Top 7 Photo Sharing Websites & What Makes Them the Best

There are several photo sharing websites out there that allow you to share your digital photos. A lot of these websites also offer additional features, such as the option to create photo books or calendars. But which are the best, what makes them so good and how do you decide which services to use for your photo sharing? Below you will find my choices for the best photo sharing websites, listed in no particular order.

Flickr is a very popular photo sharing website. If you sign up for Flickr’s free account, you’ll have monthly uploading limitations and only 200 of your most recent photos will be shown on the site. You can upgrade to a pro account for $25/year, this will provide you with unlimited usage. Flickr, owned by Yahoo, is great for uploading photos to blogs and also includes features which allow you to geotag your photos. What I like the most about Flickr is its online community and the amazing range of photographs to browse through!

If you’d like to learn more about how to get started, here is a Flickr guide for the beginner.

SmugMug is tailored with the professional photographer in mind, although anyone can open an account. There's only paid for accounts available starting at $40 per year (one of the benefits of this being there are no adverts on the site), but SmugMug does offer a free trial. It's safe and secure and provides a decent amount of control over your photos, including who can see or copy them. My favourite part of this site is the more professional feel and look that it has, it really does show off your photos nicely!

Picasa Web Albums is the free online version of Picasa software (Windows only). Because Picasa is owned by Google, integration with your Google account is easy; in this day and age, the easier we can make our lives and work the better, making this my favourite feature of Picasa. You’re provided with 1 GB of free storage, or you can pay for more space.

Photobucket is another large photo sharing website that is very popular, partly due to the easy one click upload to Myspace, Facebook, blogs and more. Some nice features Photobucket provides in addition to photo sharing are the ability to create slideshows, album themes to personalize your photo albums, scrapbook builder, and a photo gift and print store.

Since we're looking at different photo sharing websites, it only seems fair to consider the option of having your own photo sharing website. Why not start your own website or blog to share your photographs and have complete freedom and control over your photographs?

Webshots offers a free account with storage of 1,000 photos. If that isn’t enough for you, you do have the option to upgrade to a premium account. With 617 million photos to browse through in 11 categories, Webshots is definitely no slouch, giving you a great place to go to for inspiration!

Shutterfly is a photo sharing website that focuses more on photo services like printing your digital photos and gift ideas like calendars, photo books, greeting cards, etc. If that's what you're looking to do with your photographs then Shutterfly is a great website to consider!

What's you're favourite photo sharing website?