You have just shot great photos from your digital camera on your recent holiday or at a family function and now you want to share them with your friends and family. Now which online photo sharing service do you choose to share them for free? Read on for summarised reviews of free photo sharing sites.
We have shortlisted 4 services for this review and comparison process which is restricted to free services only. In many cases, you will find a free photo-sharing service with an option to upgrade to a Pro account by paying an annual fee. In such cases we shall limit the review to only the free option available.
We prefer not to group their limits and features by ‘Pros and Cons’ or ‘Positives and Negatives’ because that would be highly subjective and would not apply to everybody uniformly.
- Only 100MB of photo uploads allowed per month for free accounts (this is only a bandwidth limit per month and not a storage limit)
- Unlimited storage limit (subject to the monthly upload limit mentioned above)
- Limit of 10 MB for an individual photo
- Limit of 3 sets only for grouping photos
- Only 200 recently uploaded photos can be seen through photostream (the others are not deleted, just removed from the list, but if you blogged about a photo, that photo will still appear in your blog)
- Only smaller (resized) images are accessible (though the originals are saved in case you upgrade later) Nobody including you can access the full sized photo unless you upgrade
- Allows users to post their photos to any blog or social network
- Privacy controls so users can specify who can view photos: Public, Visible to friends, Visible to family, or Private
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- 1GB of free storage
- Limit of 10 MB for an individual photo
- High resolution images are not downsized for viewing which is great
- Privacy controls that let users specify who can view photos
- Integration with Picasa Desktop application for uploading and downloading multiple photos
- Allows users to post their photos to any blog or social network
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- Offers 1GB of free storage
- Cannot upload photos larger than 1024×768 pixels (1 MB)
- Slideshows are limited to just 50 photos for free accounts
- Limitation of 25GB of bandwidth usage per month
- Can also upload videos & flash animations
- Privacy controls that let users specify who can view photos
- Allows users to post their photos to any blog or social network
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- Unlimited Storage
- Can group photos in albums
- Only people you invite can view your photos
- Editing tools available to re-touch and crop photos
- Recently introduced Share Sites, which makes it easy for users to build public Web pages around their photo collections
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The following free services were not considered for this review:
- Kodak Gallery : Must purchase one photo print in a year to maintain free account
- HP Snapfish : Must purchase one photo print in a year to maintain free account
- Zoomr : Even though Zoomr allows absolutely unlimited storage on a free account, the service is extremely buggy and even their website does not inspire any confidence. Stay away !!!
Unfortunately as of date none of the above services allow you to use your own custom domain (similar to how Blogger does for blogs) So if you have your own domain with an annual webhosting package, then we suggest you try either of the following scripts. Mind you, this is quite complicated and not meant for the light-hearted but it provides for a complete photo sharing service on your own custom domain and looks very professional indeed:
So choose your perfect photo sharing service and upload them for the world to see !
