A website shines brighter when it has beautiful high-resolution images on it. Sadly, most web hosting services provide limited storage space, restricting the number of images you can have on your site. There is a way around that – free image hosting sites. Here’s everything to get you started.
What are Image Hosting Sites?
Image hosting sites let users store pictures online while providing other features, like social media functionality.
Typically a site like this gives a link you can embed on a website. That way the image can be displayed on your site, while using the service’s storage space, instead of your hosting account’s.
Image hosting sites have intuitive ways of sorting your content. Making folders, adding tags, and editing images without leaving the website is a great time saver. These sites are often a better alternative to CMS image management tools.
Best Free Image Hosting Sites
There are many ifree image hosting sites to choose from. These are some of our favorites:
1. Google Photos
Chances are you already have a Google Drive but haven’t tried the Google Photos free image hosting site. To start using it all you need is a Google account. The Google Photos mobile and desktop applications allow regularly backing up pictures to the cloud.
With Photos, you can create “collaborative albums” to share with others. You can’t tag your images, but the service groups them automatically based on subject. This feature makes searching faster and easier.
Photos share storage space with other Google services. That means you get 15GB for free. Use direct links for your pictures or get a sharable link for entire folders.
2. Imgur
Imgur is one of the best free image hosting sites out there. It’s completely free, only requiring an account for uploading images. It became a social network similar to Tumblr, where you can share and comment on public posts.
Imgur offers unlimited storage but does have some restrictions in place. .jpeg files can’t be larger than 20 MB; .gif files can’t be larger than 200MB. You can upload 50 images per hour, which is plenty! You can get direct links for sharing, or HTML snippets for embedding straight to your website.
3. Flickr
Flickr is a long-running image hosting site with some great features. Users can use a powerful built-in editor along with a social network for photographers.
With this platform, you can get direct links or HTML snippets for your website. On top of that, Flickr offers “Creative Commons Licensing” – asking users to credit the image’s author, when using their upload.
You can get some great features with the free account, or upgrade to premium. Currently, free members can upload a maximum of 1,000 pictures.
4. Imgbox
Imgbox is a lightweight and simple alternative to other free image hosting sites. It’s completely free and promises to hold your images as long as the service runs. Did we mention it has unlimited storage space? There are some limitations on file size, however.
Your pictures can’t be larger than 10MB. You get direct links to them, but no other features.
5. Tinypic
Tinypic is another great free image hosting site, but it does offer more features than Imgbox. While you can upload images without making an account, you definitely should! After registering for free, you can quickly sort images and videos into albums, set tags, upload multiple files at once, and set different privacy options for your content!
You can upload as many files as you want, but some limits do apply. Videos can’t be larger than 100 MB, and images can’t be bigger than 1600 pixels. Luckily Tinypic has a tool that can resize images you upload.
Conclusion
Image hosting sites are useful for storing your website’s image files, especially if you can get direct links from them. We showed you five of the best, but there are many other similar services. If you have any suggestions, please leave a comment below!
