New Photobucket policy requires users to pay up to $400

Unfortunately, Photobucket isn’t going to be free for anybody anymore. The company announced on a short blog post that it had updated its terms of service that began taking effect on June 20. In spite of this, Photobucket didn’t mention the most important change: it will now cost uploaders $400PHP 23,474INR 33,900EUR 381CNY 2,911 a year to insert their photos on another website using direct image links.

The reason behind this is that since its launching in 2003, Photobucket had been free and supported by ads. But 75 percent of Photobucket’s costs originated from “non-paying users leveraging 3rd party hosting,” and resulted in “zero revenue.”

As a business, the company decided to change the service into a paid feature. See available Plus Account Plans below:

• Plus 50 Plan: 52 GB of Storage for $59.99PHP 3,521INR 5,084EUR 57CNY 437 / Year. The Plus 50 Plan does not allow any image linking or 3^rd party image hosting.
• Plus 100 Plan: 102 GB of Storage for $99.99PHP 5,868INR 8,474EUR 95CNY 728 / Year. The Plus 100 Plan allows for unlimited image linking but does not allow 3^rd party image hosting.
• Plus 500 Plan: 502 GB of Storage and unlimited bandwidth for $399.99PHP 23,474INR 33,899EUR 381CNY 2,911 / Year. The Plus 500 Plan allows for unlimited image linking and unlimited 3^rd party image hosting.

It wasn’t until then when some users discovered that they can’t even download their own photos out of their Photobucket accounts without upgrading. You can imagine how furious some of its users were.

https://twitter.com/Elijahmalcolm/status/886693871748608001

Despite all the brash hullabaloos on Twitter, Photobucket only responded with:

⚠️ Thank you for all of the recent feedback and questions. We are trying our best to respond quickly and thank you for your patience :)

— Photobucket (@photobucket) July 1, 2017

Source: Photobucket

Via: The Verge