It's all about the money

[gbritnell]

I just got an email from Photobucket stating that some of my features have been disabled.
We see that you have been using Photobucket for third party photo hosting. You will no longer be able to use this feature unless you upgrade your plan. We have a very reasonable upgrade plan which will give you these additional features.
Well I'll be!!!!
I have been a member since Photobucket's inception and have purchased the upgrade periodically but now they cut out little bits of it to force you into buying it.
As with everything in this life it's "All about the Money!"
gbritnell

[Jasonb]

I've been paying abouy $20 for the last 3-4 years and worth every penny. I don't get all the adverts that slow things up and with the amount I use it over several forums it is cheap at a couple of dollars a month.

[b.lindsey]

The subject line says it all George...sadly (and its not just Photobucket) companies seem to be offering less and charging more, and often accompanied with a drop in quality as well.

Bill

[kvom]

I use pbase for my online photos.  Paid site, no ads, no hassles

[Jo]

The good news is that we still have space on our MEM server to host the photo's that go with your builds 

I must say I got frustrated with Photosuckit's porno adverts  and have complained a couple of times to them about it.

My photo's seem to still be working ok from there  but no doubt give them time... 


Edit: looks like unless you pay the $399 annual fee upfront you will not get third party linking anymore... that will break so many of our threads         

Jo

[Rivergypsy]

I had this notification too, and I'm less than impressed, especially as mine wanted $399 to upgrade 

[10KPete]

Well, they've got folks where they want them. Totally hooked/controlled. They've got all the pics. You either pay up or face a huge task of re-linking all your pics. Who knows what they could do to foul things up further!

Pete

[mklotz]

Virtually all my online photos are hosted with Photobucket.  $399/year is outrageous, bordering on blackmail.  I refuse to pay it.  Besides, if they've pulled something like this blackmail, what might they try after one pays?

I'm not going to do anything immediately.  Given the impact this is going to have, I'm guessing a law suit is inevitable.  A wait and see attitude is appropriate.

[Dave Otto]

Maybe someone got the decimal point in the wrong place; I think I'm paying about $30.00 a year.

[crueby]

I just went and looked at their new terms of service, which they just updated on June 28th. Here is an excerpt of the relevant part (more of my comments after it)

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• Free account : Each individual Member gets one free account that provides 2 GB of free storage or space available for your original photo files, or videos under 10min. The free account does not allow any image linking or 3^rd party image hosting. If a free account Member exceeds their Content Limit, their account will be immediately suspended and they will need to become a “Paying Member” (defined below) in order to continue accessing their account. You can upgrade to a Plus account at any time.
• Ad-free Account : The Ad-free Account offers Members the ability to use the Site without seeing any third party banner advertisements when logged into your Ad-free Account (note, viewers of your images within Photobucket will see ads unless they, too, have Plus accounts and you will continue to see Photobucket offers and announcements). This account level is available for $2.49 / month, payable by the Member on a monthly recurring basis.
• Plus Account : The Plus Account offers several paid options that may give the Paying Member more storage, bandwidth, 3^rd party image hosting, image linking and/or other services as outlined below. Once and during such period of time in which you subscribe to and pay for a Plus Account, we will consider you a "Paying Member." Please note that all Plus Account subscriptions are billed annually at the commencement of the service. Photobucket may also offer a monthly billing option for its Plus Accounts (see terms and restrictions, below).

• Available Plus Account Plans : Photobucket offers the following Plus Account Plans:

  o Plus 50 Plan: 52 GB of Storage for $59.99 / Year. The Plus 50 Plan does not allow any image linking or 3^rd party image hosting.
 o Plus 100 Plan: 102 GB of Storage for $99.99 / Year. The Plus 100 Plan allows for unlimited image linking but does not allow 3^rd party image hosting.
 o Plus 500 Plan: 500 GB of Storage and unlimited bandwidth for $399.99 / Year. The Plus 500 Plan allows for unlimited image linking and unlimited 3^rd party image hosting.




- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

By my reading of it, sounds like unless you have gone for at LEAST their Plus-100 plan for $99/year now, they dont want any image linking, which they dont define but sounds like what we do to the forum. IF you are using over 100 gig, then they want the $399/year. This is a big change from the previous terms of service.

Up till now I have been mirroring my uploads on PostImage site, using it for links when PB was down. Guess now I'll use PostImage for it all, since for now they are both ad free AND fee-free. We'll see how long that lasts.

The other alternative is to post the images as attachments to this forum directly, but that has the drawback of not being able to put the photos inline with the text, which makes things SO much easier to follow. Other forums with what looks like this same software have been able to do it, if this forum could do the same it would solve a lot of this issue.

Chris

Edit: So far I have not gotten that letter from PB, wonder if it is because I have only uploaded the 700x500 versions of the photos for the forum, and my total usage is still very small. Maybe they are going after the users with more space used first to squeeze the most money for the least effort.

[Dave Otto]

This is news to me; I'm not sure that I'm up for paying $100.00 a year to link my pictures.

[Vixen]

Well, I am not going to be paying anyone $399 a year to link in my photos.

What happens to those photos uploaded before June 28th? The old rules should still apply, which I believe allowed 3rd party image, hosting even with a free account.

We will have to wait and see what happens.

Mike

[mklotz]

One of the guys over on HSM recommended use.com as a free hosting service he's used without problems for a long time.

As a test, I established an account and uploaded a test picture via a browse-and-select-function.  I made no attempt to adjust the size of the picture as I normally do before uploading .

Now, I'll resize and watermark another picture as I normally do and add it here...

Given my ten minute or so test efforts, use.com seems a reasonable alternative to photosuckit although I haven't tested whether I can easily reorganize stored images.

Of course, the same problem still exists.  If use.com suddenly decides to hold images for an outrageous ransom as photosuckit is doing, we'll be in the same boat.

[Les#053]

If you look at Don's thread for "Adding DRO's to Myford super 7" all his pictures on Photobucket have disappeared!

Les

[mklotz]

OK, I've created a "template" (use.com notation - what I would call a file) and put some pictures in it. [This corresponds to creating a file "ENGINES" and putting a picture of an engine in it.]  Then I had use.com generate the image url needed to display the picture, which I added to this post at the bottom.  If all goes well we should see a picture...