What Hosting Site do you Recommend???

Hello,

I am an enthusiast so my budget isn't high say $10-25 a month.

I'd like a hosting site to keep my photos safe and also be able to show people high res photos they've see on my Facebook Profile. If it had some additional tools for editing or downloads that would be nice; no e-commerce needed at this time.

I've been shooting photos and friends see them on Facebook Profile and ask me for a copy, but it's difficult to get them a full size copy with detail vs. the FB version which has been scaled down so much it often can't be used for their 5x7 or 8x10. Mostly close friends and family; not a revenue type thing. Although, I am starting to shoot models this past couple weeks so it would be nice to have something useful for that to transition.

ALL Suggestion are welcome.

If you're just looking for a place to dump some images for sharing, you can't beat Image Event for $25 a year.

zenfolio or smugmug both start around $40 a year, I love it nice and easy to use and you can install upload tools right into LR/photoshop.

I use smugmug, like it pretty well. I finally started taking advantage of the export right from Lightroom feature, and it makes put out my daily photos a lot easier. I really need to sit down and customize it so it looks better, there are lots and lots of options on the site, but I have a Pro account I haven't used a normal one.

If you're tech savy, "raw" webhosting from 1and1.com with Gallery2 installed can be hard to beat.

egordon99 wrote in post #10045781
If you're tech savy, "raw" webhosting from 1and1.com with Gallery2 installed can be hard to beat.

I've actually gone this route before switching to Smugmug and can say it's not worth the effort IMHO.

The bar bones hosting from 1and1 is $4 a month, comes to about $48 a year, plus domain reg, say $10 a year if needed. So total of $58, plus you need to setup Gallery2. I haven't used 1and1 but most of the time it's a simple roll out, no PHP mySQL knowledge needed. But the front end isn't as clean and easy to use as the other popular hosting sites. You can get even cheaper hosting but then you loose features like mySQL, PHP, CGI, etc. If you want a totally unique layout, then it is a good idea, or if you want to double duty your hosting, say blog, personal business, and gallery.

For the intro price for Smugmug (just for example), $40 plus domain $10, it's pretty cheap considering the amount of work it saves. Not to mention that when you go pro, it's almost turn key to start selling your photos.

For the OP, I would recommend starting a trial with various hosting companies like Flickr, Zenfolio, Smugmug and upload the same set of photos to each one. Then check them out, how you like the customization, colors, speed, etc.

I use both Smugmug and do my own web hosting (dedicated server), there are advantages to both if you know what you're doing, there are also TONS of resources out there for both on customization of Smugmug as well as setting up and customizing open-source gallery apps.

My Smugmug - http://photos.ninthgat​e.net
My Gallery3 site - http://www.visionaryph​otos.com

The Gallery3 (Not Gallery2) site I put together in an evening, my Smugmug site is based on some templates with custom JS and CSS and was also done relatively quickly.

Gallery3 does have more current requirements than Gallery2, such as PHP5 and MySQL5, but if your hosting company provides those then it should be relatively painless to get working.

Smugmug has a lot of cool tools and ability to customize as well as track image and gallery stats, etc.

I'm happy with both, but ultimately since I'm already paying for a server I'd like to migrate off Smugmug to save money. The problem with that is I have images linked a number of places and would need to somehow make sure they still worked after migrating.

If you decide to go with Smugmug you can use my referral code and save $5 off the subscription price. The code is FeVzzwnpYQ7tM

I'm using Zenfolio and love it- I can export directly from Aperture on my computer, and the price is better than Zenfolio and it was much easier to set up. I have some experiences from my website trials on my blog- link is in my signature.

I am using Zenfolio and find it a very nice site, I would highly recommend it.

zenfolio

Happy customer for about 4 years.

Hostgator

CannedHeat wrote in post #10050345
Hostgator

Host Gator is decent. I struggle with their limit of 200kb/sec downloads. I use host gator, so check out my site and see the speed for yourself.

I'm looking for something that's faster, but haven't found much yet.

dKweddings.net wrote in post #10051232
Host Gator is decent. I struggle with their limit of 200kb/sec downloads. I use host gator, so check out my site and see the speed for yourself.

I'm looking for something that's faster, but haven't found much yet.

Interesting. I did not know that. I have not read their TOS in years. Is that file downloads (as in ftp), or would that include http page loads?

CannedHeat wrote in post #10051338
Interesting. I did not know that. I have not read their TOS in years. Is that file downloads (as in ftp), or would that include http page loads?

It's their FTP downloads. I thought it would be the same for the HTTP?

-David

dKweddings.net wrote in post #10051347
It's their FTP downloads. I thought it would be the same for the HTTP?

-David

Don't know. But the reason I asked is that just last night I ran that Woorank test (thread here) and one of the warnings was that the site took too long to load. That's not good and I'll have to find out if it is hostgator restricting. Thanks for your feedback.

-Dan