start selling items on my website there are plugins for that.

You dont have to know any coding to set this up, wordpress can be installed with a click of a button and then its up to you to customize its settings and pick themes and plugins to make the site do what you want. You do need to be a little technical to configure everything, just take your time and learn it. In the end you will have something that's a lot more customizable than before.

This method isnt cheap though. The lower end plans you will likely quickly outgrow and want more features. You will have hosting and domain charges to pay monthly/annually. But the amount of control you get is endless depending on how much work you want to put into it. Wordpress's hosting does a have a free option if you want to try it out to see if it will work for you. Its pretty limited in features and you dont get your own domain name but it will get you started and let you play with it.

My site is very bland on purpose, I dont allow commenting and turned off all the menus. I wanted it as simple as possible so the pictures were front and center. I have not been using it as much the past few years but recently started picking it back up, https://nmoody.com

Another wordpress site I run gives you a more typically example of how they can look which I use as a worklog for my cars. https://carworklog.com

Hopefully you can see between the two how customizable it is and get inspired to try it yourself.

Overread · Sep 2, 2020

I'd considered running my own, but its an area I've never gone into beyond doing a bit of basic wordpress blogging. As you say its not free either and it adds a layer of complexity. Granted I retain far more control, but at the same time its more hassle and fuss.