PhotoBucket news

[Undead Medic]

They seem to have published their permanent prices on the website.

[Carol the Dabbler]

When viewed on their website, there's a footnote on the two non-free options:  billed annually.  So if you want 3rd-party hosting, $2.25/month or $27/year is the cheapest you can get (and 2 gig is *plenty* for me -- dunno how they calculate that to be 400 photos -- I get between 1,300 and 12,000, depending on size).  That's not *too* big a price increase over the $19.99 that I'm paying this year, but I am beginning to feel like a lobster being lowered head-first into a pot of boiling water.

However my payment receipt says that I will be billed $19.99 again next year.    Does that constitute a binding contract?

 

[Undead Medic]

I’m guessing that they are basing the 400 photos on those taken with the average digital camera available today at around 24 megapixels resolution. 

[Carol the Dabbler]

Our digital camera must be way outdated, then -- and it's only 14 years old!

[Undead Medic]

I have to say I’m beginning to feel a little left out, I’ve not received any emails from Photobucket at all, let alone an apology or any special offers. 😢😭

 

[Carol the Dabbler]

That is *very* odd!  Starting, I think, last October, I've been deluged with emails from them, mostly so trumped-up that I nearly ignored their recent Actual News, assuming that it was just more of the same.

I 'spect they'd be glad to take your money, though! 

[J.P.]

On 27.5.2018 at 11:28 AM, Carol the Dabbler said:

Our digital camera must be way outdated, then -- and it's only 14 years old!

You sure it's digital?

[Arcadia]

Maybe she means it has automatic exposure settings....   

[Carol the Dabbler]

Did I use the wrong word?  I'm chronically half asleep these days.  I meant a camera that uses a memory card instead of film.  We bought it in '04 in order to take lots and lots of pictures of our house being built.

[Arcadia]

We're making fun of you, dear....  

[Carol the Dabbler]

That's what I figured. 

But usually when y'all make fun of me, it's funny.  This time I don't get it. 

 

[Carol the Dabbler]

On 5/21/2018 at 2:35 PM, Carol the Dabbler said:

Hell, yes, I will pay $19.99 for a year!  If they'd made that offer in the first place (and not locked my photos without warning), I'd have been happy to pay back then.  I'm wondering exactly what they mean by "for a limited time," but whatever it is, I can deal with it next year.

I guess I just found out.  Their new pricing structure appears to allow hotlinking with even their basic (free) service, which allows up to 20 meg of bandwidth per month.  I have no idea whatsoever how much bandwidth I'm currently using, but they say that starting in June, I can monitor my usage on their website.  Their lowest paid subscription is now $6.99/month, which is $83.88/year, a damn sight higher than last year's $19.99.  Added May 2021:  Every time I tried to check my usage, that feature was "not currently available," or something like that.

On 5/26/2018 at 4:48 PM, Carol the Dabbler said:

However my payment receipt says that I will be billed $19.99 again next year.    Does that constitute a binding contract?

I just checked that email, and it says " Next Billing Period: $19.99 will be charged on 05/20/2019."  So I guess I'll just wait and see what happens a week from next Monday.

[Arcadia]

On ‎6‎/‎2‎/‎2018 at 1:26 AM, Carol the Dabbler said:

That's what I figured. 

But usually when y'all make fun of me, it's funny.  This time I don't get it. 

I don't remember seeing this before, or I would have answered. But now I can't remember what's funny about it either.  

On ‎5‎/‎9‎/‎2019 at 9:26 PM, Carol the Dabbler said:

I just checked that email, and it says " Next Billing Period: $19.99 will be charged on 05/20/2019."  So I guess I'll just wait and see what happens a week from next Monday.

Annnd…..???

[Carol the Dabbler]

They've billed me $19.99.  They haven't said anything about repeating that price next year, though.

They're going to start letting us monitor our usage starting in June, so I will do that.  It may well be that their newly expanded free basic service would be quite adequate for me.

[Van Buren Supernova]

20 meg of bandwidth is soooo... little.

Nowadays one picture of a good camera phone is easily 12 meg.

Or is there different way to calculate it. I know it could be sized, but even so,.. 20 meg??

[Carol the Dabbler]

2 hours ago, Van Buren Supernova said:

20 meg of bandwidth is soooo... little.

Nowadays one picture of a good camera phone is easily 12 meg.

Fortunately it appears that I don't have a good camera, because my photos are somewhere around 100-250 Kbytes, so 20 meg would allow 80-200 views, which could be enough at this point.

I wonder whether it would help to put my photos (here on the forum) into spoiler boxes?  Would that prevent them from being loaded if someone loaded the page but did not open the box?  Maybe it depends on their internet speed -- on a slow day, I sometimes see the contents of spoiler boxes while the page is loading.

