Free Photo Hosting Websites

Pros and Cons of Free Photo Hosting Websites

Photo sharing websites came on the scene in the 1990s with the sharing copies of printed photos with others via e-mail. Customers who had film developed at some of the online sites were able to view their pictures on the Internet.

Through digital photograph technology and the ever-growing interest of being online, photo hosting sites are becoming more and more popular. They are used to share photos taken on a cruise, just as they are convenient to host images on a website. Some of the free image hosting sites also have slide shows and video sharing available.

Benefits

There are many benefits to using free photo sharing websites:

• Simplicity: With a few keystrokes, you can upload pictures from your digital camera and share them.
• Cost: In most cases, using the site is free.
• No experience necessary: You don't need to be a web master or even understand HTML coding to be able to host your pictures.
• Privacy: Some photo hosting sites will allow you to privately store your images; you won't have to worry about who is looking at your pictures without your knowledge. Carefully read the site's terms of use and privacy policy before uploading any pictures.
• Less bandwidth: Linking to an image from a free site to your website may take a little time, but you will be using less of your site's bandwidth.

Downside

While there is an upside to hosting your images, there are also a downside:

• Not always free:Not all of the hosting sites are free. You may be limited in what you can do with a free account.
• Public awareness:Many of the sites are public, therefore allowing anyone to view your album online. Again, make sure you read everything in the privacy policy and the site's terms of use first.
• Downloading: Many of the free only allow you to share codes and links, and not necessarily allow you to download the image from their site to your's. Your website may then appear less professional without the presence of the images.
• Photo resolution: You may not receive high resolution pictures

List of Free Image Hosting and Sharing Sites

The Internet is rampant with free photo hosting websites. While many of them are legitimate, make sure you take your time and weed out the ones that are scams. A few of the more popular sites are:

Photobucket

Founded in 2003, Photobucket allows to store, host and share images and videos, as well as create slide shows. While you can upgrade (and pay for) a pro account, the basic free account includes:

• The advertised 99.9 percent uptime
• 1 GB of free storage
• 100 GB of free bandwidth
• Private accounts (if your account is set to private)

Sexually explicit photos are not allowed and will be removed. Many use Photobucket to post pictures on Facebook, MySpace, message boards and other public forums. For $25 a year, you get:

• Up to 5 GB of storage
• Unmetered bandwidth
• FTP upload access
• Longer video and slide show play
• No advertising
• Higher resolution photos (up to 5 MB)

ImageShack

One of the fastest-growing free image hosting sites on the Internet, ImageShack went live in 2003. It offers user-friendly interface and allows for uploading of images, flash files and movies. This hosting site allows:

• Embedding files onto web pages (without altering code in any way)
• Unlimited bandwidth for video and slide shows
• 300 MB per hour of hotlinked image transfer
• Unlimited amount of storage space
• All files are private until the URL is shared with others

ImageShack also offers a subscription-based membership (for $68 a year) that includes:

• 3 MB per image limit
• Unlimited uploads
• Unlimited bandwidth
• A dedicated download speed
• Free upload tools
• Automatic upload backups

More Image Hosting Sites

Other free photo hosting and sharing sites include:

• Flickr
• Free Image Hosting
• PhotoLava]
• Village Photos
• My Photo Album

A Final Note

These are only a few of the many photo hosting sites that are free. But as with anything else on the Internet, if there is something you don't want everyone to see or know about, then don't post it. Once you share a link or URL with another, it can be sent to many people over and over again.