Not sure if everyone has heard but if you use Photobucket to host your pictures they now want you to pay. Was noticing a lot of the discussions had this instead of pictures:


I believe they want $400 a year to let you keep posting your pictures.

I switched a few months back. Couldn't stand Photobucket anymore. Obviously you need ads to support the free version of the site but when it gets to the point that it bogs the site down and makes it user unfriendly it is time to go.

If you don't want to pay the $400 give Imgur or Flickr a try. There are other sites too.

I had just started using Photobucket before that change.

Seems to be the start of companies asking for paid subscriptions for services that used to be free for users, but funded by advertisers. Now they want it both ways, although $400 for Photobucket seems insane. Don't know how they won't lose nearly all their business.

The AOL Desktop software, which was free, has turned into AOL Gold at $4.99 per month. If you didn't agree, they discontinued your desktop access, but you can still read and use your email thru aol.mail.

I refused and lost access and boy am I glad I did not accept Gold. It is a disaster. Nothing works the same, it crashes, people can't discontinue the subscription, there are complaints posted all over the internet. It was working fine when it was for nothing. Next thing they will try to dump free email accounts altogether.

Don't think that Facebook and Twitter and Snapchat and Google and all the rest aren't going to go this route some time soon. Their shareholders will demand the revenue stream. They don't realize that, if its not free, people may get smart and figure out that they really don't need it.

I use Imagebam 99% of the time except when I post on the other site that doesn't like me...... Incognito!

Okay so I can switch to one of the other website hosts mentioned but what about the 200 pieces of art I had on Photobucket. None of it is visible now, all my work down the drain unless I pay them $399.99?!! That's outrageous! Is it even legal what they have done?

quote:

Originally posted by NIK:
Okay so I can switch to one of the other website hosts mentioned but what about the 200 pieces of art I had on Photobucket. None of it is visible now, all my work down the drain unless I pay them $399.99?!! That's outrageous! Is it even legal what they have done?

Not being a lawyer and having never used Photobucket, I don't know, but my guess would be that it is in the fine print of the user agreement that you had to approve when you signed up.

Its proprietary software and I'm pretty sure that you will find some vague wording about how you are only renting their space and you have no rights to anything once you get discontinued by them.

That doesn't mean you can't pursue some arrangement where you get access to at least copy your artwork since that is your profession and you didn't know you could get locked out. You may have to get some legal help though, as I'm sure you are not the only one who really wants their stuff and Photobucket wouldn't take such a big step unless it's confident its within its rights.

That still doesn't mean they won't grant exceptions if you have a lawyer's letter and a good reason. It's worth a try anyway, but if it costs you more than the $400 they want, well then they have you.

quote:

Originally posted by NIK:
Okay so I can switch to one of the other website hosts mentioned but what about the 200 pieces of art I had on Photobucket. None of it is visible now, all my work down the drain unless I pay them $399.99?!! That's outrageous! Is it even legal what they have done?

You can still log in to your account and access the images you just can't use Photobucket for third party image hosting.

What you will need to do is download the images back to your computer and then upload them to the new service you are using. I heard you can bulk download the images but I do not know how.

I downloaded my Photobucket images a page at a time to a flash drive until I had them all. It took about a week. Then I cancelled my Photobucket account.

quote:

Originally posted by cardaddict:
I downloaded my Photobucket images a page at a time to a flash drive until I had them all. It took about a week. Then I cancelled my Photobucket account.

It was pretty easy for me to switch to Imgur since I always kept a copy of all images on my computer, flash or DVD. Just had to re-create the albums on the new site and upload.

Going to keep doing that for when it happens again.

I still used Photobucket. Didn't pay their 'ransom' though. I use a 'workaround' when Posting photo's. Just add ~original at the end of the link. Like so:

That's an amazing discovery! Thanks for sharing!