Photobucket Issues (2 Viewers)

[jazzeum]

I just received an email from PB that, unless you pay $399 a year, third party hosting is not allowed. Fortunately I just moved to Smug Mug but I still have a lot of photos on PB in my collections thread that I will need to fix. I'm not willing to pay that much money. Of course, as the saying goes, you get what you pay for :rolleyes2:

 

[theBaron]

There was a discussion of this over at Hyperscale's forum yesterday, and it appears that there is a lot of confusion about this.

It looks like it's a badly-worded ad for their most premium of premium services.

If we go to PB's current pricing list, at http://photobucket.com/pricing, we see that their current offerings are:

"Choose the plan that’s right for you and enjoy the premium member benefits.
Plus 50 offers 50GB of Storage and No Linking or 3rd Party Hosting - Get FREE monthly Print Shop giveaways & exclusive offers, valued up to $500
Plus 100 offers 100GB of Storage, Unlimited Linking and No 3rd Party Hosting - Two months free with an Annualized Plan
Plus 500 offers 500GB of Storage, Unlimited Linking and 3rd Party Hosting* - Plus 500 members receive all of the above, PLUS dedicated url and support
Ad free browsing"

Plus 500 is $39.99 a month, or $399.99 a year, billed annually. Plus 50 is the plan I have, with 50 gig of storage space.

It was also suggested in the discussion at Hyperscale that this could be a phishing scheme. For one thing, there are irregularities in the text that suggest it was written by someone whose first language is not English. For another, not everyone got the email.

In any case, as in all of the controversies regarding Photobucket over the past year or so, I haven't had any problems, myself, with accessing my account or linking images. I have had problems with images linked to Photobucket, when I access forums from work, because our web filter detects all of PB's popup ads and restricts the access. The symptoms in that case are that images take much longer to load, or they never load at all.

Prost!
Brad

 

[jazzeum]

As I noted, thanks to Zach, I had started to transition away from PB to Smug Mug, which I like a lot better. I had never posted that many photos to PB so few of my photos here were blocked and I've just finished reposting the ones in the Collection section. Now, on to the Trophy section.

 

[johnnybach]

Well I have received NO notification at all from Photobucket - and the first that I knew about it was when I saw that one of my posts where I had used a stored image had disappeared - to be replaced with a sort-of clock-face device - showing my 100% of something(?) had been exceeded.

Well - as I have been using the service for free for years, I can't really complain - however no demand for money has been received by me - I've read their offer - and decided just like Brad (Jazzeum), that I don't want to pay $399 per annum to them, and I've decided to just go with it - and not use them anymore.

No big deal for me - just that I won't be posting quite so many pictures as I used to, as I will use the Treefrog method from now on. jb

 

[Malcolm Britain]

Pop up ads - the Bain of the internet. Almost as annoying as junk mail and spam phone calls!

 

[theBaron]

Well I have received NO notification at all from Photobucket - and the first that I knew about it was when I saw that one of my posts where I had used a stored image had disappeared - to be replaced with a sort-of clock-face device - showing my 100% of something(?) had been exceeded.

Well - as I have been using the service for free for years, I can't really complain - however no demand for money has been received by me - I've read their offer - and decided just like Brad (Jazzeum), that I don't want to pay $399 per annum to them, and I've decided to just go with it - and not use them anymore.

No big deal for me - just that I won't be posting quite so many pictures as I used to, as I will use the Treefrog method from now on. jb

That's what happened to me, John--I maxed out the free space. At that point, I decided between sticking with Photobucket or opening another free account at another host. I decided, for now, to keep everything in one place, and so I took the basic subscription. I may still start using another one in addition to PB. Attaching photos is a pain in the butt, given all of the forums I belong to, and their varying requirements for file size and image dimensions.

Prost!
Brad

 

[jazzeum]

I hadn't used up the free space, only 6%. Well, as the saying goes, it is what it is.

 

[johnnybach]

That's what happened to me, John--I maxed out the free space. At that point, I decided between sticking with Photobucket or opening another free account at another host. I decided, for now, to keep everything in one place, and so I took the basic subscription. I may still start using another one in addition to PB. Attaching photos is a pain in the butt, given all of the forums I belong to, and their varying requirements for file size and image dimensions.

Prost!
Brad

Hi Brad - I have only used up 32% of my storeage space - so presumably have 68% unused still available.

In my opinion - this seems simply a way to rid themselves of customers that they make little or no profit from. I was getting heartily sick of all of the pop-up ads and other problems in uploading pics anyway - so see this as a perfect opportunity to dump them. jb

 

[Larry Allen]

As I noted, thanks to Zach, I had started to transition away from PB to Smug Mug, which I like a lot better. I had never posted that many photos to PB so few of my photos here were blocked and I've just finished reposting the ones in the Collection section. Now, on to the Trophy section.

Brad or Zach ...I went to "Smug Mug" and discovered they have FOUR plans. What plan do you guys suggest that will allow the "3rd Party Posting" option.

I received a notice from PB that I am going to be shut down unless I sign up for a plan.

Also Brad, how do you re-post a picture once it is moved to a new site. I didn't think that you can re-edit an older post.

Many thanks

LaRRY

 

[jazzeum]

Larry,

I think I chose the plan that costs approximately $70 to $75 per year.

