Photo Sharing Website Comparisons 45 ways to share your photos A while back, I posted 7 Alternatives to Flickr. I asked for your thoughts on my suggested alternatives and other recommendations that you had. I got more than I bargained for in your comments. I quickly realized that I had left many great sites out of my abbreviated list. Due to all of your great suggestions, I felt that you deserved a more complete list of photo sharing sites. I’ve included my original 7, all of your suggestions and a few others that I’ve scoured the web to find. Read on for 45 ways to share your photos. 1. 23 - It’s adding new features extremely fast, support in the forums is almost instantaneous and its interface is very clean. With your free 23 account you can upload 30 photos every month, and if that’s not enough you can upgrade to 23 Plus for EUR 20/year and upload an unlimited number of photos 2. Animus3 - Free photoblog hosting. Unlimited images and bandwidth. Search engine optimization for your photos. The original concept of Aminus3 (pronounced “a minus three”) was revealed to Jason Kravitz in a dream of March 2003. The dream was elusive, with a host of different characters including a Full Metal Jacket drill sergeant who was screaming, “I cannot tell you what Aminus3 is, I can only tell you what Aminus3 is not!” Jason was aware that to find the meaning of Aminus3 would be to uncover some great secret. The dream became reality in the form of a photoblog community website developed by Aaron Schmidt. Originally consisting of just a few friends, the site now encourages creative photographers from around the world to connect, learn and display their photography on a daily basis. 3. Art Limited - Photos, art and critics galore. This site is for artists, models and critics who propose creative, personal and original high quality work which is recognized and appreciated. If you wish to only comment on the pictures and take advantage of the message center and forums to enter into discussions with the artists (art dealer, gallery director, curator, artist agent, publisher, gallery representative, image researcher, collector, press, communication), you can create a “OBSERVER” account. 4. DeviantART - DeviantART is probably less of a photo sharing site than any of the other sites listed here. Check out what’s been popular lately at DeviantART. As you can see, DeviantART is more of an art community than a photo sharing site. And it is a very active community with tons of chat rooms and forums to chime in on. You’ll even find a forum dedicated to reports of other’s who ripoff an artist’s work. (Read more on 7 Alternatives to Flickr) 5. DropShots - Hails itself as a next generation photo and video sharing site. DropShots looks and works kind of like a desktop application. It’s made for everyone - DropShots was designed to be simple and easy to use suitable for any level of computer user (even grandma!) - NOT the feature overload and complexity of other services designed for the technically inclined. It’s all about interaction - DropShots is a destination for families to connect and converse about the joys of life captured on photos and videos - NOT just a place facilitating the one-way event of sending or posting pictures for others to view. 6. Flickr - Flickr is great for sharing photos for free. It’s definately the biggest photo sharing community on the web. The community features on Flickr are very deep and part of what makes Flickr so successful. Groups are one of the easy ways to get involved in the Flickr community. Groups revolve around a general topic that’s usually related to the kind of photos that users take or the kind of gear that they use. You can share your photos in the groups’ pools or engage in discussion in forums with the groups. Still, there are some limitations to Fickr’s free accounts that detract from its usefulness. When you have a free Flickr account, you can upload 100MB worth of photos each calendar month. This is a bandwidth limit, and not an amount of space that you have on Flickr servers. (Read more on the 7 Alternatives to Flickr article) 7. FocalPower - Currently in a closed alpha phase, but it shows promise. Solving the current problems of photo hosting and online photo management to help photographers advance their work online. Reduce the Work of Sharing Photos Online: Upload Once, Share Everywhere! Control and Re-inforce Your Photographic Brand Protect Your Work: Control Where Your Work is Shared Get Your Images Online Fast: Integrates into Your Workflow 8. Fotki - Fotki seems like it’s really trying to outdo Flickr, and may be succeeding in some areas. While Fotki is easy to use, it has a lot of different options that can be overwhelming at first. One rather popular feature that’s prominent on the front page is free unlimited photo hosting for websites, blogs, emails and auctions. (Read more on 7 Alternatives to Flickr) 9. Fotolog - Kind of Flickr meets MySpace. What makes Fotolog special is not just the ability to post photos, but the way it makes it easy to connect with others — whether staying in touch with friends and family, exploring the diverse Fotolog universe, discovering photos of new people from different cultures, participating in the site’s fascinating special-interest communities or, perhaps most important, receiving personal feedback from around the world on your photos. 