Photobucket just got greedy - 3rd party hosting now $400/yr

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Photobucket just got greedy - 3rd party hosting now $400/yr

Postby plant_one » Sat Jul 01, 2017 10:46 am

so apparently photobucket has gotten greedy.

if anyone has been to their account lately - you'll find the site is awash with ads. I had to click 6 ads closed just to get to my main landing page in my bucket.

and now they're asking their users to pay $400/yr (or $40 a month) for unlimited 3rd party hosting of images - much like most of us do on web forums.

you can go simply ad-free for $2.49 monthly autobill subscription so your account is actually useable, but that's not available in an annual subscription plan - I've been fighting with them for over week about this since I was previously an annual ad-free subscriber. $30 a year was worth it to me to not be bugged by advertising and popups for a service I've been using for over a decade.

this jump in the change to their service of over 1300% cost increase is just *&^%^&**&%&*^% redonkulus. I'm sad to say that all the image content I've posted here since my arrival will probably be missing from the forums, along with stuff posted by most of the other members here. For what photo bucket wants to charge I can run a full blown website myself and host my own images there.


Image


https://www.ghacks.net/2017/06/30/photo ... ed-images/
If you have visited a website recently that displays images hosted on Photobucket, or are embedding images hosted on Photobucket on your own, you may have had a rather rude awakening one day as Photobucket decided to block these images from being displayed on third-party sites.

All Photobucket images hosted on third-party sites, at least from what we can tell, are replaced by a dummy image. It reads: Please update your account to enable 3rd party hosting. For important info, please go to http://www.photobucket.com/P500.

According to some users that we spoke with who are affected by this, this happened without prior notice or any form of warning on Photobucket's part.



Photobucket defines third-party hosting (what is with using 3rd instead of third?) as embedding an image or photo on another website. This includes embedding photos on forums, eBay, Etsy, Craigslist or another other site on the Internet that is not Photobucket.com.

When you open the referenced page on the Photobucket website, you are informed that you may restore the third-party hosted content by becoming a Plus 500 subscriber.

A Plus 500 plan allows for unlimited third-party hosting, and provides members with other benefits such as an ad-free browsing environment on the Photobucket site, priority customer support, or full resolution photo storage.

Photobucket offers three paid plans to members, but only the most expensive plan supports third-party hosting of images. It is available for $39.99 per month, or at a discount when billed yearly for $399.99.

According to Photobucket, the site has more than 100 million unique users who have stored more than 15 billion images on its servers.

For users who are affected by this, it is important to note that the images are not gone. They are still hosted on Photobucket, and you can actually load them right then and there by right-clicking on them and selecting "open image in new tab" or "open link in new tab" depending on the web browser that you are using. This opens the Photobucket website where the original image is displayed.

The problem right now is however that Photobucket has been used as a host for images for years on many sites on the Internet. And it is not even the case that the site owner can do something about it if other members of the site have embedded photos from Photobucket as the disabling is account linked.

All members of a site who used Photobucket in the past would have to sign up for the -- rather expensive I might say -- Plus 500 plan to restore the old functionality. This is not practicable at all, and it won't happen.

As far as alternatives are concerned, there is Imgur for instance which supports the embedding of images on third-party sites.

While members of Photobucket may wait and hope that the company reverses the stance on third-party hosted images, it is probably better to migrate the photos to another hosting service entirely.

You can download your entire library of images by selecting Library on Photobucket, and there the download album link under actions.

Closing Words

Photobucket may make a quick buck from the unannounced change, as some members may feel pressured in paying up so that their images are displayed again on third-party sites.

I think however that many more will leave Photobucket and use another service instead for image hosting. This may be fueled by site-wide bans of the service.

The plan is overpriced in my opinion, not only because there are free alternatives available out there, but also because you may sign up for a VPS or web hosting account instead for a fraction of the price that Photobucket charges.

Even if it would be priced reasonably, and Photobucket has any right to adjust its pricing, blocking images without prior notice or migration options, especially since this was free before, is not the most elegant of ways to go about it.
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Re: Photobucket just got greedy - 3rd party hosting now $400

Postby Hoot » Sat Jul 01, 2017 11:29 am

Thanks for the report. I was wondering why a fellow who posts good images frequently over on Rimfire Central, suddenly had almost all his images all go to this:

photobucket.jpg
photobucket.jpg (25.11 KiB) Viewed 22892 times


The guy has been a great source of data for Rimfire BR shooters (Hoot's other secret passion) and he's an old codger so no telling if he will pony up the dough. If he doesn't, it'll be our loss.

I use postimage.org. Its free and if you regisyer and set up an account, your images don't expire if they're not viewed frequently enough. That's what happened with Tinypic web hosting that we used to link to on this forum here. Interestingly, they are owned by Photobucket.

