Best Photo Album Websites

[Jazzbo]

I'm fed up with Webshots. I was at work yesterday trying to show a co-worker some pictures of trips etc. I wasn't logged in so I sort of experienced what it was like to be general viewer and was extremely frustrated ticked off by the continuous pop-ups for stupid inane garbage. I find this so annoying and outrageous I'm going to switch to another photo site. Even if it means re-loading all my albums.

What are other sites one can use for storing photos and features people like about them? I don't mind paying monthly fees so long as you get no pop-up ads. I've seen some sites where you can write a thumbnail introductions with the albums. That would be nice. Be nice if responders could include links to their albums so I (and other readers) could sample them to see how they look and work.

How about Facebook?

 

[Tuco]

Jazzbo-

I've used Smugmug for a few years. Easy to use, good service, extras if you want, etc.

You can write reports at the tops of your album and notes on each shot. Likely can do that elsewhere but I have ben happy with the site. I upgraded and can post videos into my albums.

Good luck.......

 

[Stash]

I don't get fancy but have had good luck with FLICKR and it's free. Link below..

 

[Mohamed Ellozy]

I use lots of free Google stuff, so when I started taking photos I chose Picassa for editing on my desktop and Picassa Web Albums for sharing. My public gallery is here.

 

[Billy]

I agree with Tuco. Smugmug is good. I was using Phanfare, but then they changed their policies a few years ago and lots of folks jumped ship from Phanfare over to Smugmug.

Smugmug is a pay site, but for me it's worth the $5/month. They have three "levels" of accounts (I forget the exact annual price, but it's something like $40, $60, and then $150ish for pro-level stuff).

Excellent fast customer service, user-customizable galleries, lots of cool stuff, pictures come up FAST, and no pop-ups or banner ads.

Also, your username becomes part of the web address for your pix. For example my username is "WalkingInTheWoods", and here's the link to my pix http://www.walkinginthewoods.smugmug.com/

 

[bikehikeskifish]

Facebook is good if you want to share albums with other Facebook members. Not so good for embedding, sizing, or sharing with non-Facebook members.

FWIW, even webshots members get annoying pop-ups. It's the "price" we pay for the service. It's one of the few surviving free sites too.

Tim

 

[Chip]

I use lots of free Google stuff, so when I started taking photos I chose Picassa for editing on my desktop and Picassa Web Albums for sharing. My public gallery is here.

Same here. ALL of the other sites mentioned here are not able to be viewed by me at work, including the pictures that are linked here from those sites, so I assume many workplace computers have the same restriction. Plus it's quite easy to use after the initial download and the format is pretty straight forward.

 

[leaf]

i second, third and fourth smugmug. you need to pay for it, but it's worth it.

 

[kevinmac]

I was on a hike this weekend and one of the hikers raved about phanfare especially about the ability to mix music with the slideshows.

http://www.phanfare.com/home.aspx

 

[Billy]

Not knocking Phanfare at all, but a few years ago they made some changes. People who have a better memory please correct me if I'm wrong, but one of the changes was that non-members who wanted to view your photos would have to first fill out an online account form (as if they were gonna sign up). Can't remember all of the other issues but it was enough of a hassle for me to split and go to smugmug.

Having said that, Phanfare has the fastest easiest drag-n-drop photo upload tool I've ever seen.

 

[SteveHiker]

Not knocking Phanfare at all, but a few years ago they made some changes. People who have a better memory please correct me if I'm wrong, but one of the changes was that non-members who wanted to view your photos would have to first fill out an online account form (as if they were gonna sign up). Can't remember all of the other issues but it was enough of a hassle for me to split and go to smugmug.

Having said that, Phanfare has the fastest easiest drag-n-drop photo upload tool I've ever seen.

Pretty much what you said.

It was the easiest to use, but the company is not trustworthy. The "customer service" (that's what they call it, not me) was about the worst I've ever seen in any industry. They made the changes mentioned above, despite negative feedback from users. As a result they lost something like 40% of their customers. I've heard recently that they're changing back to the old model, but despite it's warts I've been much happier with Smugmug and pretty much everyone else I know that switched has been too. (other than the inconsistently functioning Facebook app, right Leaf?)

