Best FREE (or CHEAP) online picture host?

Well I'm not a professional photographer, i just take pics for fun during my rare spare time.
I used to have flickr pro, but it expired and with all the changes they made to it I don't like it anymore.

So the question is: what do you guys use that is either free or cheap? I don't wanna spend more than 30 bucks a year (that's why i chose flickr pro which was $25).

I want to be able to easily navigate, view slideshows, copy and past / upload and delete pics real fast, and some basic editing would be nice to have too

thanks for reading

Picasa is pretty good. You get 1GB for free.

I want to be able to easily navigate, view slideshows, copy and past / upload and delete pics real fast, and some basic editing would be nice to have too

I believe Photobucket offers all of that for free, though I've never used any of their features other than hosting. I've found them to be far more intuitive to use than Flickr, without having to jump through hoops just to get a BBS or other link for the pic I want to post.

My only caveat is that they have changed their structure upon login, not listing all of your albums in a convenient format anymore. It's easy enough to circumvent, if you know what your browser's address bar is telling you.

It depends on what you want to do with the site. Wordpress or blogger are free and are pretty much unlimited if you want to do it is a blog.

Photobucket likes to delete stuff from time to time. Smugmug really seems to be the best thing going for busy photographers. I work in a similar industry and their prices are almost unbeatable for what they provide.

About the only thing cheaper is to get some oversold shared hosting on a potentially crappy server and install your own script such as Coppermine. Its not hard to DIY but it will take more effort although you can do so much more in the long run. If you had a bigger budget i could offer you some great solutions but with a limited budget the options are somewhat limited. If you search there are so many scripts out there like Joomla which you can plugin lightbox entirely free and get a nice site going. Those with money that lack the time as said earlier would be best off to consider the offerings of Smugmug.

Take a look at zenfolio. Within your budget if you don't go with a pro account and you can customize it nicely.
I have not update this in a while as I am moving to host my own website, but look at mine:
juanpics.zenfolio.com
Free trial. There is a $5 off code that any zenfolio user can provide you (the user will also get $5).
So that is $20 for a year (+1 month free trial)

anything that you upload to a free/networking site, such as facebook, your image will then be their property.


or something along those lines. i think smugmug is your best choice, plus you can customize it to your taste.

I like smugmug as well

I like smugmug but I also like flickr. The community of other photographers is pretty awesome. The ability to join other groups with similar interests is an added benefit. If it was necessary to stay in that $25 range I would most definitely stay with flickr.

Just my opinion

TeamSpeed wrote in post #11019587
I like smugmug as well

i like it as well, but it's $150/year

^ Only for the professional version!

Camel Toe Coalition wrote in post #11012545
Photobucket likes to delete stuff from time to time. Smugmug really seems to be the best thing going for busy photographers. I work in a similar industry and their prices are almost unbeatable for what they provide.

About the only thing cheaper is to get some oversold shared hosting on a potentially crappy server and install your own script such as Coppermine. Its not hard to DIY but it will take more effort although you can do so much more in the long run. If you had a bigger budget i could offer you some great solutions but with a limited budget the options are somewhat limited. If you search there are so many scripts out there like Joomla which you can plugin lightbox entirely free and get a nice site going. Those with money that lack the time as said earlier would be best off to consider the offerings of Smugmug.

nprdavid wrote in post #11019670
I like smugmug but I also like flickr. The community of other photographers is pretty awesome. The ability to join other groups with similar interests is an added benefit. If it was necessary to stay in that $25 range I would most definitely stay with flickr.

Just my opinion

after going through trial periods of Smugmug, Zen and Flickr, I chose Flickr in the end...

I am a hobbyist and just want to host my photos online so wherever I go I can grab my photos. I just joined Flickr last week...and at $25 unlimited everything, I don't think you can beat it... besides, it is just straight web hosting, no crap etc so the site is pretty fast.

IMHO, at least in my area...Flickr is faster than both Zen and Smugmug and cheaper too.. only gripe I have is I can't choose a black background

I did not want to spend too much on webhosting too, but I want good enough quality, I compared Picasa and Flickr, and picasa's image quality is not as good.