Photobucket Reviews

Free storage only goes so far before you start getting those pesky notifications pushing you to pay up and unlock more GBs. In fact, unless you’re meticulous about sorting and deleting your photos and videos, the likelihood is that you’re already paying an additional subscription fee to keep storing new media.

Backup services come at a cost too, but they also bring many benefits. Unlike others, Photobucket works exclusively with photo and video files and offers dedicated tools to manage them. This includes a whole host of actions, from customizing and sharing albums to editing and printing photos.

Its file support covers JPG, JPEG, PNG, GIF, BMP, TIF, TIFF, HEIC, HEIF, and WEBP. While it doesn’t support raw file types, it lets you store photos of up to 200MB and videos of up to 10GB.

Compression-free cloud storage

One of the main concerns when backing up photos and videos is whether their quality will be sacrificed. There are many cloud services out there, but not all of them include compression-free storage like Photobucket. When you upload a photo, Photobucket optimizes it using lossless compression, a method that reduces the photo’s size without compromising quality.

Plus, to provide a smoother interaction with its apps when viewing photos, it uses intelligent resizing, which resizes them according to the device from which they are viewed. While viewing the images in their original size is possible, users must add specific parameters to image links according to the preferred size.

Manage, share, customize, and edit media

Photobucket lets users easily manage backed-up files. It’s possible to sort them into folders and personal or group buckets with shareable options. Up to ten contributors can be invited to these buckets and be assigned collaborative, administrative, or owner roles. Naturally, when it comes to viewing-only purposes, there’s no limitation whatsoever.

With Photobucket’s easy linking mode, customers can share files in many ways, such as direct link, email, and straight to social media accounts. Moreover, link back lets you choose whether people can access the whole bucket of pictures when sharing just one of them.

Several options exist for organizing and customizing your files. These include moving files across folders, changing titles and descriptions, adding tags, and setting favorites. You can also sort files by date taken, date uploaded, and title.

Photobucket even has an image editor, so it’s easy to fine-tune your photos directly via the browser or app. There’s every setting you could possibly need, from filters and stickers to frames and overlays.

Printshop & video playback

Setting Photobucket apart from its competitors is the printshop, with all kinds of printing options available, from simple cards to photo books. This came as a surprise since it’s not common for backup services to provide this type of service.

Since it’s possible to back up videos, it would only be logical to allow users to watch the videos without downloading them. With this in mind, Photobucket has a video player that runs on HTML5 and lets you playback MP4, MOV, and WEBM files.

Hosting

Lastly, the hosting function may come in handy for e-commerce services, bloggers, and anyone who’d like to embed images. It provides embed links like HMTL and IMG codes, making it easier to share your photos across blogs and forums.

In order to secure your files, Photobucket not only lets you set albums as private but there’s also the option to password-protect them. Additionally, you can set up a biometric login with a fingerprint.

When it comes to privacy, Photobucket is compliant with GDPR. However, it also states that after sharing your files, they enter the public domain and the company accepts no responsibility for what third parties may do with them. This is only natural since one of Photobucket’s features is sharing, which encourages users to distribute images.

Still, those who would like to use Photobucket only for individual use can opt for a plan without sharing features. Even if you opt for one that allows it, you are always in control and can choose whether or not to share files.

Photobucket can be used either through its sleek online platform accessible via a browser, or its iOS and Android apps, which include mobile auto backup – one of Photobucket’s best features. It provides you with the peace of mind that whatever happens to your mobile device, all your photos and videos are safe and sound.

Photobucket lets you sync the service with Facebook and transfer all your photos to the platform. However, unlike the mobile auto backup feature, it won’t continuously back up this social media’s photos. Any other pictures or videos must be manually backed up.

Nonetheless, everything syncs perfectly and without delay across platforms, making it easier to switch devices. In addition, there’s no device limit for backups, which means that you can back up as many devices as you want with a single account.

Photobucket offers three plans, all of which include 1TB of storage. The cheapest option is My Bucket, which costs $4.16 per month, billed annually. Opting to pay yearly results in a 16.6% saving compared to its monthly billing option, and includes mobile auto backup, album creation, and free file compression.

The mid-tier plan is Group Buckets, which is designed for personal and social sharing. For $6.66 per month, paid annually, you get additional features like group sharing, photo editing, and video playback.

Anyone wanting to access image hosting and password-protected albums need to opt for Photobucket’s Premium Sharing plan, which costs $11.69 per month, billed annually.

The company offers refunds to customers within 48 hours of purchasing. Still, we felt it was a shame that there’s no way to increase storage, but 1TB is still generous.

On a more positive note, Photobucket has a 7-day free trial for the Group Buckets plan that requires customers to provide a payment method to initiate it. These include PayPal and credit cards like Visa, Mastercard, and American Express.

Photobucket’s customer service includes an extensive dedicated support page with helpful billing, account management, and troubleshooting information, as well as a blog covering topics like photography. If these aren’t enough, you can submit a ticket or contact a live agent via chat on the company’s website.

While it doesn’t provide 24/7 support or a way to reach the company via phone, we got a reply within four hours of submitting a ticket. It should be mentioned that the company works Monday through Friday for email tickets from 7:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. MST.

Live chat agents are available on the same weekdays, but only until 4:30 p.m. MST. Finally, you won’t have any luck trying to contact Photobucket via social media, as it doesn’t offer support via these channels.

Despite these setbacks, Photobucket is an affordable service, especially considering the 16.6% discount with yearly subscriptions. Before making any kind of financial commitment, it’s worth giving the storage, hosting, automatic backups, and great editing tools a whirl with the 7-day free trial.