Flickr

April 2009. Flickr's ad-supported free account draws praise from reviewers as one of the best of its type. Flickr, which is part of Yahoo!, offers more features to free-account holders than most competing services. Niceties include things like inline captions and advanced tagging, excellent photo quality, privacy options and access to a large user community. Limits are imposed, however, including caps on bandwidth (only 100 MB of photos can be uploaded in a month), the number of photos you can see (only the last 200) and the size photos can be viewed at (1,024 pixels along the longest edge). Those limitations are removed in Flickr's Pro offering (*est. $25 per year), but experts generally prefer other services such as SmugMug (*est. $40 per year) for their ease-of-use and even more impressive line up of features.

Flickr has been extensively reviewed, but few reports provide rigorous, in-depth comparisons with competing services. FirstTube.com is one exception, and that site picks Flickr as the most powerful among free photo-sharing services. Though discussion could be deeper, an article in the reputable British magazine Which? also picks Flickr as the best photo organizing and sharing tool. Coverage at PCMag.com, Zerokspot.com, the Australian site Lifehacker, DownloadSquad.com, and the blogs Ben Co. and TechnoFriends is a little less helpful, but the reports at those sites are still worth a read for additional background.