Top 5 Image Hosting Sites

An image can literally convey moments that remain defiant to words. Storing images can be messy but by the end of this article you would surely find a solution to it. This article compares some of the best Free Online Image Hosts on the net.

What are Image Hosting Sites?

Image Hosting sites allow users to upload images on their server and provides an image url leading to your uploaded image. This is what is required for posting on websites, blogs and forums or sharing with family and friends.

Why should i use an Image Host instead my own web host?

There are several reasons on why to use an image hosting site rather than your own web host. Some of them are mentioned below :-

1. Waste of Web Space and Bandwidth

Each Web Hosting Plan (except the Unlimited Plan, that costs something around 15 $ on most Web Hosting providers ) has some limitations to Web space and bandwidth. Hence using online image hosts can save both of these.

2. Never keep all your eggs in a single basket

Every month thousands of sites are banned due to hosting of adult or copyrighted images on their server. Hosting of these image on some other sites prevents your site from banning.

3. Allows Organisation in to Albums and Folders

Image hosting provides you the ability to organise your uploaded images in to folders and albums. This not only saves your time but lets you share them with family and friends.

4. Some Other Useful Features

These image host provides some cool features like Archive upload(zip,tar and rar), url and bulk upload, Single click Social share, Image resizing options etc.

5. Gives you high quality Backlinks

Image hosting sites usually have a high page rank thus giving high quality backlinks to your site.

How to find a suitable Free Image Hosting?

There are many free image hosting sites on the net. But to choose from them could be a tiresome task. The following list of Top 10 Image Host along with their features would make your task easier.

1. Picasa Web Albums

Picasa Web Albums is a free image hosting site owned by Google. It is automatically linked with your blog at blogger and all images that you upload via blogger stores into it. You can have maximum 250 Albums each with 500 pictures in it.

• Upload Options: As File or Url
• Allowed Formats: JPG, PNG, JPEG, GIF
• BandWidth : Practically Unlimited
• Upload Size Limit : 20 MB

2. Flickr

Flickr is an image and video hosting site owned by Yahoo! They offer a free, Pro and a Pro+ account. Free account gives Powerful photo editing tools and Smart Photo Management like features.

• Upload Options: As File or Url or Email
• Allowed Formats: JPG, PNG, JPEG, GIF
• Bandwidth : Unlimited
• Upload Size Limit : 200 MB
• Storage Space Limit : 1 TB

3. Imgur

Imgur is a highly popular image host that provides all the pro features in the free account. Actually on their 6th anniversary they got rid of pro subscriptions and added all features in free accounts. These includes image analytics and referrer data , Multiple Thumbnail options and editing on the go.

• Upload Options: As File or Url
• Allowed Formats: JPG, PNG, JPEG, GIF
• Bandwidth : Unlimited
• Upload Size Limit : 200 MB For .gif & 20MB for Non Animated ones
• Storage Space Limit : Unlimited

4. TinyPic

TinyPic is another cool image sharing site. It allows organizing, tagging and editing uploaded image. Free account even allows multiple uploads.

• Upload Options: As File or Url
• Allowed Formats: JPG, PNG, JPEG, GIF
• Bandwidth : Unlimited
• Upload Size Limit : 100 MB For Images & 5 Min for Videos
• Storage Space Limit : Unlimited

5. Imageshack

Imageshack too has some good features like allowing uploads as zip files. Though it has ended up its free accounts and allows only subscription based accounts.

• Upload Options: As File or Url or Zip
• Allowed Formats: JPG, PNG, JPEG, GIF, MP4, MOV, 3GP, FLV etc
• Bandwidth : Unlimited
• Upload Size Limit : 5MB/Image
• Storage Space Limit : Unlimited

6. Fotki

Fotki is a pupolar blogging and image hosting site. Fotki is well known for is flexibility as it provides privacy control settings and allows you to manage all your data.

• Upload Options: As File or Url or Zip
• Allowed Formats: JPG, PNG, JPEG, GIF, MP4, MOV, 3GP, FLV etc
• Bandwidth : Unlimited
• Upload Size Limit : 20MB/Image
• Storage Space Limit : 3 GB + 200MB/Month Additional

7. PhotoBucket

Photobucket has above 100 Million Registered users and offers completely free account. Even Twitter uses it for hosting images.

• Upload Options: As File or Url or Zip
• Allowed Formats: JPG, PNG, JPEG, GIF
• Bandwidth : 10 GB
• Upload Size Limit : 20 MB/Image
• Storage Space Limit : 2 GB in Free & more on Subscription

8. Smugmug

Smugmug is best Paid Image host. No free accounts are allowed. It ha premium features like right click image protection, Mobile Apps for Android/iOS , Portfolio view and you can even add your personal domain to it.

• Upload Options: As File or Url or Zip
• Allowed Formats: JPG, PNG, JPEG, GIF
• Bandwidth : Unlimited
• Upload Size Limit : 12 MB/Image in Standard and 24 Mb/ Image in Pro
• Storage Space Limit : Unlimited

9. SnapFish

Snapfish is image host owned by HP. It doesn't even requires registration for uploading.

• Upload Options: As File Only
• Allowed Formats: JPEG
• Bandwidth : Unlimited
• Upload Size Limit : 145 MB/Image
• Storage Space Limit : Unlimited

10. WebShots

WebShots is a great photo sharing platform where photographers share there creations. Though it has many ads and provides minimal features like Crop and Resize online.

• Upload Options: As File Only
• Allowed Formats: JPEG
• Bandwidth : Unlimited
• Upload Size Limit : 10 MB/Image
• Storage Space Limit : 5400 Photos and 540 Videos