Photobucket
reviews and complaints

As I delve into the world of Kelly Dickinson Woodworking, I can't help but reflect on the cautionary tale of Photobucket. With a dismal rating of 1 star, customers share harrowing experiences of lost photos, accounts held hostage, and a lack of transparency. Just like the disappearing images on Photobucket, trust seems to vanish when it comes to this woodworking business. It's a stark reminder to choose service providers wisely, ensuring your memories and investments are safeguarded with care and integrity.

A convenient tool for placing images to forum pages (the ones that do not still support the function themselves). Could have a little less ads, those are annoying even with adblock or such.

Photobucket is perfect for sharing fun photos of friends - I use photobucket for sharing my crazy fun photos from nights out and pics of my family. What photobucket is not good for is for real photography. I don't find it useful in the same way I would use smugmug. Plus the comment you get on photobucket are pretty useless. Pbase is a much better way to get good comments on your photos. Or maybe photosig.com

EDIT: 11/27/2018 Please check the updates at the bottom.
OLD TITLE: Worst business decision ever since Adobe's move to creative cloud subscription only.
OLD review:
Photobucket, more like photof#cket.
What would you feel if you make a blog, a website or any other post, and then years later, found out that the (old) images were replaced with a message demanding you to upgrade your account to a paid subscription.
Images across the internet using Photobucket are now WREAKED, asking users to pay money to have them hosted (not a one-time fee, a periodic $400/year plan). It's a huge insult that they WOULD DECIDE to have this subscription at the most expensive of all their subscriptions. I am so disappointed to see this forum post of arts just got wiped out:
https://bbs.saraba1st.com/2b/thread-***-2-1.html.

EDIT
Hotlinks aren't the only ones destroyed, viewing it directly, downloading or otherwise accessing it (even from their own site) on some images SOMETIMES NO LONGER WORKS (the "please upgrade your account" image instead of the image intended). That is a mess. This could be one of the biggest internet DISASTER ever. It's like they're censoring them for ransom. More like hosting images disabled, not just 3rd party.
Many people said they did this because their income are short due to users using adblockers on their site, you know why? Its because your site is heavily infested by ads. At least some news sites, deviantart and wikia step it up on keeping their ads clean. Nobody wants ads that have un-close-able, website access/usability-disabling, redirecting, opening in a new tab, scam hosting, fake close buttons, spawning a separate browser window as pop-ups (including pop-unders), banners/boxes WITHIN the website filling the screen, installing malware, noisy auto-plays that refuses to mute, any browsing-obstructive content placed on a webpage and any other what google describes them as "abusive experience". I've experienced mediafire and rayfile doing this [protected]@p with clicking on the (real) download button. Viewing it on mobile is EVEN WORSE, just run away.
This company turned to sh! T the way imageshack (better to be called imageshat) did. They had the nerve to turn their backs to say "no, it's no longer free" and prevent hosting images. What's worse is that they don't give enough warning to all its users that there is a change in terms of service.
The first time I saw this was on smwcentral, and it look god awful: http://smwc.me/***
I hope this practice does not spread to multiple companies that host images like cancer, if any of them were to act this way, then there is no way to host your images permanently, like an avocado thats opened. Better to use google drive and link without hotlinking.
If you're an active user who wanted to fix your post, you have a FIELD DAY of fixing thousands of images across the internet you posted. If you're inactive, its gone forever. They could've make only images uploaded after that point be blocked, but they decided to screw it all.
EDIT: give a shout to Michel van Heijster for making a script that makes fixing your images WAY easier, download here: https://bitbucket.org/michelvh/photobucketscraper. Not sure if this is gunna work with if the image view on photobucket got replaced.
Thank god someone was smart enough to help others with this problem.
EDIT2: There is an browser add-on that circumvent this "hotlink protection" called "photobucket hotlink fix": https://github.com/Ryan-Myers/photobucket-embed-fix. What I want you to do is use that extension to enable viewing images, then download them ("save as"). It should download the actual image. Now reupload that image to another site (that does not do sh! T like photobucket did) and post a message stating that you backed up the image as intention to help visitors reading it.

11/27/2018 update: They have improved their business models and no longer block images anymore but rather watermarked them on outside sites. Now lets hope they continue to grow. The only sad problem now is due to the nature of how hotlink detection works, web archives cannot archive them as the hot inked content can read your URL. But you can download their originals.

We love photobucket and we are able to embed photos from it into ebay, we also use it to host the photos of our website http://www.tropicalrareseeds.com, excellent and they changed the layout

I submitted an image to be processed. I had made a mistake on the text that was to go with the photograph and Photobucket worked with me to get the order corrected! They were very patient and pleasant to work with. Thank you.

I've had an account with Photobucket since around 2004 or so. It was free back then, which I really appreciated, but then around 2007 or so, they started cutting the file size limit and bandwidth limit for free accounts. Wasn't happy about that, but it still suited my purposes. About 5 years ago, they started covering your images with a watermark.

