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Photobucket

Score5 out of 10

4 Reviews and Ratings

What is Photobucket?

Photobucket headquartered in Denver offers their cloud services for uploading, sharing, linking and finding photos, videos and graphics. Service plans may include hosting, photo editing, private album sharing or sharing to social media, and caption and title creation and editing.

Categories & Use Cases

Top Performing Features

  • User and role management

    Administrators can manage users and user groups by role, in terms of setting permissions for things like file access, sharing, and editing permissions.

    Category average: 8.4

  • File organization

    The ability to choose where files will be stored, and manage individual users' storage; includes control over file organization structure.

    Category average: 8.4

  • Device management

    Administrators can manage devices connected to the cloud storage platform, including restricting access for certain devices or wiping files from devices remotely.

    Category average: 8.6

Areas for Improvement

  • File search

    A search function that allows users to easily find files, and in some cases even search within multiple files.

    Category average: 7.8

  • Performance

    Platform runs at a good speed on all browsers; files load and sync quickly.

    Category average: 8.2

  • Versioning

    Users can access the most up-to-date version of a document, track changes, and revert to older versions if needed.

    Category average: 8.2

Easy to use interface that is great for beginning freelancers but might have kicked the bucket by restricting useful features to higher tier accounts

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

When bandwidth was a lot more expensive, Photobucket, with [its] generous bandwidth capacity, allowed us to keep our cloud hosting bandwidth usages under control and offload samples of work and other media onto Photobucket servers. This was especially useful as the business was just getting started, and we needed to ensure our expenses were streamlined as much as possible.

Pros

  • Photo specific-features and better UI for sharing photos vs. other cloud storage providers
  • Unlimited plan is still generously priced
  • the "1" in the classic 3-2-1 backup plan that is easy to use
  • Good for beginners

Cons

  • Plans are awkwardly priced compared to competitors
  • [In my opinion,] made shady practices in the past forcing users to their premium plans

Most Important Features

  • Offsite storage of media that is closer to a "set it, forget it" vs providers like AWS
  • While we don't need it, unlimited storage can be attractive to some

Return on Investment

  • No maintenance necessary since it usually "just works"
  • Saves time for quickly sharing content to clients

Other Software Used

Dropbox, Apple iCloud, OneDrive, Google Drive

Cloud Based Storage Gives me Peace of Mind!

Pros

  • Houses very large photos that I don't have the capacity to store on my computer
  • Allows for a great online backup just in case something happens with my computer or external hard drive
  • Allows me to quickly and easily share photos with clients after their photoshoot is done
  • Organizes photos into a streamlined setup

Cons

  • It's honestly pretty straight forward for what I use it for. No complaints here.

Most Important Features

  • Storage Storage Storage. I have so many photos and the files are HUGE. I like having the peace of mind of knowing that even if my computer or hard drives break down the photos are somewhere else. In some cases, I'm capturing huge events for people and the thought of losing them due to a technical glitch is heartbreaking. This prevents that.
  • Ability to share with clients. It makes it simple for them to view their photos at any time without taking up a bunch of space on THEIR devices. After all... many people don't print photos out anymore.
  • It is a relatively inexpensive business expense in the grand scheme of things. It's worth the price for the peace of mind.

Return on Investment

  • The peace of mind is priceless. Time is money and I spend a lot of time stressing over accidentally losing files. This helps.
  • I no longer have to use multiple services to send files to clients. It's more specifically designed for photos rather than documents of all types
  • I want the positive experience for clients to continue from beginning to end and I like that this system is simple for them to use as well.

Other Software Used

Adobe PhotoShop