For those who haven't visited the site in the last few days: Flickr free accounts are going to be limited to 1000 images from January 8th. If you have more than 1000 you won't be able to add more. Then on February 5th they delete your oldest pictures until there are 1000 left. The alternative is to switch to the pro version, at $49.99 a year (30% off if you switch this month), which leaves you with unlimited storage. And I suspect that the price won't hold for more than a year or two. Their claim is that most people with free accounts have less than 1000 pictures, which I suspect means that there are a lot of people with very small numbers who signed up then never really did much, then a smaller number of enthusiasts who have lots. E.g. I have over 2000 and would not describe myself as an incredibly active photographer. It's not quite as bad as Photobucket, but the speed of the change is really annoying. Not quite decided what to do next - my inclination is to go pro for a year while exploring other options, but it seems likely that the end of free photo hosting is nigh. Any suggestions?
I have had a PRO account for many years and a few months back (luckily just after I had renewed for 2 years) they doubled the price by making it $49.99 for 1 year rather than 2. So, that price had better hold for quite a while. Geez, 1000 photos for free accounts! That's a massive change from 1TB of storage. I didn't expect the change to SmugMug to be so dramatic. I do like Flickr and I will carry on as normal until I need to renew and I will then make up my mind. I will certainly be looking into alternatives but I agree with you, Marcus, that it is unlikely that many free quality photo sharing sites will be available.
Given that I haven't really found any good alternatives, I've just paid to go to a pro account. Not sure it will save a huge amount paying now rather than in January or February, but knowing my memory I'd forget if I didn't get it done.
I haven't found a good alternative either. I will still keep searching while hoping that things get better on Flickr.