In the past year or so, I've been getting emails from them warning me that my account is over limit and I need to log in and delete my photos (or however they worded it) or get a paid account. The last time they sent this email, I logged in and deleted a lot of photos from my account (after downloading/backing them up), but not quite enough to get me into the free account tier. I'm a small business owner and I don't usually get enough time during the day to do things like this as often as I'd like.

Today I received an email from them with the subject "Your photos may be subject to deletion. Verify & secure your account today." The email told me I hadn't accessed my account in some time (really it's only been a couple of months or so?), and I must verify my account to keep it in "active" status. I clicked on the "verify" link, logged in, and ended up at this page with an ugly red background, informing me "Hosting is not allowed. It's time to make a decision, upgrade today or delete your account." There is a "Purchase now" link and underneath it a "or contact support to delete your account."

I think it's disgusting that they're not even giving me an opportunity to access my account so I can save/download/delete any other photos. They might try to justify it as, "Well, we told you many times and we're not giving you any more chances." But I only received two such emails telling me to delete photos or purchase an upgrade. And they never said anything about only giving you x amount of chances before forcing you to upgrade or delete your account. I believe they're not only greedy, but shady as well.

I left them negative feedback on their site along with an email address to contact me, so we'll see if they say anything. At this point I'd rather just delete my account and be done with them... they disgust me that much. I also can't afford a paid account with them. I've been using a better image hosting service for several years now (a FREE one). But I'd like to at least be able to access the photos first. They don't care, though.

I was told by Photobucket representatives from customer service that my photos would be safe. Now, I can't go in and save the photos to my hard-drive. They want money, so I have access to my photos. They did this on purpose to try to manipulate people into paying for their services. It's just not fair. They claim they gave notice, but they DID NOT. I want access to my photos, so I can download them, and then you can delete my account.

Margot

coloradoanGirl

I signed up with photobucket.com when they first started in 2003. I had years worth of irreplaceable memories, photos that I uploaded to photobucket because I trusted that my photos were safely stored and I would never have to worry about losing them. Today I received an email saying that my account had been deactivated because they "No longer support free accounts." The email said that in order to have my photos back I would have to pay them. This email came out of the blue without any prior warning or mention of my photos being at risk of being taken from me or me being unable to access them unless I pay them money. Photobucket has taken my memories hostage and is demanding payment if I want them back. THIS IS WRONG! THIS IS NOT HOW YOU TREAT YOUR CUSTOMERS WHO'VE BEEN USING YOUR SERVICE SINCE YOU FIRST MADE IT AVAILABLE! This is BAD business and Photobucket's terms stated that they would never delete or remove your photos without your consent, but apparently that was a LIE! This company should be shut down for their bad business practices and for lying to their customers by saying the customer's photos will be safe while using their service and then holding them hostage and depriving the customer of access to their photos and demanding the customer to pay money in order to get them back. I have lost every bit of respect for Photobucket due to their actions. I had photos of my children and my Grandfather and Great Grandmother and friend that passed away uploaded to my account and it isn't right that they have decided to take my photos hostage suddenly without warning.

They are STILL doing blackmail, in 2023, by FORCING THEI PAYWALL and NOT ALLOWING THEIR MEMBERS to get their photos off of their website. They apparently have been doing this for years and I just found out about this, when I tried to sign in. They are greedy. This is not only unethical, but ILLEGAL. Class action should be taken against this company. There are also many complaints against this so-called company.

I put a lot of photos on photobucket, long ago when it was free. I am now being told I am over-storage and must remove a lot of them, I get emails telling me this regularly. When I try to log on to remove the photos, a message states the account is Inactive and please contact "support", no contact details for "support". There is no way of me retrieving my photographs. How can we combat this BS? TB

Dear Sir,

For several days I try to post my images stored in Photobucket to other web site (Stampboards.com). From unknown reason I get a message "It was not possible to determine the dimensions of the image" although I resized my images so they fit the web site requirements.

Until now I posted thousands of images from Photobucket to Stampboards.com without any problems. This problem is new and appeared 4 days ago.

Best Regards
eli
Account: Eli10149

I've had a photobucket since 2003 and now they say I reached my max space for my account and in order to get into my account I must pay a fee .I was never or warned of this issue .I would have deleted some pictures now I can't even get into my account to do so and i have precious memories and pictures that are irreplaceable please can u assist me.i would appreciate it if I can get into my account .I will delete the necessary amount of photos needed to keep my account free. I just don't understand why I didn't get any notification prior to this happening so I could have prevented this situation from occuring.i mean I can even pay a fee I just don't want to be charged the whole annual fee all at once isn't there away u could charge me monthly instead of taking the whole amount out at once .that would be much more reasonable for me

I am a long long time customer with a monthly subscription plan who's account is suddenly restricted because it told me i needed to upgrade. i figured maybe plans changed, no biggie ill select appropriate one then continue on my my mission. Today is my best friend's wake and before i go to give the eulogy, i wished to print a few more pictures to take with me. Unfortuanely the plan i had before that is largest enough to grant me access has become annual and i dont have the full amount to pay that right now. So here i am unable to access my dead best friends pictures and videos on the day of her wake because you decided to change your policy and plans without giving e the opportunity to raise the money or remove my pictures. Im devastated for so many reasons. You should be ashamed of yourselves. And of course your voicemail is full and I cant speak to anyone who could maybe grant me even one day of access.

