The days of unlimited free online photo sharing are coming to an end. This is not surprising considering server space costs money. If you aren’t bringing any money in to their site, why should they store your photos for free?
AOL ended their service on January 8th. You have until June 30th to register with American Greetings Photoworks and migrate your photos from AOL to their site.
Yahoo Photos closed September 20th 2007 as part of their takeover of Flickr.
Shutterfly seems to be the last game in town. They allow unlimited free photo storage with no possibility of your photos being deleted. There is no file size limit although they only accept jpeg files. There is no minimum purchase requirement.
Here are your remaining options for “free” photo storage. Some really don’t cost anything but have limitations on how much you can store on their server, while others have a minor minimum purchase.
Photoworks allows you unlimited free storage. In order for your account to remain active, though, you must order at least one product per year. The most affordable thing they sell is a photo print for $.15 plus $1.79 shipping, for a grand total of $1.94. Photoworks limits your file size to 10MB and file type to jpegs only.
As I mentioned a few weeks ago, Kodak revised their terms of service on March 13th. In order to store less than 2GB, you must purchase $5 worth of products per year. Upwards of 2GB, you must purchase $20 worth of product per year. Photos uploaded to Kodak Gallery must be jpeg files.
You get $5 worth of product for your $5 payment, and the shipping is free. So you are, in effect, getting 2GB of photo storage for free.
Photobucket allows up to 1GB of storage for free. Photos must be less than 1MB and are limited in resolution to 1024×768.
For a $40 annual fee, you receive 10GB of storage. Photos can be 5MB and may be a resolution of 2240×1680.
DotPhoto allows you to upload jpeg, tif, png, and a bunch of others so long as they are under 8MB and 3200×4800. They don’t seem to have a limitation as to how much you can store, but you must log in at least every 90 days or risk having your account deactivated.
DotPhoto offers you a free personal website on which to showcase your photos. For a $25 annual fee, you can also get super cheap, high quality prints, and you no longer have to worry about the 90 day inactivity rule.
Flickr allows you to upload a maximum of 100MB/month for free. They will only display your 200 most recent photos with a free account. If your account is inactive for 90 days it will be deleted.
Flickr offers a Pro account for an annual fee of $25. With that you receive unlimited high-resolution photo storage and unlimited viewing.
Google offers Picasa. They allow you 1GB of free online storage and software to edit your photos. The photos you upload can be as large as 20MB, even RAW images. If you want additional storage, it starts at $20/year for an additional 10GB.
Snapfish allows unlimited storage with the requirement that you make at least one purchase per year. You can purchase a $.09 print and have it shipped for $.99, bringing your total to $1.08 for unlimited storage per year. Photos must be jpeg files.
Winkflash allows free unlimited photo storage. Really free. You don’t have to buy a thing. They have 3 levels of image hosting; friends, group, and public. Friends and group can only go to other Winkflash members. The public sharing option gives you a unique URL, which you can password protect.
There is no limit as to file size, type or resolution. Best of all, you can download your high-resolution images for free. They even have accessible phone customer service!
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Hey there!
There’s also Smugmug though it’s technically not free storage. You can also try Amazon S3 as a very affordable backup option.
Hi BoonKwee!
Thanks for the tip. SmugMug is a great alternative for those of us who don’t want any file size or storage limitations – something many of their competitors can’t claim. I was especially impressed with their right-click protect for power users.
Thanks for the review. It’s challenging to keep up with the services, since as you note, they are changing (and/or closing) regularly.
I like Shutterfly for many of its features, particularly that it does not require persons you’re sharing your photos with to sign up for an account. The major drawback for me with Shutterfly is the inability to download high resolution versions (without purchasing an archive disk).
Winkflash allow high resolution downloads and as of the other day was still offering unlimited free storage.
David, thank you so much for the tip on Winkflash. As you can see, I updated the post to reflect their fantastic options. It’s really free! Their photo books are very creative as well. If you’ve purchased one, can you let us know the quality on their photo products?
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