Lancia Beta Forum

I'm sure I'm not alone in having used Photobucket for my image hosting up until now. But now PB have decided to call time on 3rd party image hosting and all of a sudden Internet forums are awash with the dreaded 'update your account' message. Had the annual cost been set at a reasonable sum I may well have considered it, but the amount that PB are asking ($400 per annum) is just ridiculous. So how do other members host their images? What's the most cost-effective way to do this? And is there any possibility of on-forum hosting of images being made available? I can see that once PB have broken ranks and started to charge for 3rd party hosting, a lot of other companies will be looking at what they can charge.

I don't know the answer, for the time being I'm just posting a link to my Google photos if I need to post anything. I need to find time to 'rescue' any pictures I have on there that I don't have on anything at home as I suspect a bad outcome, their system has been getting worse for a long time!

Yes, I've been trying to recover my photos from PB, but their 'download album' link keeps failing. I don't think it's in their interests to allow people to reclaim the photos they've uploaded, to be honest. I too expect a bad outcome...

I moving to imgur

It's possible others might move to a paid model - TBH I'd have no problem with something that scales perhaps starting at $30 a year but $400 or nothing is stupid. That said some will pay up as it's better than loosing their pics some it might be a short term big earner for PB

My thoughts exactly, if it was of a reasonable request many including me probably wouldn't mind paying an annual charge, but the price that they are asking is ridiculous :o
I will be using flickr from now on which I do pay an annual fee to use, so fingers crossed they will allow 3rd party sharing for a long time as part of the package :)

Photobucket are a disgrace, just trying to download a few pictures that I'm not sure I've got elsewhere and they are effectively blocking anyone recovering their pictures pictures with impossible 'I'm not a robot' checks that time out before the download starts.

Yes, I'm experiencing very much the same. I sent an email to their support team who tried to make out that it's a problem they've not seen before and are desperately looking into. Yeah, right... Fortunately I keep copies of all pictures I upload to PB, but it's just the time it takes finding them all on my hard drive and then uploading to another provider. In future anything I upload to another image hoster will be stored in a directory clearly marked as uploads. However that doesn't help me now. PB really are extracting the urine...

I've found you can copy them one by one, tbh most stuff on there I already have copies of or they are of holidays with the now ex-wife that I can live without 😂 is the beta rebuild stuff I need and I don't know which pics I have elsewhere or not (memo to me be more meticulous in future!). Photobucket had been going downhill for some years it really used to be brilliant but no longer

I've heard of the high prices being asked too. I use a number of classic motorcycle forums and complaints have been made on those as well.

Most of my PB photos are copies of those in my albums, and they are only on Photobucket because it was one of the ways in which to upload photos. It's a bit old hat these days since many sites allow direct uploading. Facebook is one of course, if you can bear using it!