Choosing a photo hosting site
November 22nd, 2005 by gregr
I’ve caught the photography bug. Not sure exactly what did it…I was reading a copy of PC Magazine a few months ago where they reviewed some DSLR’s, and somehow got excited about it. Many hours of research later, and I had a Nikon D50 sitting on my table, and that was just the beginning. :-) Since then I’ve accumulated a bunch of those gold Nikon boxes (lenses, flash, the list goes on and on), not to mention a tripod and other such things.
Since then I’ve taken a bunch of photos, of course, and I looked for a place to put some of them online so I could share them with others. Flickr was the first thing that came to mind (duh!), but I wasn’t immediately satisfied with that…so I started looking around some more.
My basic requirements were as follows:
- Lots of storage space and bandwidth (I wanted to upload high-quality original images, from 2-4MB each)
- Galleries, where I could group my own photos together (by trip, subject, etc)
- Ability to password-protect certain galleries
- Ability to customize interface if I want to
- Relatively professional appearance (in case I happen to shoot a Pulitzer prize winner :-)
- Reasonable cost
I ended up spending some quality time with four different systems:
JAlbum (not a site, but an application that publishes pages to a site)
Flickr
Zoto
Smugmug
I also looked briefly at PBase, but the basic account limits you to 300MB of storage (and 900MB for the uplevel account), so that just wasn’t going to work.
I really liked JAlbum, and I was tempted to create my own site and host it. One of the perks of being NewsGator’s founder is my blog is hosted on the company’s hardware, and if something breaks, I can call one of our operations guys and if they’re not doing anything really important then they will help me with it :-). So that was tempting…but in the end, I wanted a hosted service (password protection built in, with no work from me, cross-user tagging, etc).
So that leaves us with Flickr, Zoto, and Smugmug. I’m going to write up short reviews of each of these, and I’ll let you know at the end what I finally ended up going with…so here we go!
[links updated]
This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 22nd, 2005 at 4:54 pm and is filed under photography. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
November 22nd, 2005 at 5:26 pm
What can we say about Flickr…great site, unbelievably popular, acquired by Yahoo!. All good stuff. But…[more]
November 22nd, 2005 at 6:01 pm
Up next in my short series is Zoto. I first heard of these folks at BlogOn 2005, when I met Kord (their CEO). He…[more]
November 22nd, 2005 at 6:28 pm
And now we come to Smugmug, the last photo-sharing site in my series. A bunch of folks in the dpreview forums seem to…[more]
November 25th, 2005 at 7:52 am
Greg Reinacker, who runs Newsgator Technologies, compared Flickr, Zoto, and SmugMug: Choosing a photo hosting site….[more]
December 16th, 2005 at 7:58 pm
I use http://www.ekono.net . They give 100MB free space, 1MB file size limit and hotlinking is allowed. Much better than others.
December 27th, 2005 at 9:04 am
am surprised not to find http://fotopic.net here. They give u upto 250 mb of space if ur not a paying member and more if your are.but their features aplenty, its like having ur own site and managing it.. they help u with tools though to customize your page settings.they offer the choice of ur url ..i.e fotopic.net/…urgallery name..
you can ofcourse link it if u ve got a domain name(dot tk gives u free ones!)
FLICKr: i ve been using flickr too but i too had the problem of asking my friends to sign up with yahoo or flicr first and they do not allow u resize ur photos. But sharing within the flickr community works only too
well.
January 29th, 2006 at 10:54 pm
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July 30th, 2006 at 2:12 pm
you didnt mention albumconnect.com in your review. no limits on filespace / bandwidth
August 30th, 2006 at 5:08 pm
Almost a year ago, I reviewed a few photo hosting sites. After that, but quite a while ago, I got an invitation…[more]
September 1st, 2006 at 12:43 am
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September 1st, 2006 at 12:45 am
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September 1st, 2006 at 8:36 am
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November 2nd, 2006 at 8:19 am
Hey, I found a website called VOPVA http://www.memoryrewinds.com which is really fantastic and easy to use with huge set of features.
Check it out. You may find it much better than many other photo gallery websites on the web
December 5th, 2006 at 9:11 pm
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January 11th, 2008 at 2:10 am
Hi!
I recommend ComBoost http://www.comboost.com
One of the advantages you’ll find is the range of slideshows that you can add inside your website.
July 20th, 2008 at 1:56 pm
Howdy Y’all,
Watch out for PhotoBucket. They have some nice features, enough that I went for the 25 bucks yearly offering BUT…. their moderators kept deleting pics, even though I uploaded nothing with adult content.
If one of their cubical-dwelling politically correct moderators disagrees with something, your pic is gone with the wind. Even a pic that pokes fun at something politically correct it will likely be banished.
Too much subjective censorship there. I would not have been fearful to show my collection to anybody; law enforcement, a church deacon, even little kids BUT…. irk some brainwashed politically-correct buffoon bored in their cubical and, poof!!!!! gone is your pic.
Who needs some likely uneducated self-centered buffoon to lord over you that way?
I removed all my pics and ignored their recent notice that it’s time to renew.
Uh huh, right. As if I am going to support censorship and political correctness!!!!!!
Bye bye, PhotoBucket. I will do without before I ever utilize your service again.
May 1st, 2009 at 3:18 pm
I only really heard of flickr, maybe ill have to check out those other ones.
-Jack
May 19th, 2009 at 11:36 am
At the time I am using flickr. I am also trying smugmug and bluemelon. It has been just a week and I am not sure which of them if any I want to pay yet. I like them both and flickr is not that bad either. Thank you for the reviews! :)
July 3rd, 2009 at 6:24 pm
Any suggestions for me. I am shopping around for websites for my new photography business. Can anyone help?
February 9th, 2010 at 5:27 am
www. photoswarm.com is another good photo sharing site too.
February 12th, 2010 at 5:42 am
Will, having looked at the Photoswarm about page, aren’t you a co-owner of Photoswarm? If so it would only be polite to add a disclaimer about that before publically praising your own company as if you are a happy customer.
June 4th, 2010 at 3:36 pm
Hi,
I use http://www.isphotobomb.com , its very easy and cool.
August 3rd, 2010 at 3:26 am
You should also check out ecosee.com at http://www.ecosee.com for a very solid wordpress based photography system