Photobucket is acting up, time to move to a different imaging site. Any Suggestions?

[Silverraptor]

So, back when I made my account on this forum, I hosted my self-made avatar on photobucket free version. There were limits sure, but I was under that limit and able to host no problem.

And now we have a problem...

It's clear the greed for photobucket has reached an all time high because they recently blurred out my images, including my avatar. When trying to log into my account, they kept redirecting me to payment plans, trying to get me to pay with no direct link to just LOOK at my photos on my account. After some clever navigation, I finally found the photos and it said I was now over using my free trial limit of photos, which is 250 pictures and I have 300. Just for context, I haven't touched my photobucket account in years, so they made the free trial limit smaller, trying to force people to pay for the images they already were allowed to put up on their site. So I went through and managed to delete 50 pictures that I deemed were no longer relevant or necessary, and expected that to make my avatar picture clear again, but eh-heh-heh, nope! Apparently, the 250 image warning was replace by a new warning, I only was able to have 25 MB of storage space and my 250 photos were apparently equal to roughly 2 GB of storage space.

But was I going to give in to pay for a service I've left idling for years to benefit from the free service they decided to reduce? Oh no! My tenacity is a lot stronger than that. Since the last time I logged into photobucket, I have developed other email accounts for various purposes (mainly business) so I decided to make a new account and move my avatar picture over to there and upload it for my avatar picture. Did it work? Yes and no. The photo is now clear, but they decided to make sure they exert MAXIMUM PRESSURE to get me to pay to host any pictures on their site. As you can see, my avatar has now a photobucket water mark over there to advertise that I am a cheapy cheap to use more then their bare minimum of service they provided. And they win, I give in...

...to moving all my pictures to another photo hosting center. When a website I haven't touched for years has reduced their standards so much they've forced me to address them, do several songs and dance to try to comply with their new limits, and still reduce what I've been using unless I pay them money, it's time to find a different hosting service. So I'd like to ask anyone out there what sites they host their avatar pictures or other photos on for free? It'll mainly be used for my avatar picture, but I might migrate over some of my other photos as well. I haven't had to think about this issue for so long, I don't know who's all out there, and who might be new in the field that would suit my needs.

[Rogar Demonblud]

Free services are going away, as Big Tech has figured out they can charge now that people are used to using them. Last free one I knew of was TinyPic, and I'm not sure if they still exist outside the paywall.

[Silverraptor]

Well, I found https://imgbb.com/. Didn't even need to open an account. I'll just use them for now and see what happens for the next few days. In all curiosity sake, what do people use to host their own original avatars on this forum?

[Rogar Demonblud]

I used to use either Photobucket or Imgur. Now I just don't bother.

[Mastikator]

I use imgur, they've never given me any trouble for not paying.

[Togath]

Discord also works surprisingly well, since you can link to photos hosted on it.

[Cygnia]

Seconding imgur (so far...)

[Unavenger]

I've always used imgbb for image hosting, and it's never given me issues, so I was gonna go suggest it until I saw you'd already found it!

[DataNinja]

I use imgur, they've never given me any trouble for not paying.

Seconding imgur (so far...)

Imgur specifically cannot be used for avatar hosting, which seemed to be one of the problems here.

Also, don't use Imgur to host image libraries you link to from elsewhere, content for your website, advertising, avatars, or anything else that turns us into your content delivery network. If you do – and we will be the judge – or if you do anything illegal, in addition to any other legal rights we may have, we will ban you along with the site you're hotlinking from, delete all your images, report you to the authorities if necessary, and prevent you from viewing any images hosted on Imgur.com. We mean it.

Note that this is why GitP is no longer able to display imgur images, because too many people here were using avatars hosted there. Hence imgur banned the site. And so the images will only show up if one is using an anonymizer program in their browser (it seems Chrome and Firefox might have them in by default, perhaps) to disguise where the traffic is coming from, if it's in their cache already, or if they copy the link and paste it in a fresh tab (not 'open in new tab', because that'll still have GitP fingerprints).

[137beth]

Tumblr does allow you to embed images they host on other sites. I'm not sure whether using it as an avatar will lead to the same kinds of issues as with Imgur, though.

[nedz]

imgbb seems to work — look, see.

[Frogsama]

Imgbb is better than imgur for bigger pictures. Imgur erases your transparency settings if the picture is too big, weird.