You can work online, you can shop online, sort out your utilities online, you can chat to friends online -in fact the list is endless. Photo sharing is one online activity that is massively popular with people from all over the world. provide a stable platform for people to share their photographs with the world.

can be either paid for free and as with any sort of service when you pay you will get extras. Using free photo hosting however does have its benefits as you are still able to upload images to a photo hosting website and other people can view them. One of the only drawbacks to using free photo hosting is that, typically, you will not get a large amount of storage of photos. You will be limited to the amount that you can post online which can be a problem if you have a great deal of thought to that you would like to upload to the website and share. Many people don’t realise just how many photos they want to upload sometimes and find that they reached their limit faster than they thought.

Paying for photo hosting can be a good idea if you have a large number of photos that you want to upload and you would also like some extra features to go with your photos. Such features include things like:

• Password protected photo albums, only you and the people who you give the password to are able to access these albums and view the photos that are within them. This is an option that many people choose to take up if they only want friends and family to see their photographs.
• Customisable skins, these are themes of pages upon which the photos are shown. This can give an extra dimension to an online photo album and it is useful to people who are trying to create an image for their photographs. Many people who have successful blogs use such features as it helps to create a sense of fluidity between the blog and the photo albums.
• Increased storage for photos, this will mean that the photo hosting website will give you the scope to upload large numbers of photos and larger sized photos. Such an option is a good idea if you don’t want to have any maximum size of image restrictions or any restrictions placed on the bandwidth allowed to user.
Obviously, it is up to the individual to decide if they want to pay for photo hosting or not as there are plenty of sites that will allow you to upload your photos free. It is best to decide what you want to use a photo hosting service for and then make a decision on whether or not a paid service or a free service would be right for your needs.