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Photobucket limits displaying of images on external sites to $40/month plan

blog.norphil.co.uk

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Re: Photobucket limits displaying of images on external sites to $40/month plan

#51

Post by [deleted] »

chippy wrote: post #32
tedmiston wrote: post #25

Imgur has been around for a long time now, and their terms allow hotlinking on forums. Clearly consumers aren't going to pay $400/year for this feature. Why does anyone still use Photobucket?

It's possible that Imgur will, when it gets as old as Photobucket, change their terms and start charging more. Will we expect people in tech forums in the future to be writing "What does anyone still use Imgur?" The answer to both the future and the present questions is that they have been using it in the past (inertia) and have not moved their thousands of images (cost/pain).

[deleted]

Re: Photobucket limits displaying of images on external sites to $40/month plan

#52

Post by ComputerGuru »

PhotoBucket lost my trust a long time ago.

What will we do when Imgur stops growing and investors push them to make money off their content?

https://neosmart.net/blog/2017/what-happens-when-imgur-goes-...

All these companies burn through investor money, have no real profit making business plan, bank off being the most popular image hosting site of the day/month/year, then capitulate and turn to dark practices and extortion to make a buck, leaving room for another darling startup to take their place. Rinse and repeat.

Re: Photobucket limits displaying of images on external sites to $40/month plan

#53

Post by ComputerGuru »

gizmo wrote: post #5

How is this ransom? You just have to pay money to use their service. $35 a month isn't a lot of money for anything remotely serious. Also, photobucket has a $10 a month plan for up to 100GB of image storage that supports "unlimited linking". Most forums won't need more than that. Nothing about this pricing page looks extortionate to me: http://photobucket.com/pricing Maybe I'm missing something important here, but to…

Because they made their money and their fame by providing a way for users to embed photos in other sites for free in a very classic bait and switch (see: ImageShack in 2010 and Imgur in 2020 [0]).

[0]: https://neosmart.net/blog/2017/what-happens-when-imgur-goes-...

Re: Photobucket limits displaying of images on external sites to $40/month plan

#54

Post by theSpaceOctopus »

icebraining wrote: post #42
gizmo wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Terms are _always_ subject to change. We're talking about 1 dollar per day for image hosting here. These panicky reactions seem totally overblown to me. I don't think this is really about the price as an absolute number. This is more of an emotional reaction about the price changing, which some people feel is fundamentally unfair.

$1/day is not an insignificant amount for a lot of people, especially around the world. Hell, paying anything can be a difficult proposition when you don't have a CC. Also, that's just for one image hoster. If it catches on, a person who used a few over the years would have to pay thousands per year to avoid losing links. But you're right that's not just about the money.

> $1/day is not an insignificant amount

Especially considering nearly everything has a monthly fee attached these days.

$3 here, $5 there, $9.99 over there. Of course businesses should be paid for the services they offer, but as a consumer those numbers add up quickly, and in that context a subscription in the $30/$40 range is non-trivial, even for someone with a first world salary.

I can't imagine they provide that level of value, but that's just my opinion.

Re: Photobucket limits displaying of images on external sites to $40/month plan

#55

Post by mpeg »

jsjohnst wrote: post #50
gizmo wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And a 2nd hand 200GB hard drive from ebay costs 5 bucks. That's not comparable though, because Photobucket offers many image related services. Maybe forum operators aren't interested any of those services and they should be using a dumb storage provider instead.

It's not forum operators using Photobucket. It's the user of the forum.

I wasn't really trying to compare photobucket and s3 feature wise anyway, just highlighting that the price is completely out of proportion for the cost to host and distribute those images even with a cloud provider.

Re: Photobucket limits displaying of images on external sites to $40/month plan

#57

Post by danpalmer »

tyingq wrote: post #38
danpalmer wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bear in mind that this is not a fee for _forums_ to pay (where $400 a month for image embedding could be reasonable). This is a fee for the _users_ to pay, to be able to embed the images on their Photobucket accounts elsewhere on the web. I doubt many users would be interested in paying $35 for the "linking" version (which is literally just links, not embedding), let alone the $400 version.

I'm not seeing a $35 linking version...it's $100/year. The "no links / no embedding" plan is $60/year, which is just hilarious for 50GB of mostly useless storage. http://photobucket.com/pricing

Ah, yeah even more so, I was just going on what the preceding comment said.

Re: Photobucket limits displaying of images on external sites to $40/month plan

#58

Post by CM30 »

AndrewStephens wrote: post #39

Photobucket are within their rights to do this but it is really sad that so much of the message board culture is inaccessible because popular free image hosts tend to go away after a few years. I would lay money that 90% of posts over 10 years old have broken images. The moral of the story is for forums to host images themselves, but nobody wants to do that because: a) uploading files is annoying to implement and exp…

Sorry for the late reply, but forums do allow you to upload your own images. Every modern script (both paid and free) has an attachment feature or a gallery add on you can use with it.

However, this isn't the best for the actual users, because:

1. Most forums disable hotlinking for obvious reasons. So if they upload an image to a forum, they'll then have to do the same thing for every other forum they post it on.

2. Forums often require users to register to see attachments, so the images are either invisible or reduced to tiny thumbnails for guests.

Stuff like Imgur and Photobucket got popular because people could post an image once and use the same URL lots of times knowing anyone could see it.

But yeah, forums do host images themselves and have for about a decade or so. Very few have problems with disc space, bandwidth or illegal content either, I know since I've run them for years without issue.

Re: Photobucket limits displaying of images on external sites to $40/month plan

#60

Post by westcoastflea1 »

yes ive been hosting images on photobucket for years with links to my ebay listings some listings with 12 links to photobucket and to have all those links broken (3 years of work) unless i suddenly pay photobucket 40.00 a month is extortion and could possibly ruin my business
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