Shutterfly is not going to allow free image hosting starting this year:
You are receiving this email because you are a valued Shutterfly customer, and we want to let you know that we’re making some changes to our service offerings in 2023.
We recommend that you read our policies and notices carefully, to make sure you fully understand what is changing.
At a glance, here’s what our updates mean for you:
We updated our Privacy Notice to ensure compliance with new consumer data privacy laws in California, Colorado, Connecticut and Virginia.
We also updated our Terms of Use to explain how either of us may initiate an arbitration proceeding in the eve
If this site would finally get into the 21st century, people wouldn’t have to go to off site apps to download pictures. A lot more people would post photos also.
What a pain… I’m not sure if I want to keep using it or not…
on the one hand, I got used to using it, and I can’t even re-link all the pictures I’d need to, because they’re in posts made with my old account that I can’t access anymore. On the otherhand, I don’t want to worry about remembering to make payments… I dunno. I guess the grace period, in theory, is already over, so I need to figure out what to do soon.
I wouldn’t hold my breath waiting for technological advances to the forum server. By volume, message boards get in one week less than 1% of the traffic that the Facebook groups covering the same interests bring in in a single hour.
I decided to pay for something to get 18 months to think about this and then make a decision - I found an item for $5.00 which arrived today and which promply went into the garbage so I’m good to go until June of next year.
As for losing the photos I have on that site - the only thing I’ve used it for is to post pictures on this forum so if I decide to close the account all that will be lost is what I’ve posted here.
Other sites including the “other 3 rail site” let you post pictures directly from your device. No outside service is needed. Just go to your photos, pick one, and attach it. Easy peasy.
If this forum had that option there would be a lot more people including myself posting pictures.
Let’s get something straight, in NO WAY do I blame the staffs of the magazines in the Kalmbach family, but “the other 3 rail site” and another rail-centric mag company seem to be doing everything right and whoever’s in the Kalmbach “C Suites” seem to be doing everything wrong and to make matters worse not learning from their mistakes. Are they deliberately trying to lose customers? I doubt it but the way they’re going that’s what’s going to happen.
I can’t help but think the people at “the other 3-rail site” and the other “rail centric” publishing outfit understand the business and the clientele but the Kalmbach “C Suite” people don’t.
I may have misunderstood but I thought it was stated that “the other site” is no longer free to individuals who just want to show up and post. As I understand it, as of the first of last year anyone who was not already a member of the site and who wishes to post must have a subscription.
If that’s the case it’s understandable, “Nobody rides free!” I’m not on that site but if it does everything it’s supposed to do and does it well then it’s probably worth it as long as they’re not charging past the subscription cost.
The economics of running one of these boards are not trivial (speking here from experieince). The “other” site is much larger, and one of the reasons is that they do host their own pics/vids, BUT it costs them money to do so, so asking for some kind of support–subscription or being a supporting member–is reasonable on their part. I didn’t mind it.
I don’t post pics here because I gave up on web hosting services because of cost in serious inconvenience. I would like to see hosting here. Given the wide range of interests among the Kalmbach sites, I would think that they could consider a minimal level of archive support, amortizing the costs across the boards. But I cannot know they could. All I know is that I wish they would. And I am a subscriber, but I would also pay a nominal fee for membership here if I needed to.
very strange… I would be shocked if it was unrelated.
Oddly enough… shutterfly never sent out that E-Mail to me. And there was nothing on my account to suggest my pictures would all vanish Feb 1st if I didn’t do something about it.