10. Gallery 2 - is an open source photo album organizer packed with a ton of options for websites. Gallery is a web based software product that lets you manage your photos on your own website. You must have your own website with PHP and database support in order to install and use it. With Gallery you can easily create and maintain albums of photos via an intuitive interface. Photo management includes automatic thumbnail creation, image resizing, rotation, ordering, captioning, searching and more. Albums and photos can have view, edit, delete and other permissions per individual authenticated user for an additional level of privacy. It’s great for communities - give accounts to your friends and family and let them upload and manage their own photos on your website! 11. Humble Voice - More than just photography, it’s for artists of all genres - film, word, photography, art and music Humble Voice offers a variety of inspired features geared toward both local and widespread audiences to view and create artist profiles. Each anomalous profile offers ample views of photography, art, film, writing or music. By creating a profile, one can upload, maintain and manage not only a community of friends and family, but also a vantage point to share your own artistic creations - in whichever form they may abound. 12. ImageEvent - Available in premium and pro-premium flavors, at $24.95 and $64.95 per year respectively. The premium version allows you to store 1500 images. The pro-premium is unlimited. ImageEvent allows you to upload in a variety of ways - everything from a single file upload, to using ftp or even .zip files and more. You can also share a ton of other file formats, including videos and even documents. You can sign up for a free 21-day trial to take it for a test drive. 13. Ipernity - Share whatever you want with whoever you want - photos, videos, audio, docs. Currently in beta and free to join. 14. Kodak Gallery - Commonly known as a source for cheap prints for your snapshots. However, you can sign up for the premium service to enable enhanced hosting features and get a break on 4×6? prints for only $0.10. There are two plans, one for $25 and one for $50. The latter of the two gives you the $0.10 print break. You can also get unique domain, such as www.kodakgallery.com/yournamehere. Unlimited download bandwidth applies to both plans. 15. Koffee Photo - Software and online hosting combined into one. KoffeePhoto software helps you create and manage photo albums on your computer. Every album you create gets its web page allowing you to browse and share your photos from anywhere. Album hosting and photo sharing is unlimited and free. KoffeePhoto automatically synchronizes your high resolution pictures across your different computers and with your sharing fellows. In case of data loss KoffeePhoto recovers your whole photo library in one click. KoffeePhoto provides direct print ordering through partner services while simplifying the process of uploading the pictures. 16. Multiply - For true multimedia types. It’s likely to be a big hit with bloggers and facebook fans due to the integrated sharing options. Multiply gives you an easy way to share all kinds of digital media, including photos, blogs, videos, music and more, all in one convenient place: your own personal web site. With Multiply, you can share and discuss your stuff with everyone in your “social network,” and also be alerted whenever they have something new. Your personal web site on Multiply - http://YOURNAME.multiply.com - is the one place where you can share many different types of content. No longer do you, or your friends and family, need to learn how to use separate sites (and keep track of separate IDs, passwords, and links). 17. My Photo Album - Another unlimited photo hosting option. My Photo Album also permits video hosting. Also good for bloggers and socialites on the likes of MySpace and Facebook for its integrated sharing. There are quite a few typos in the copy of the pages that I browsed through, along with some browser compatibility issues, which makes the site and service seem kind of amateurish. Interestingly, the main page features a banner seeking current Flickr users and provides instructions on how to migrate your Flickr account to My Photo Album. 18. One True Media - A very Web 2.0 looking site that’s clearly geared toward social media users and bloggers. Makes slideshow and video montages, among other things like photo books and ecards. Not really a photo hosting solution, but if you need to feature a slideshow on your blog, it could be an option. 19. Panoramio - Acquired by Google last year, Panoramio is photo sharing meets GPS. Works with ATP’s Photo Finder to geotag photos automatically. 20. PBase - PBase does not offer a free account option. You get 500MB of storage for $23 per year and you can get 1500MB for $60 per year. Additional storage can be added at any time in increments of 500MB. You can create an unlimited number of galleries from your photos stored on PBase’s servers. PBase offers StatCounter, Google Analytics and Extreme Tracking capabilities for each of your galleries. There is also a PBase forum community that users can participate in. PBase users also publish a professional looking magazine, aptly named PBase Magazine, that has a pretty cool history. 