I feel like this must have come up a thousand times, but I'm having no luck with searches here so let's give this a try.
What website (service) are you using to host your photos online? There doesn't seem to be any shortage of options, Flickr, SmugMug, 500px, Zenfolio, etc.
I'm looking for somewhere I can share albums of images that friends can download for when I take photos of events, with the option of keeping them private from the public. I'd like to be able to embed photos into forums like this one. An actual public facing gallery or something would be fine, but not a huge priority. This is not intended to be a backup solution, so unlimited storage isn't a huge deal either. I'm expecting to pay money because storage isn't free, but saving money is nice.
What are you using? What do you like, or dislike about it?
Sounds like you need a server to host your photos not a website. Typically you can view all your photos and give passwords to clients to view albums but they aren't 'websites' per se.
Can't advise on which would be best for your needs as I'm based in Shanghai and the best servers here for fast uploads and viewing, are local Chinese ones. I'm sure some of the US based guys can help out - maybe post this question on the Pro Digital Corner too? Or even the Wedding Photographer forum.
I'm using Microsoft's OneDrive online that comes with the Office subscription.
1 TB is a ton for me since I'm not a pro, but might not be enough for you.
I copy all my images online as a backup, but can also share links to family and friends to see.
You have the option to not allow editing, and the links can expire if you want.
I use SmugMug for many different reasons, one of which is uploading things to my public side which anyone can see.
Another of which is I setup a private folder for the dance troupe I do a lot of work with, they shared a special link with all their dancers and any of them can view all the photos I upload. The founder of the troupe has a password that she can download the photos (as a gallery or individually). The dancers themselves cannot.
I also use it for delivering client galleries. They are private and I email a link to someone I do a shoot for. They can view the gallery, download the photos, or share the gallery simply by forwarding the link to someone.
SmugMug isn't perfect, but it is the best I've found and I re-evaluate it every once in a while.
I pay a provider around $30/year to host my website on my own domain. I use free image hosting software (piwigo) to handle albums, access rights, etc. Takes some willingness to mess with settings and css for full customization, but then you have full freedom to do as you please.
For posting images to the forum I use postimage. You can put photos in folders/albums and share those too, but I don't see a way to batch download a folder (it has to be done one image at a time) and you can't password protect anything. Anyone with the specific link to a photo or album can access it. It's a free service and seems reputable, but other than their paid premium service, I'm not exactly sure how they make their money... so that slight concern still lingers and I don't use it for anything sensitive.
I also use Google Drive for sharing projects with clients, etc., It's decent for this, allows batch downloads of entire folders and has more access controls, though mostly based around others also having Google accounts. You can share links and those aren't publicly accessible unless someone posts the link publicly. This option is free and comes with 15GB storage and can be increased via paid storage tiers. On the same Google account you can 'upload' photos you have on Drive to Google Photos and put them into albums, etc. There are some aspects of Google Photos that are better for photo viewing and sharing than Drive, but a tradeoff is that the 'standard' storage option of Photos is to further compress images and downscale them to 16MP to economize storage space. You can opt to keep images at original compression and size, though it will eat through your storage more quickly. There's also the question of what Google analyses in the background in order to enable the face detection/recognition option. You can toggle this on/off but it's unclear the last time I checked if Google already processes photos for face recognition/identification at time of upload, or waits until you turn on the feature.
For a nice client presentation type photo gallery option, I've used Pixieset and like the various options they have for access, password protection, etc. The first 3GB is free so you can at least set up something to test the waters. I haven't considered it for hosting photos posted to forums, so not sure if it would work. For this I'd use postimage instead.
GroovyGeek wrote:
I pay a provider around $30/year to host my website on my own domain. I use free image hosting software (piwigo) to handle albums, access rights, etc. Takes some willingness to mess with settings and css for full customization, but then you have full freedom to do as you please.
Who do you use as a webhost? Curious since I can't find any thing at that price point
stompyq wrote:
Who do you use as a webhost? Curious since I can't find any thing at that price point
namecheap.com
I just checked to verify that I am not giving you intro pricing, and indeed I was. My latest renewal was $43 for hosting the domain and $6 for ssl. If you are willing to make a multi-year commitment it will be cheaper.
Full disclosure - the site seems to be owned and operated by a Russian company, in case this gives you pause in the current climate. They have extensive online docs and excellent chat support, but it still requires decent computer literacy and a comfort level with cpanel/etc. I am not paying for WordPress, or any of their photo plugins, and instead running Piwigo with some level of custom css-based mods that I wrote myself.
The result isn't the slickest but it works and the price is right Link
I just checked to verify that I am not giving you intro pricing, and indeed I was. My latest renewal was $43 for hosting the domain and $6 for ssl. If you are willing to make a multi-year commitment it will be cheaper.
Full disclosure - the site seems to be owned and operated by a Russian company, in case this gives you pause in the current climate. They have extensive online docs and excellent chat support, but it still requires decent computer literacy and a comfort level with cpanel/etc. I am not paying for WordPress, or any of their photo plugins, and instead running Piwigo with some level of custom css-based mods that I wrote myself.
The result isn't the slickest but it works and the price is right Link...Show more →
You are right - ownership is not russian but each and every customer facing employee I have interacted with has been Russian. All very competent and helpful. Their CTO seems to be russian so they may have hired cheaper labor there.
don't expect much for $7-$8/year if there are any of those deals left, it'll be an unmanaged server interface that's sharing bandwidth/storage with who knows how many other websites; the advantage is that you can put multiple websites on it.
I’ve been using Flickr for years for this purpose and it works great for my needs. All of my friends and family are familiar with it by now so it’s easy to send out the album link and have people be able to download the full size pictures. It’s also easy to make an album private with link access only, I’ve done that for family shoots. I pay for the unlimited storage but I think they give you a reasonable amount for free. I’m not very savvy with webpage building so I didn’t want to mess with that. The only issue I’ve had is that sometimes people have a hard time downloading the pictures to their phones without using the Flickr app.
if there are any of those deals left, it'll be an unmanaged server interface that's sharing bandwidth/storage with who knows how many other websites; the advantage is that you can put multiple websites on it.