Photo Storage Websites

Not so long time ago photo “storage” was a frame or an album – not figuratively speaking, mind you. An actual paper album. Today is a whole new photographic epoch. Digital photography has reinvented how we take, share and store our photos. Where should you keep your thousands of photos?

There are many different photo sharing website's - look around and see what’s out there!

Flickr
At the time of writing Flickr claims to host approximately 3 billion images. Basic accounts are free but limited to 100MB a month in uploads. You can upgrade to a pro account for $24.95/year, allowing for unlimited photo uploads and ad-free browsing, video uploads and more. Users can easily create and join groups around particular themes or interests. Flickr also helped to pioneer “geo-tagging” of photos – linking them to a particular geographical place through integration with web mapping technologies.

Shutterfly
Shutterfly has been around since 1999 and was among the first companies on the photo hosting web scene. Its free service enables easy sharing of photos with friends and family via Shutterfly-hosted websites you can customize. It also provides a desktop client for organization of a user’s photo library. Shutterfly enables easy printing of photos, along with some neat extras like customized borders and back-of-print messages.

SmugMug
SmugMug is a slick-looking, professional-level photo hosting site. They take security of users’ photos seriously, storing multiple backup copies in multiple datacenters. Account levels are three-tiered: standard accounts cost $39.95US a year, power user accounts provide a few more features at $59.95/year, and professional level accounts are $149.95/year and cater to the professional photographer or serious amateur. Professional accounts let users sell their photos, both as prints and as digital downloads.

Picasa Web Albums
In comes as no big surprise that Google has its own offering when it comes to photo hosting on the web. Picasa, Google’s companion desktop client, integrates smoothly with Picasa Web Albums, where users can store and share photos on the web. Picasa Web Albums maintains Mac-friendliness with uploads via iPhoto or direct from the desktop. Picasa Web Albums has a number of partners that allows users to print their photos on a range of products.

Photobucket
Photobucket is free for users to sign up for and allows users to store thousands of photos and hours of video. Their service also allow you to organize, share, order prints and a range of other photo products. The beauty of Photobucket, one which younger users are likely to appreciate, lies in its web 2.0 functionality. Photobucket is integrates easily with Facebook, MySpace, Bebo and a number of other social networking sites. It also allows users to send their photos to several blogging platforms.


 NOTE: Prices, data, figures referred to in this blog might differ from actuals & changes constantly