21. Phanfare - Very family oriented with security features as a headline offering. With Phanfare, your photos and videos are beautifully presented on the web for your friends and family to enjoy, ad-free. . . . From wedding bells to the arrival of a new baby, Phanfare has the perfect album style to showcase all of your treasured photos and videos. . . . Phanfare’s optional Windows and Mac desktop applications give you even more control. The blazing fast uploads mean that your albums will be ready to be shared within moments. . . . Phanfare stores your full-size photos and high-quality videos. Download these images and videos as often as you like. All Phanfare members can store up to 1GB of photos and videos for no charge. Unlimited storage is available for just $54.95 per year. 22. Photo.net - Photo.net will likely only appeal to serious photographers. It is a huge community of amateur and professional photographers with a variety of skill levels and photographic experiences. You can upload your photos and submit them for comment and critique. Likewise, you can comment and critique fellow photographers’ submissions. You get your own gallery to post photos into. You get a few more features by making a $20 donation each year. Additionally, you can participate in the very active (and moderated) forums. I’ve learned a lot from photo.net over the past couple of years. I still find myself reading the forums and asking the occasional question when I need some advice on a particular matter. If you’re new to photography or you simply want to learn more, photo.net is probably one of the better online resources out there. 23. Photobucket - Photobucket is a media management site for photos and video. It allows one click publishing to sites like MySpace, Facebook, Friendster and Xanga. It is clearly geared toward the social media user. You can use Photobucket to create slideshows of photos and video mashups. There’s a 1GB space limit for images and video clips in free accounts. That’s not much when you consider file sizes of photos these days. Additionally, free accounts are limited to 25GB of monthly bandwidth. That’s quite a lot bandwidth for photos; however, I’m not sure how long that would hold up if you’ve got a lot of video clips on there. 24. PhotoSIG - Another more serious photography community. photoSIG is a community of photographers and photography enthusiasts, ranging from amateurs to working professionals. photoSIG members may critique photos that have been submitted by other users and may also submit their own photos for review by the community. photoSIG is designed to be self-maintaining. The worthiness, or unworthiness, of photos and critiques submitted by users is determined by the user community. Users have the opportunity to comment, favorably or unfavorably, on photos and on critiques submitted by other users. In addition to the editorial control exerted by the community via the rating system, photoSIG itself also attempts to encourage high-quality critiques by only allowing critiques that conform to photoSIG’s quality standard to affect a photographer’s rating. 25. Photoworks - Supporting both film and digital, Photoworks offers services that appeal to those who like Kodak Gallery. I recall using Photoworks a dozen or so years ago for film processing, which seemed to work ok at the time; however, I don’t think that I’ve used Photoworks in the past decade. That sentence makes me feel older than I want to. 26. Photrade - Share Photos. Get Paid. Photrade provides the functionality of photo sharing (Flickr/Photobucket) + stock photography sales (istock) + photo print sales at any price (SmugMug) + Photo Protection (currently watermarking + breakthrough upstream protection ideas I can’t talk about yet) + ad revenue (NEW) all in one site. Choose the services you want to use - they are all optional and all free (we charge a commission on sales). From a user experience perspective its as simple as uploading your images and setting your prices. The ad revenue sharing is probably the most unique part of the site. Users earn ad revenue from 3 sources. First, ad revenue is earned from ads hosted in the galleries (currently google ads on the left and right banners) - we payout on a CPM basis every time a photo gallery is viewed (not real time payouts - we do periodic deposits). Second, through our Patent Pending Picture-in-Picture ad platform an ad is embedded in the image when it get shared/linked to by other users (you can turn the ad on/off when you share your own images). We payout on a CPM basis (currently no payout in the private beta test). If your image is linked to or used by anyone on the internet, you earn ad revenue every time it is viewed. Third, users earn ad revenue from splashscreen ads every time their image is clicked on and the user is brought to their image on Photrade.com. So, when the image is shared either by the user or by anyone online the user benefits - through 3 potential ad revenue streams PLUS the opportunity to sell prints and stock. Plus we have photo merchandise, stock and prints that you can sell at any price (including the base price with no markups if you prefer). - Krista Neher, CMO (via email) 27. Picasa - Google’s free photo organizer. It combines editing software with photo sharing solutions via Picasa Web Albums. Picasa Web Albums is the fast and easy way to put your photos online so you can start sharing. Use it with the Picasa software to upload entire albums of high quality photos in a click of the software’s “Web Album” button, or use your normal web browser to add pics. Each account gets 1GB (and counting!) of free storage - that’s enough to post and share around 4,000 standard resolution photos. 