Although I am referencing the uploading service of Photobucket, I make the assumption that other service providers have similar limitations. In short, in addition to storage limitations, these service providers limit the number of people who can see the photos you posted. If hence a lot of people want to see your photos on the forum, you pretty quickly exceed the bandwidth granted and your photo will be replaced by Photobucket with a tile until you purchased additional bandwidth. I was well within my storage when I posted my photos of the MFCA 2014, but now had to purchase a "PLUS" upgrade to have access to unlimited bandwidth. So, please consider this a word of warning.
Here are the details from Photobucket's website:
What Does "Bandwidth Exceeded" Mean?
Bandwidth is a measure of the resources used to serve (display) media from your Photobucket account to 3rd party sites (like blogs, forums, etc). Bandwidth is not storage. The size of the image or video will increase the amount of bandwidth you use when you link out to other sites. Have you exceeded bandwidth? Click here to upgrade
Examples of bandwidth usage:
-Lets say you have 100 photos that are 1MB in size each, and you are linking every single one of them out to your blog/website. 100 images at 1MB in size means that you are linking out just under 100MBs in data size for all those images. Those photos would need to be viewed 100 times a piece to reach the 10GB bandwidth limit for a free Photobucket account.
-If you only linked out 10 photos that are 1MB in size, those 10 photo would need to be viewed over 10,000 times before you would reach the 10GB bandwidth cap.
-If you had 10 videos on your blog/website that were 100MBs in size, that would equal out to just under 1GB in file size. If those videos were viewed 100 times total, you would reach the 10GB bandwidth cap.
What happens when you reach the bandwidth limit?
If you do reach the bandwidth cap for the free account (10GB), your linked out photos will be replaced by the above Photobucket image that states "this image exceeds bandwidth". To get things back to normal you will need to upgrade to a Plus subscription, or wait for your bandwidth to reset for the month. Your bandwidth will reset to zero every month on the day you registered your account. You can find this date in your User Settings, under the Account tab.
If you upgrade to a Plus account, you will no longer have to worry about the bandwidth exceeded message, as all Plus accounts have unlimited bandwidth. Upgrading your account to a Plus account will only remove that message from photos that are linked out from your upgraded account. It will not remove the bandwidth exceeded message from images that are linked out from another users account.
Views of your photos directly on the Photobucket site does not use any bandwidth. Bandwidth is only used when the image is posted outside of Photobucket.
Here are the details from Photobucket's website:
What Does "Bandwidth Exceeded" Mean?
Bandwidth is a measure of the resources used to serve (display) media from your Photobucket account to 3rd party sites (like blogs, forums, etc). Bandwidth is not storage. The size of the image or video will increase the amount of bandwidth you use when you link out to other sites. Have you exceeded bandwidth? Click here to upgrade
Examples of bandwidth usage:
-Lets say you have 100 photos that are 1MB in size each, and you are linking every single one of them out to your blog/website. 100 images at 1MB in size means that you are linking out just under 100MBs in data size for all those images. Those photos would need to be viewed 100 times a piece to reach the 10GB bandwidth limit for a free Photobucket account.
-If you only linked out 10 photos that are 1MB in size, those 10 photo would need to be viewed over 10,000 times before you would reach the 10GB bandwidth cap.
-If you had 10 videos on your blog/website that were 100MBs in size, that would equal out to just under 1GB in file size. If those videos were viewed 100 times total, you would reach the 10GB bandwidth cap.
What happens when you reach the bandwidth limit?
If you do reach the bandwidth cap for the free account (10GB), your linked out photos will be replaced by the above Photobucket image that states "this image exceeds bandwidth". To get things back to normal you will need to upgrade to a Plus subscription, or wait for your bandwidth to reset for the month. Your bandwidth will reset to zero every month on the day you registered your account. You can find this date in your User Settings, under the Account tab.
If you upgrade to a Plus account, you will no longer have to worry about the bandwidth exceeded message, as all Plus accounts have unlimited bandwidth. Upgrading your account to a Plus account will only remove that message from photos that are linked out from your upgraded account. It will not remove the bandwidth exceeded message from images that are linked out from another users account.
Views of your photos directly on the Photobucket site does not use any bandwidth. Bandwidth is only used when the image is posted outside of Photobucket.