You cannot re-edit an old post and I'm not sure the mods can can grant you rights to do so. You might have to re-post everything on your current thread or perhaps start a new thread.

When you join Smug Mug, you need to make your albums or galleries, as they call them, public or you won't be able to share your photo. After you've uploaded a photo into your gallery, click on the photo and then click on the icon in the extreme lower left (that is the Share icon).



Then, choose the size of the photo, then select BB Code, then copy and paste into your thread.



Hope that helps.

Brad

 

[Toy Soldier Brigade]

Not sure why anyone is paying for photo hosting anymore. They're are too many free sites available.

google photos
dropbox
icloud
facebook
Instagram

To name a few.

It's also very easy to just upload pictures directly into a post.

 

[theBaron]

Not sure why anyone is paying for photo hosting anymore. They're are too many free sites available.

google photos
dropbox
icloud
facebook
Instagram

To name a few.

It's also very easy to just upload pictures directly into a post.

Photobucket is also free, to start. The give you so much space free of charge. Other hosting sites have similar offers.

There are potential issues with some of the sites you name, particularly whether they might decide to declare that anything you save there becomes their content. Also, I know that Dropbox also has limits on the amount of space you use. We use it for file-sharing in the theater I belong to, and we have to clean house on a routine basis, because we run out of space.

As far as uploading photos into a post goes, I've already mentioned one drawback to that, and that is having to comply with varying file size and image size limits across more than one forum. No two of the hobby forums I belong to have the same requirements. And it is a pain in the butt to have to accommodate them, to say nothing of the burden it places on the particular forum to store the uploaded file.

 

[Warrior]

I talked to Mike Miller about this a couple of years ago as I had maxed out my "free" space, so I now pay to unload my pictures, it's not expensive at all for me to do so, I did not get the notice some of you did and I've checked my Photobucket account a couple of times recently (probably not a good idea to check it last night when I got home from our July 4th shindig.........^&confuse.........) and it's fine, I'm only using 2% of my space.

As has been stated in this thread, they get you initially with the "free" deal, then you have to pay once you max out your space.

Why would any company allow you to unload pictures onto their site long term for free, there's no value in that to them as a business?

If they do, like Brad said, there is an angle; if I learned one thing in 56 years, it's "nothing is free in life".................

It's like my Facebook page for MMTS; it's "free", but if you want to reach a wider audience, you pay to advertise, you also pay to boost posts and you pay for other services.

Again, they are in business to make money, not to allow you to use a Facebook page forever for free.

 

[Vicknor]

Are they doing this to selected accounts only?

All my PB pictures in TF seem to be still there

 

[jazzeum]

Are they doing this to selected accounts only?

All my PB pictures in TF seem to be still there

Keep your fingers crossed! There may be different rules on what they can do in each country.

 

[mikemiller1955]

I talked to Mike Miller about this a couple of years ago as I had maxed out my "free" space, so I now pay to unload my pictures, it's not expensive at all for me to do so, I did not get the notice some of you did and I've checked my Photobucket account a couple of times recently (probably not a good idea to check it last night when I got home from our July 4th shindig.........^&confuse.........) and it's fine, I'm only using 2% of my space.

As has been stated in this thread, they get you initially with the "free" deal, then you have to pay once you max out your space.

Why would any company allow you to unload pictures onto their site long term for free, there's no value in that to them as a business?

If they do, like Brad said, there is an angle; if I learned one thing in 56 years, it's "nothing is free in life".................

It's like my Facebook page for MMTS; it's "free", but if you want to reach a wider audience, you pay to advertise, you also pay to boost posts and you pay for other services.

Again, they are in business to make money, not to allow you to use a Facebook page forever for free.

so George...how much do you pay annually...is it $25...?

 

[jazzeum]

All of Larry's American Revolution photos are still visible so it's hard to understand how the people at PB operate. Perhaps inconsistency is a good thing, on occasion.

 

[mikemiller1955]

All of Larry's American Revolution photos are still visible so it's hard to understand how the people at PB operates. Perhaps inconsistency is a good thing, on occasion.

I get the feeling that they can manipulate the capacity you have allegedly used...
and hit you with a notice to upgrade to a paying customer at their discretion...

Joe Quintini was maxed out after many years...
and you know how many pictures he posted...

then I was maxed out very quickly after maybe just 2 years...
so I'm not totally trusting their accounting methods on file usage...

 

[Warrior]

so George...how much do you pay annually...is it $25...?

I'll check my credit card statements, but that sounds about right, it's peanuts for the service they provide to me.

I don't have time to fart around and resize my photos so I can directly upload them onto this site, I post pictures on numerous other sites where I don't have to jump through hoops to do it, I just go into my saved pictures, post the picture and I'm done.

 

[Toy Soldier Brigade]

I need lots of storage so I use Google Drive & iCloud. I have the free Dropbox account only because that's how Britain's sends out their info to dealers.

I pay 1.99 per month for google for 100gb. I have 20 years of emails and probably at least 50,000 pictures stored there.

iCloud is .99 a month for 50gb,s. And I only use about 30% of the space between my wife and me.

If I didn't need the space for my business I could get away with the free versions.

It also helps that storage is tax deductible