28. Picateers - Fundraising meets photography. Imagine running your own school portrait program and raising thousands of dollars at the same time! Today’s digital cameras and Picateers Portrait Fundraiser makes it easy and fun to do. It’s simple. We help your school or organization find a talented volunteer parent or teacher to take the photos. With guidance from us, they snap the pictures, and we do the rest. You end up with great portraits and 50% cash back on all revenue. Now that’s something to smile about. 29. Pickle -Hails itself as next-gen media sharing. Photos and videos in one. Instant sharing via camera phones. In addition to sharing items on Pickle, you can embed individual photos and videos as well as entire channels on other websites such as MySpace, Blogger, and eBay. Each channel you create has its own viewing page on Pickle. You can customize pages by selecting templates to fit the occasion. To share your media, Pickle provides unique links to your account homepage, each specific channel, as well as your individual photos and videos. You will be taking digital videos and photos for the rest of your life. Pickle provides tools to help you organize as your account grows over time. Assign captions and tags. Sort by date uploaded or taken. Search your whole collection instantly. By offering a complete solution to storing and organizing all your personal media, Pickle lets you build and maintain a dynamic archive of memories. Pickle gives you a path to grow. 30. PicMe - A unique take on photo organization for online sharing. PicMe sets itself apart by allowing you to organize your photos into stacks. The photos that you love to share, view and enjoy are now hidden away in your computer like a digital shoe box. PicMe is a tool for letting you easily see, view, share and enjoy your thousands of pictures. PicMe makes it easy to share a lifetime collection of photos quickly and securely with friends and family, right from your desktop. PicMe uses stacks to allow you to see 1000’s of photos at once. You have to try to see for yourself. 31. Pix.ie - More free photo sharing. It seems a lot like Flickr, except it’s Irish. Pix.ie is Ireland’s new online photo sharing community! We provide you with a safe place to upload, share and permanently store your photos online. We’re offering a massive 500MB upload limit per month! That’s up to 6GB per year for FREE! With pix.ie you can: Join the community and allow others to see your photos within minutes! Organise your photos using into easy to manage albums and tags. Set detailed permissions on each photo so that others only see the photos you want them to see! 32. Pixamo - Again, similar to Flickr, but a little more like Flickr meets Facebook. Your free account gets you 2 gigs of total storage, which can get chewed up pretty quick if you’re uploading full-res images. 33. RedBubble - Not limited to just photos, RedBubble is truly an artist’s site. The RedBubble community exists to challenge the elitism of the traditional art world. We believe that everyone’s an artist. We think creative expression and communication should be encouraged and celebrated. The RedBubble website helps us communicate with artists and showcase the work created by the community. 34. rmbr - More photo sharing and fun for the social media hooligans out there. rmbr is a funware application that combines the best of social multiplayer games and digital photography to maximize fun, stickiness and virtual item revenue. Unlike current photosharing sites, rmbr is designed to be easy and engaging: it works with existing social networks, automatically synchronizes your photos while ensuring the best ones come to the surface, and allows you to instantly message, doodle and play photo games with your friends and family. 35. Shutterfly - Yeah, you’ve heard of these guys. More printing and sharing on par with Kodak Gallery and others like them. Shutterfly has been really pushing their photobooks. Admittedly, they look pretty cool for fun projects, but their photo quality from prints is rather lacking. 36. Slide - Taking the MySpace and Facebook crowd by storm, Slide offers photo hosting and sharing, simple editing, slideshow creations and more. Not to be taken too seriously, but if you need their services, it’s totally free. 37. SmugMug - Ah, SmugMug. SmugMug is my personal favorite for sharing and hosting images on the web. There’s no free plan to choose from; however, it is well worth the price of admission for me. The SmugMug Standard Account is $39.95 per year. The SmugMug Power Account is $59.95 per year. The SmugMug Pro Account is $149.95 per year. You can see the differences in the features here. SmugMug keeps 4 backup copies of each photo in 3 states. You get unlimited storage in all plans. Your can see your photos without registering, and without spam. The handful of times that I’ve needed to contact support, they’ve gotten back to me with a real answer within minutes. Pro users (I’m one) get the ability to sell photos and set their own prices. I don’t sell a lot