[Arcadia]

Yeah, I kind of think they would load anyway, or they wouldn't be there when you opened the spoiler box.

I'm not sure 20 mg of bandwidth is the same thing as file size. That is, I don't think one 20mg image would use up your month's allotment of bandwidth. I think it's got more to do with how many people are trying to access the image at once??? I confess to being out of my depth here. Here's an article on the subject that I almost understand   maybe it will help? http://www.plugthingsin.com/internet/speed/

Also this, which Bing comes up with when you ask it how much bandwidth a website needs:

Bandwidth depends on your web page size, as well as the number of visitors to your website and the number of pages they visit. For an average page size of 50KB, 20,000 visitors per month, and 5 pages per visitor your website will need about 5000MB, or 5GB, of bandwidth per month.

[Carol the Dabbler]

1 hour ago, Arcadia said:

Also this, which Bing comes up with when you ask it how much bandwidth a website needs:

Bandwidth depends on your web page size, as well as the number of visitors to your website and the number of pages they visit. For an average page size of 50KB, 20,000 visitors per month, and 5 pages per visitor your website will need about 5000MB, or 5GB, of bandwidth per month.

  That's what I was assuming:  50K x 20,000 = 1,000,000K, which is 1,000 meg, which is one gig.  So page (or image) size x total views per month = monthly bandwidth used.  So in your first example, if you're allowed 20 meg of bandwidth per month, and all you have on your site is a single 20-meg image, and one person (presumably even you!) looks at it just once, that's it for the month.

[Artemis]

Bandwidth is one of those nebulous things I don’t really understand... like “The Cloud”, and the stock market.  What even is it?  I don’t know, but everything’s there!

 

 

[Carol the Dabbler]

I'm pretty sure that "bandwidth" has three different meanings, which is one reason that it's confusing.  Somebody who actually knows what they're talking about, please correct me if the following is not accurate:

1. Bandwidth can mean (and I'm guessing this is the original meaning) the most data that a specified connection is capable of handling in a specified time period (thus the "freeway" analogy in the link that Arcadia posted).  This is often used to describe internet speeds, and generally seems to be measured in bits (not bytes) per second (e.g., kilobits per second, i.e., thousands of bits per second).  This is not the meaning we've been talking about.

2.  Bandwidth can also mean the amount of data that a website typically sends / receives in a specified time period (or the amount that the webmaster would like to be able to send / receive).  This generally seems to be measured in bytes (not bits) per time period (e.g., megabytes per month; i.e., millions of bytes per month).  This isn't quite what we're talking about either.

3.  Bandwidth can also mean the amount of data that a subscriber is *allowed* to send / receive per time period via their account.  This also seems to be measured in bytes per time period, often megabytes per month.  This is the relevant definition with Photobucket.  It's pretty simple, actually -- Photobucket will let people look at your pictures, but it keeps a running total of the image sizes, and once your limit is reached -- something not-so-nice happens.

[Arcadia]

I'm still not sure I get it, but more to the point … are you going to keep using it?  

[Carol the Dabbler]

I've already paid for the next 12 months, so I'll certainly use it that long.  As for after that, I'll need to see what kind of usage statistics I see in the meanwhile.  I can try looking at certain threads where I've posted a lot of pictures, to see what effect that has.  I'm not keen on the idea of paying way more than I am now, so if it doesn't look like their free service would be adequate, and if they don't offer to renew again at my current rate, I may just let it lapse.  Dunno what (if anything) I'd do about the photos I've already posted.

[Van Buren Supernova]

I remember on one of my early jobs, we were allowed to access internet for 200Megabyte per month. Geez it needed special skill to be sure that we didn't exceed it and it ran out fast (that was why I bought my first smart phone, because there were a lot of downtime at work and it drove me crazy to just sit there waiting for time to pass). One of my colleague was not aware about the limitation and he downloaded something and slapped with 800 dollar charge, not sure how they settled it. 

 

For your case.

If your usage exceeded your bandwidth, would you be automatically charged?

If yes, it would be dangerous for your bill since you have little control over it, right?

If not, than I suggest you just test out how far you could go, and see what happens when you had hit your quota. I suspect it would be frozen just like what happened here last month.

[Carol the Dabbler]

5 hours ago, Van Buren Supernova said:

If your usage exceeded your bandwidth, would you be automatically charged?

 

5 hours ago, Van Buren Supernova said:

see what happens when you had hit your quota. I suspect it would be frozen....

I think I read that they "watermark" all of your photos until you upgrade to the next level.  I don't think they could have a policy of automatically charging you for the next level, since their lowest level is free, so they wouldn't have credit card numbers for a lot of people.

 

[Artemis]

11 hours ago, Carol the Dabbler said:

I think I read that they "watermark" all of your photos until you upgrade to the next level.

Yeah that's true.  I haven't paid them and all my photos are watermarked.