I was so pleased with postimage that I contacted them asking if they had a subscription I could buy? They answered "Not at this time, but thanks for asking." So far, my images have been kept but then its only been about a year. Some of my posts are 7 years old. Once I filled up my free 15gb that my ISP provided, I had to go elsewhere. Microsoft One and Google Drive are hard to directly link to the image.

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Re: Photobucket just got greedy - 3rd party hosting now $400

Postby Thom28 » Sat Jul 01, 2017 6:36 pm

Hoot,
Can you explain how to upload the image that is in your gallery on postimage.org to a new topic or a reply to a forum? Does it require downloading one of the messaging board software plugins?
Any assistance would be appreciated. Thanks for the help

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Re: Photobucket just got greedy - 3rd party hosting now $400

Postby Hoot » Sat Jul 01, 2017 10:09 pm

Thom28 wrote:Hoot,
Can you explain how to upload the image that is in your gallery on postimage.org to a new topic or a reply to a forum? Does it require downloading one of the messaging board software plugins?
Any assistance would be appreciated. Thanks for the help

Thom


Thom;

When you open a gallery or an image within a gallery on postimage.org, there are command boxes across the top. One is labeled Share. Click on that and it presents you with differently formatted link URLs for the particular image. Highlight the Direct Link URL and CTL-C it to copy it to your clipboard. Back here, in your post composition box there are a series of command boxes across the top s well. Move your cursor to the place in your post where you want the image to appear and click the Img command box. You will see a set of image brackets appear where your cursor was. Position your cursor between the two bracket sets and press CTL-V to paste the contents of your clipboard there. That's what I do. If you are having trouble following that description, I can repeat it with images. I have many galleries at postimage.org to keep my groups of images organized.

Hoot

Edit: If I'm composing a post or thread that will have a lot of images in it, I upload all of them first. I then copy the Direct Link for each and put all the links in a notepad document that I can work from once I go to create the post or thread. I usually save the notepad file in the same folder on my PC that has the raw images from before I edited, resized and uploaded them to my host. Emphasis upon resized. I hate a post with apicture in it that is so freakin large that all you can see is 1 square inch of it without sliding the bars left and right, up and down. That's the cost of these multi-mega pixel cameras out there now and lazy posters.
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Re: Photobucket just got greedy - 3rd party hosting now $400

Postby Thom28 » Sun Jul 02, 2017 12:31 pm

Hoot,
Well we are going to try it and see if I followed the directions correctly.

Image

Image
Last edited by Thom28 on Mon Jul 03, 2017 1:50 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Photobucket just got greedy - 3rd party hosting now $400

Postby Thom28 » Sun Jul 02, 2017 12:38 pm

Hoot,
Is that the way it is suppose to display it or is the picture it's self suppose to appear?

Also thanks for the step by step instructions.

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Re: Photobucket just got greedy - 3rd party hosting now $400

Postby MOOSE EARS » Sun Jul 02, 2017 4:54 pm

Image

Just trying to post one from the URL IMG link on the share feature on PB
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Re: Photobucket just got greedy - 3rd party hosting now $400

Postby Hoot » Sun Jul 02, 2017 9:34 pm

Thom28 wrote:Hoot,
Is that the way it is suppose to display it or is the picture it's self suppose to appear?

Also thanks for the step by step instructions.

Thom


No. I fixed it though. You were close but had more information in the link than you needed. Interestingly, when I clicked on the link, it took me to the image, but properly formatted, the image should have been in your post like it is now. If you click EDIT on that post, you will see the pertinent part of the image url that was necessary.

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Re: Photobucket just got greedy - 3rd party hosting now $400

Postby Thom28 » Mon Jul 03, 2017 2:22 pm

Hoot,
I think I finally got it figured out. I went back and looked at the original post of the Jeep picture and saw how you had edited the URL. I posted another picture in that post of my Ruger #1 450 and the picture came right up.
Thanks again for all your help.
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Re: Photobucket just got greedy - 3rd party hosting now $400

Postby Kazutora » Fri May 05, 2023 10:25 pm

Photobucket may make a quick buck from the price change, as some members may feel pressured in paying up so that their images are displayed again on third-party sites.

I think that many more will leave Photobucket and use another service instead for image hosting. This may be fueled by site-wide bans of the service.
GBWhatsApp APK
The plan is overpriced in my opinion, not only because there are free alternatives available out there, but also because you may sign up for a VPS or web hosting account instead for a fraction of the price that Photobucket charges.

Even if it would be priced reasonably, and Photobucket has any right to adjust its pricing, blocking images without prior notice or migration options, especially since this was free before, is not the most elegant of ways to go about it.
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