I have been using #photobucket for many years to host images for our website. A few years back, we needed more hosting storage space so we upgraded to the plus20 account for the $29.99 yearly fee.
I received a notice that our current plan has been discontinued but I can upgrade to a $99.99 plan, however. I received the notice that my current plan was discontinued on february 23 and on february 26th, my #paypal account was debited $29.99 for my discontinued plan! What gives? This is fraud and I am disputing this payment as well as letting everyone know how photobucket conducts business. Caveat emptor!

Considering the countless number of fantastic forum help topics that have been ruined by photobucket I will never, never become a user. Please, make adjustment to restore your blocked 3d party hosted photos to forums. I am so disappointed that photobucket was so inconsiderate, so unaware so evidently uncaring to their customers and to the public they affected. I recently started using a similar service and as I said, will never use photobucket.

Extremely disappointed.
I can't access my pictures. They changed the policies and now you have to pay the full amount of money for using their service the whole year. I used to pay partially and it was convenient. But now thy demand me to pay $450 and I don't have it. What am I to do? Work harder to earn the money and pay you the whole amount at once? Of course, your stupid service is worth it. That was sarcasm, if you didn't understand.
I'm done with them. The only problem is how to delete all of the photos...

Businesses have the right to make changes at anytime. But how unprofessional, and plain wrong, to not give advanced notice about such a drastic change. Many now have hundreds/thousands of photos not showing up on the site(s) they've linked them to. Knowing this involves peoples means of income, it should be criminal to make such a greedy, inconsiderate move..wow..horrible! What idiot is paying $400 a year for 3rd party hosting . There are other free sites with 3rd party hosting, and I will now be using one of them..actually I already started to over a year ago. I've hated Photobucket for years now, with their horrible ads blocking more than half the screen at all times, and their site simply not working properly all of the time. Finally, I can be done with this pathetic website. Thank you for the ridiculous "upgrade", because now I can be done with you forever!

My wife ran into this issue a few weeks ago and I assumed it was just something fishy with a scammer and we moved her to another site. Now I come to find out this is you suddenly wanting money for a service you've offered for free for years. Considering I have used 5% storage over the years I couldn't understand why suddenly I was being told to pay. Now I find out you're just greedy.

Effective tomorrow I'll be moving all my images and pictures away from Photobucket and deleting everything on the site. I have no desire to deal with shady and greedy people who have now decided to charge for a service that you have offered for free for years. This is a very sad goodbye, but a goodbye none the less.

Thank you very much for eliminating all the photos I had posted on the Internet forums over the years. I used photobucket for the simple purpose of posting a few pictures on forums ever now and then. I only had the free service and only used 8% of what you were giving me for free.. Now you want to change me nearly $400 a year to post a few pics on the web. Well you can take this [censor] and shove it.

With no notice and no advance warning you have just succeeded in screwing up a whole lot of what I like about the internet. This is a extremely dumb move on your part. For all I care you can go ahead and cancel my account completely because without photo sharing I have no need for it ever.

Danny Moore

No notice given of this extortionate forced upgrade.
Millions upon millions of images now hidden across the web and held to a $400 a year ransom. This is bordering on criminal. I hope some of the big players step in and sort you out you. Greedy, scheming and down right despicable actions resulting in millions of hours of wasted time by blog writers, forum members and anyone else that was naive enough to trust photobucket.

Not cool, pb. I should be able to retrieve my photos, but I can't even click on them to take a screen shot, due to your sudden upgrade requirement. Those are my photos you are holding for random! I want the ability to remove my photos, as I will never pay your ridiculous fee of $400.00 a year. Pathetic. Expect an angry phone call in the morning...

Rob osborne

I am complaining because of the sites new update. It was perfect before, no lag, fast and professional. Now, I can't even see because the adverts are in the way and some of the adverts are covering buttons. And i'm unable to upload to my bucket. The site is completely un-useable, tacky and slow. Is there a way to convert back to the old version? Someone needs to realise how bad the new update is and get it sorted out because its completely unacceptable.

Do not deal with Photobucket! They don't give refunds and customer service is very poor and unhelpful. I used Photobucket in the past just as a place where I posted my pictures and it was nice. Once I've decided to try their photo printing service and ordered a simple canvas as a gift.
Quality was very poor and printing was blurry even though the original picture was made by a professional photographer!
When I asked for a refund they refused and said that they don't do refunds.

Photobucket.com has mass complaints and are the biggest scam company around. They spam constantly, they take your money for photos and never deliver and they supposedly say their free to host pictures but once they trick you to sign up and get ahold of your email to spam you to death they remove all free hosted photos.

Photobucket.com is a big scam

There's plenty of other places that are better and don't have a big fat f with the bbb