of photos; however, I share tons. I use SmugMug to share photos on Photography Bay and with friends and family. I can make galleries private or password protected and even limit the size of photos that are viewable by others. SmugMug also allows you to employ right-click protection to keep the pervasive use of downloading curbed. I know there are ways around it, but it’s not as easy to do as Flickr. The print quality that you get from SmugMug is surprisingly good. Printing is outsourced through EZ Prints and you get the option to use auto-enhancing or your own true color adjustments. It’s not on par with the likes of MyPhotopipe.com, but it beats the heck out of Wal-Mart. If you think more polished look of SmugMug is your cup of tea, you can use this code ( 7jCtURK05RxCQ ) in the ‘Referred by’ field on the signup form to save $5 from whatever account you sign up for. (Disclosure: I get a credit as well.) 38. Snapfish.com by HP - Another popular photo printer like Kodak and Shutterfly. Snapfish offers unlimited hosted options and a variety of print options. You can still send film in to get developed at Snapfish too. 39. Tabblo - A place to make cool stuff with your photos. Tabblo was started in 2005 with a simple observation: There is no good online application for putting together photos and words with styled templates that can be customized by the author for the purpose of telling a story. While there are plenty of online photo-sharing sites, and a host of options for writing (keeping a blog), doing both together requires a level of commitment not possessed by many. Tabblo also has opened up a developer tool kit in hopes of expanding its reach. The Tabblo Print Toolkit (TPT) is a suite of developer tools for making websites more printable. With our first release you will be able to re-format a web page into printable templates through calls to our templating engine. 40. Walgreens - Yep, you can upload photos to Walgreens.com. $0.12 prints and limited sharing options. Not that you would, but you could. 41. Webshots - Seems like a decent photo hosting and sharing site with both free and premium accounts. The free account gives you 1000 photos plus 100 more for each month of membership. Premium accounts ups the ante to 5000 photos plus 500 more for each month of membership. You can also download the Webshots Desktop software: Webshots Desktop is a state-of-the-art photo-management application that provides tools for managing photo albums and sharing images online. With the Webshots Desktop, you can: Upload photos from a digital camera to your Webshots albums with one click. Track and view the photo albums of you friends and family. Alerts when favorite members have uploaded and shared new images. Alerts when new professional photos are available in Pro Shots. Offers wallpaper and slideshow functionality. Bonus Webshots Toolbar lets you search Webshots from your browser (IE only). 42. Winkflash - Buy prints for $0.06 for a 4×6? print. Get unlimited storage - forever. Public sharing with your custom domain, like YourName.winkflash.com. Sounds good. 43. Zenfolio - Where pros go to share their photos. Zenfolio is a hosting service for photo galleries. You can upload and elegantly share an unlimited number of photos using simple and intuitive tools. Prices range from $25 to $100 per year. Reminds me of SmugMug in functionality. Uses EZ Photo (same as SmugMug) and MPix for printing. Check out a demo album. 44. Zooomr -Reminds me a lot of Flickr. It has many of the same photo sharing features, like SmartSets (think Flickr sets, but smarter) and Groups. Additionally, with Zooomr you get unlimited bandwidth, file storage and uploading and . . . it’s all free. One thing Zooomr does that Flickr doesn’t is the Zipline. Basically, Zipline allows you to keep in touch with what your contacts are doing, as they’re doing it. Uploading is also simpler with Zooomr. The interface is as intuitive as a Mac and you get great and simple visual feedback on your uploads, file by file. You can also get a pro account with Zooomr. While you can’t do any better than unlimited for your photo sharing options, you’ll get some increased functionality from Zooomr’s social aspects. Zooomr also has a more liberal stance on censorship issues than we’ve seen in the past at Flickr: Data that can identify individual users should not be hosted in Internet restricting countries, where political speech can be treated as a crime by the legal system. The company will not engage in pro-active censorship. The company will use all legal means to resist demands for censorship. The company will only comply with such demands if required to do so through legally binding procedures. Users will be clearly informed when the company has acceded to legally binding government requests to filter or otherwise censor content that the user is trying to access. Users should be informed about the company’s data retention practices, and the ways in which their data is shared with third parties. The company will document all cases where legally-binding censorship requests have been complied with, and that information will be publicly available. 45. Zoto - Unlimited storage. No ads. Beautiful interface. One year memberships start at $19.95. What did we miss? The list continues to grow!

Written by Photography Bay photographybay.com Posted on February 11, 2008