Backing up your pictures on a secure photography website is a no-brainer. It’s simply the best way to safeguard your memories from accidentally getting lost or damaged forever. However, you can’t just hire any site do this important job. Back in 2008, several hundred paying customers, who trusted the photo site Digital Railroad, were suddenly given just about 10 hours to gather their images and get out. The company had gone belly up.
Despite this nightmarish incident, take note: The lesson here isn’t to avoid using these remote servers, but rather to choose the right one. Think of it this way, you’re not going to just give any old bank your money for safe-keeping. You want one with a good reputation, a smart business model, and positive customer feedback. With the same criteria in mind, I put together this list of the top three most trustworthy photo storing and sharing websites on the Net.
History Created by a husband-and-wife team in 2004, Flickr was founded on the concept of sharing and community. Its membership is now about the size of New York City: 8 million users and counting. Among the rave reviews on its site is this gem: “To say I’m addicted is an understatement. Flickr makes it easy … It … encourages sharing the slices of your life, realized through photos…”
Price Plans Use up to 100 MB every month for free or invest $24.95 a year for unlimited storage.
Share Your Album If you want to keep your images private, you will have to manually choose that setting. The default setting grants access to your galleries to anyone and everyone around the globe.
Cool Features You can map where you’ve taken your pictures around the world via their Organizr page. Also, use the free Flickr Uploadr program (available for both PC and Mac) to create your gallery in a few quick clicks.
History In June 2001, Kodak, a trusted name in photography, bought the digital photo developing service website originally named ofoto.com, which was founded in 1999.
Price Plans Get up to 2GB for $4.99 a year or unlimited storage for $19.99 a year. There’s one catch: To maintain storage, you need to make minimum purchases (buy prints, albums, calendars, cards, or other products, like mugs or key chains) within three months of uploading images, and then once a year thereafter. If you don’t follow these shopping rules, your photos may be deleted—but only after 60 months (5 years!) of inactivity.
Share Your Album Sending slideshows of your holidays, reunions, and vacations to 50 of your closest family and friends doesn’t get any easier. And you don’t need to be a member to view a gallery.
Cool Features Privacy is sacred here: No one can see your images without your invitation. Also, uploading images is super simple. No special software required.
History In 2005, a dinner conversation about the future of photography led friends to launch this website. Five years later, the site has more than 500,000 seemingly happy customers (lots of great feedback on its Facebook wall) ranging from novice to professional photographers.
Price Plans Starts at $9.99 per month for 10 GB of storage space. Get an extra 10 GB for an additional $5.99 per month.
Share Your Album Invite people to view your galleries using a formal invitation feature (perfect for wedding images or promoting a fundraiser) or you can just email them the link (non-members can bypass logging in). You have several photo visibility options here, so you can keep images private for specific users.
Cool Features There are no restrictions on file size or format, meaning that you can upload your high resolution originals in RAW format (an uncompressed, unprocessed data file) as well as your low resolution camera phone snapshots. Plus, for a one-time fee of $100, you can have Photoshelter upload all the images off any thumb drive or external storage drive for you, no matter the quantity (a good deal if you’re in a time crunch).
[Photography courtesy of Amelia Hennighausen]
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Tags: Digital Memories, Photography, Sharing
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