 

[leaf]

(other than the inconsistently functioning Facebook app, right Leaf?)

right steve.

and i echo the phanfare comments.

 

[poison ivy]

I'll also agree with the phanfare comments. They have a great product, but their attitude toward their customers is awful. I would not pay them money... they have demonstrated that they will make wholesale changes to their business model and you'll be stuck with it. They react very badly to customer concerns and complaints.

When they changed their business model, I wrote them several e-mails (not angry e-mails mind you... just politely worded e-mails asking if there was a way they could still serve the people who were happy with their old product...) and received several insulting responses from the ceo/president of the company. He told me to go to smugmug if I was unhappy with the changes.

So, I went to smugmug.... works great and they have been helpful and responsive when I've contacted them by e-mail. If you're willing to pay for a photo hosting site, you can't go wrong with them.

- Ivy

 

[Jazzbo]

Photo web site problems

Webshots appears to be part of American Greetings which is probably not a good sign. It can be a big problem when a sight changes over course of years. Things like becoming more commercialized etc. I have a lot of albums built up over the years. lots of links to this forum that might become dead links when I drop my membership.

I've been invited to look at friend's photos and find I have to fill out info forms to obtain permission to view. Most times I don't bother looking. I know couple of times I did I started getting spam mail. I have no use for any sites that do that to visitors.

 

[Tom & Atticus]

I was on a hike this weekend and one of the hikers raved about phanfare especially about the ability to mix music with the slideshows.

http://www.phanfare.com/home.aspx

I'm extremely happy with Phanfare. Here's an example of a slide show with music that Phanfare allows.

 

[Billy]

I'm extremely happy with Phanfare. Here's an example of a slide show with music that Phanfare allows.

Tom, I just looked at your slideshow, and then looked at your homepage and I was able to look at the photo galleries without any of that "you must register first" stuff. So maybe phanfare realized what a deal-breaker that was and changed their mind about it. If so, good for them. By the way, nice photos.

 

[Seeker]

I'm extremely happy with Phanfare. Here's an example of a slide show with music that Phanfare allows.

Nice pictures! What a wonderful day for a first winter hike!

 

[Papa Bear]

I with the Google/Picassa crowd

For years I had a free web site available but it has become a bit overloaded (it still works pretty well) so I looked at alternatives.

I already had a Gmail account so I signed up for the web albums and got the Picassa download. I use another photo editor/manager on my PC (ThumbsPlus - an excellent freeware product) so what do I do? Easy, I keep using ThumbsPlus and when I want to move an album on-line, I start up Picassa, it synchronizes it's view of the albums and then for the particular one I want to share, I just click "Share" and boom, it loads the whole thing, captions and all, on to my on-line albums. Plus it keeps it synchronized if I add or delete a photo to/from the album on my PC. It's this auto-synchronizing with what I have on my PC that I consider a very strong point. (Maybe they all do this for all I know - but my old service which used "Gallery" - a pretty popular software product - didn't.)

Since the free storage is humongous, I'm pretty happy. Plus I can geo-locate my photos if I want to and a little Gmap will come up next to the albums to show where things were taken. Sorry, no music to accompany the slideshow (of course maybe there is but I haven't discovered it yet - with Google you never know).

I suppose I could also use it as a backup for my photos - just tell Picassa to upload everything (you can make albums private if you want). I don't know if even 1Gbyte is enough for all my stuff, but it's tempting. I would say my photo collection is the most valuable thing on my PC. I do back it up every week or two to an external backup drive.

 

[Jimmy Legs and Little D]

Fans of Phanfare

We've always been fans of Phanfare going back several years (Tom and Atticus, HikerBob and Poison Ivy to name a few). It was a real shame when they changed their policies and lost good clients.

Smug Mug is comparable but it would be to their advantage to give the option of adding music to the slideshows.

A slideshow with music goes hand-in-hand.

Donna and Mike

 

[lx93]

While doing Mt. Kathadin in 2005, Nartreb recommended PhotoBucket, and I like it. You can use music to make slideshows, and track stats to see which of your pics people like.

But I can't compare it w/ other sites, so maybe the reason why noone else has mentioned it is because it's not as good as other sites. I dunno.