ImageShack has been ruined. What are some good alternatives?

aimeeandbeatles

watermelon
Joined
Apr 5, 2007
Messages
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Just within the last few days ImageShack made a big change to its policy saying that you could only keep 500 images free without paying for a subscription. :( It'll delete old pictures starting March 1.

Actually, personally I decided to subscribe to it (the basic plan is $2 a month which I can swing pretty well just with the penny rolls). I didnt want to lose & have to re-upload all the pictures on my forum -- and there's quite a lot.

Anyways this thread is to discuss alternatives you use for ImageShack (for other people who migrating). I tried imgur (or whatever it's called), didn't like it to be honest. Photobucket is annoying.
 
Whoopsa, might have to change some stuff around. Three mail accounts gives three Imageshack accounts, that'd be 1500 images. But WiPs demand a lot. I'll have to migraine, I mean, migrate somwhere else anyway.

I refuse to pay for something that was free when we joined it.
 
You get what you pay for.

Expected unlimited space for free is completely ridiculous.
And yet, it was the norm until now.
 
You get what you pay for.

Expected unlimited space for free is completely ridiculous.

And if they give us unlimited space free, why shouldn't we expect it?
 
And if they give us unlimited space free, why shouldn't we expect it?

You should expect poor service, unless it's a loss leader from a big company (Google, MS) using it to leverage their other services.

And none of these free services are giving you real "unlimited" free space - you can be sure they boot off abusers from the service.
 
You should expect poor service, unless it's a loss leader from a big company (Google, MS) using it to leverage their other services.
Apparently imgur has some sort of affiliation with Google, I'll try that.
Zelig said:
And none of these free services are giving you real "unlimited" free space - you can be sure they boot off abusers from the service.
Depends on what you call 'abuse' as I use the place for WiPs and mafia/NotW games.
 
Depends on what you call 'abuse' as I use the place for WiPs and mafia/NotW games.

I have no idea what any of those things are.

I don't know that imgur has any affiliation with Google. Generally, I stay away from companies that don't have a reasonable business model.

I also avoid any webhosting companies advertising "unlimited" anything like the plague.
 
Apparently imgur was created by some sort of fan. The 'affiliation' means that you can have an account for free logging in from a Google or Yahoo account. (Or a Twitter or Fakebook account, but I wouldn't touch those with a ten-foot pole).

And it doesn't sound that unlimited, Wikipedia lists its storage space per user as "250 visible images for free accounts. Unlimited for pro accounts."
 
Well the proper term should be unmetered. Theres a shade of difference between unlimited and unmetered. Im not awake enough to explain it.
 
If you just want to share it temporarily/short term, then imgur, though be aware that once you upload it, anyone with the url (or anyone typing in random URLs) can view it; there's no security or privacy over the stuff you put on there. And it compresses images to 1MB max. Oh and it deletes all images that haven't been viewed in over 6 months.

If you want a place to store high-res photos online over the long term, then something like Flickr or Picasa might be better for you. Picasa is free and unlimited for users with a Google account; as Zelig said, it's a loss leader for Googlesphere lock-in.
 
Well for the high-res/animated ones I just use my own site. Theres not a lot of them.
 
This might be of interest for the people who are thinking about using it :)

"As long as images are getting at least 1 view every 6 months, they will stick around forever. After that, your image may be removed to create more space for newer images. "

Source
 
I'd still recommend Picasa as an alternative to paying for Imageshack, if you already have a Google account. It offers unlimited space for low-res (less than 2048x2048 pixels) images.

edit: Re 6 month limit: yeah, imgur is fine for short term photo sharing with friends or the internet, but it's not supposed to be an online photo album like Flickr or Picasa.
 
It's not clear to me that paying means you can expect better service either. If it isn't working, you're still stuck, *and* you've wasted your money.

Whilst large companies in multiple markets have the option of running things at a loss, I'm not sure that guarantees good service either - on the contrary, you have the risk of them doing this to gain entry into markets, as happened with Google recently when they gave access to their maps API for free, then after the competition were forced out the market, started charging. Don't expect better service from Google. (Not that I'm saying don't use Picasa, just that the claims about expectation of service apply to anywhere.)

(Also makes me laugh about those "You don't need to backup a Chromebook". If your data is only available online, you damn well better back it up.)
 
Well, I'm actually saying that Picasa does offer a better service than Imageshack :p . Not on the basis that it was bought by Google, but on the basis that it's actually a good service for online photo albums. Flickr is still the best in terms of level of service, data security, and copyright protection, but it has other limitations that Picasa doesn't have.

Imageshack and Photobucket are easily the worst photo sharing services I've ever used.
 
Well the proper term should be unmetered. Theres a shade of difference between unlimited and unmetered. Im not awake enough to explain it.

OK now Im more awake I'll try to explain this.

Unlimited means exactly what it says -- and is not possible (for example, you cannot have unlimited space as they have not created infinite hard drives yet. Nor can you have unlimited bandwidth as network cards are not infinite either.)

Unmetered is a bit better IMO. As it means you are not limited to an arbitrary number set by the web-host... You still run into the limits of the physical hardware though.

This can be up to debate though. I googled it and I got a lot of stuff on both sides of the coin.
 
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