Photobucket Now Charging $399 Per Year for 3rd Party Hosting

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I managed to rescue 90% of my PB pics , no videos though.

It took me a good few hours to download them and save them onto my works PC , just lucky i have been backshift since Saturday.

Kenny
 
Didn't have many on mine so downloaded them all just incase I haven't got them elsewhere.

What I don't understand is why go from zero to $399? Sure with the number of members they have, a nominal annual fee would have generated a huge annual income and keep their users happy?
 
Another option to replace PB :

postimage.org.

Member on the 968uk forum has tried it and reckons it's better than PB!
 
bob6600 said:
Didn't have many on mine so downloaded them all just incase I haven't got them elsewhere.

What I don't understand is why go from zero to $399? Sure with the number of members they have, a nominal annual fee would have generated a huge annual income and keep their users happy?
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The fee is only for 3rd party hosting...the photos you have on PB are not disappearing...just yet.
 
KillerHERTZ said:
With no warning at all.- see my Sig image.

All my 14 years worth of photos will need to be re-hosted. Countless threads on forums across the net will be ruined as it has millions of users

Good work Photobucket :wallbash:

https://www.ghacks.net/2017/06/30/photobucket-now-charges-399-for-third-party-hosted-images/
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Yep , mine are the same . That's them getting greedy and it will backfire because few will pay .

They touted themselves as an image sharing site , with the facility to host images onto other sites - all free of charge to the users and paid by advertising .

Know what ?

I'm just leaving all of my links broken and their little ransom messages showing everywhere . These things will abound all over the Internet and PB will become hated .

I won't upload any more images so they can just whistle for any money they might imagine they're getting out of me .

The more of these ransom messages that remain all over the web , the more negative publicity it will create for them , after all their users leave , their sponsors will pull their advertising .

This is an object lesson in how not to run a business .

They need their user base ; we don't need them .
 
I just deleted my account and removed bookmarks from browsers .

I made it clear the reason for this was because of their ransom demands ( could be viewed as extortion ? ) .
 
Well, got the email and the ransom demands. All over the Brunnhilde thread where my photos were is now the death notice of a ship of fools.

Rather renders the thread somewhat pointless without photos, I still have them all, but obviously as I can't edit the thread I can't re-host them and re-link them.

Blowing your brains out in public - great job Photobucket.
 
I've got too many to delete my account really, but there's no way I'm paying their ransom
 
Karl - I am going to re-host all of my photos that I feel need to be kept for external links, fortunately only a couple of hundred. Is there a possibility at some point that I can be allowed to edit my Brunnhilde thread to re-link the correct photos in the individual posts when I've got them re-hosted (or just use the manage attachment part). I'd really hate Photobucket's greed to ruin the pictorial history of my build thread.
 
Well, mine just gone too.

Some of the post, like the DRL mod, had 30-odd pics in them, can't be edited now and pretty useless without those photos.
 
Just received my "ransom" e-mail from PB , just lucky i managed to get my stuff off before they got round to me.

My only concern for anyone leaving their data on the PB site is that how much longer will it remain open if people are leaving in their droves , and if it shut completely then i would imagine everyone will loose everything.

Kenny
 
I have every single photo on my Mac, all I am going to do is see if I can make a file of all the links I made on my build thread so that I can find the original photo and preserve it.
 
Yup I got the email today and all my links are now dead.

I plan to leave them for now as it's possible that PB will have to back down. But anything new will go somewhere else.
 
Charles Morgan said:
I have every single photo on my Mac, all I am going to do is see if I can make a file of all the links I made on my build thread so that I can find the original photo and preserve it.
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Likewise , although I had 100+ pages of images uploaded to PB , I still have all my original images on external drives , all duplicated onto backup drives in case of failure . The files on PB were at reduced resolution anyway , while I still have all my RAW files and full size JPEGS .

I will look at other options going forward , but until PB go down completely I'm just going to leave the ransom messages showing as a warning to others not to use them .

My email came in at 0:08 this morning , when I was sitting at EDI airport waiting to meet family off a flight , and my account was deleted shortly afterwards , once I had read through some of the torrent of complaints .

Now , there was a thread running about conspiracy theories - who thinks this was instigated by Donald Trump ? :devil:
 
I've had a Photobucket account for many many years and in turn have a number of threads on forums which link to them. All of which are now knackered. :mad:

I think what has shot Photobucket in the foot with this is the greed of it all. So many people use it for the linking of images, not for storing pictures!

So to make the cost over $30 a month is ludicrous. It's the sheer greed of it that has people leaving in droves. I mean if they'd said that going forward if you wish to link images it's $5 a month, people may have considered it and they'd see the car pouring in.
 
Just read this and the hundreds of posts with my how to`s etc all dead !

If mods allow the edit feature back on I may update some over time, but till then no pics!

:(

I think I might have to get my own hosted website!
 
Alps said:
Just read this and the hundreds of posts with my how to`s etc all dead !

If mods allow the edit feature back on I may update some over time, but till then no pics!

:(

I think I might have to get my own hosted website!
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Think you need to look at your signature :)
 
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Photobucket' statement, big lol at the last bit:

Denver, Colorado (July 6, 2017) One of the world’s leading photo storage and hosting sites has begun notifying its largest commercial scale users that it will now offer an unlimited third party hosting subscription plan.

John Corpus, CEO of Photobucket, said that historically the company “relied heavily on advertising revenue but that major industry-wide changes in the advertising space have greatly impacted Photobucket, including the rise of ad blockers and the Company’s explosion of 3rd party hosting that generates zero revenue.”

“This model is no longer sustainable,” Corpus added.

Corpus noted that seventy-five percent of Photobucket’s costs originate from non-paying users leveraging 3rd party hosting. The majority of the industry has either eliminated 3rd party hosting or imposed variable pricing based on consumption. To address the market, Photobucket has added unlimited hosting to its Plus 500 Subscription plan at a competitive fixed price.

Photobucket modified its Terms of Use in the second quarter of 2017. The Company began notifying non-paying users through email and on-site messaging that the Plus 500 plan offers 3rd Party Hosting for both commercial and personal use requiring no development or technical experience. Photobucket users who elect not to subscribe to the Plus 500 plan are always able to access all of their photos and migrate to alternative solutions if they so desire.

In Photobucket’s 14-year history, the Company has amassed over 100 million registered users, over 15 billion images stored, with 2 million daily uploads and 60 billion photos accessed monthly.

“With all the photos stored and shared, nearly everyone interacts with a Photobucket hosted image on at least one page across the web over a sixty-day period, putting the photo hosting service as a significant part of the internet,” Corpus said.

Corpus said that “initial results for the Company are positive. This path to a more sustainable business model allows us to develop an even more robust product to meet our customers’ needs.”

“We are grateful for our customers’ continued support,” he added.
 
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