The Best Online Free Photo Album Websites: Reviewing 7 of the Best Places to Create Photo Albums

The Best Online Free Photo Album Websites: Reviewing 7 of the Best Places to Create Photo Albums
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If you’re interested in simply sharing your digital photos, here’s an article about the top photo sharing websites currently available. This list quickly reviews seven different websites that let you create digital photo albums to share and store your photos without worry, and how you can get started making online photo albums. Most of these options also let you purchase special products like photo books, calendars, and posters that can be created from your own custom photos.

Clicking on the links below will bring you to honest Bright Hub reviews of that particular service.

1. Webshots

Editor’s Note: This service has now changed hands and is called Smile. This is free at the time but when fully launched will be a subscription service.

Creating albums with Webshots is quite easy with either of their two different upload methods based on how many photos you have to upload to the site. You can upload photos and setup an album for them to be uploaded to, or first create an album and then upload or move photos into it. Once your albums are finished, you can choose to keep it private to only the friends you allow to see them, or make it a public album so everyone can see. Your photos and albums can also be made into coffee mugs, calendars, mouse pads, books, and even jewelry which you can order from the Webshots website.

2. Shutterfly

Much like digital photo albums you may be familiar with on your computer, Shutterfly uses the expandable folder method to view and manage your albums on the website. This allows you to learn a lot about Shutterfly’s tools and options that are very specific to the site and lets you feel comfortable while viewing, setting up, and organize your photo albums.

Shutterfly lets viewers navigate photos in each gallery like a book. By default, the book will automatically turn ‘pages’ to different photos and options to go back, go forward, and pause - this feature applies to anyone who may be viewing your photos. For more sharing options, Shutterfly lets you create real photo books, calendars, and even posters that you can order for yourself or others.

3. Snapfish

With a free Snapfish account, you can upload and store an unlimited amount of photos to share with everyone you know. The catch is that they’ll need to create a Snapfish account to view them. With this method, you choose who’s invited to see your online photo albums. Snapfish offers a slideshow feature so that viewers can sit back and enjoy the photo albums you’ve created. Ordering prints of photos is also a snap and the price of each print is very affordable. At the moment, when you upload your digital photos to Snapfish for the first time, the first 20 prints are free, after that, prices are according to size (4x6 prints cost only 9¢) with additional savings on pre-paid prints. Snapfish offers services to create and purchase photo books, cards, stationary, and other gifts that include your own photos.

4. Photobucket

If you just want to upload photos and create albums online, Photobucket is worth a look. As one of the more popular options on the web, Photobucket lets you easily upload your digital photos, create albums, and share with others. The photo albums that you create enable you to easily link to them with a single URL for others to view. Your photos can also be added to Group Albums that include photos from others that were tagged with the same name. While Photobucket isn’t meant for everyone, it does provide a fast and simple way to share your photo albums with everyone. You can also upload your videos for everyone to see.

5. Picasa Web Albums

Google’s free photo sharing tool, Picasa Web Albums, was created with one thing in mind - letting you upload and share your pictures online quickly and easily. Picasa also makes it fun, providing you with easy options to edit your photos the way you like and allow others to comment on them. Picasa Web Albums offers 3 gigabytes of storage for free with their desktop program that makes uploading photos from your desktop quick and easy. When you’re creating your online albums, you can set each one to be public or private so that you have the ability to decide who should see your photos and who shouldn’t. Picasa also offers products like full-size prints and gifts that you can buy for yourself or others in case the online photo albums aren’t enough. To learn more about what this free photo sharing tool has to offer, read our review of Picasa Web Albums.

6. Flickr

Yahoo’s Flickr.com photo site is a very popular online photo album site where users can upload, caption, and share their photos with others. Flickr makes everything from uploading, organizing, and sharing quick and easy. To learn more, visit a guide about how to get started with Flickr. Photo albums are called Photo Sets on Flickr, which is just their way of describing collections of photos. Flickr also incorporates lots of social networking-type options for you to comment on others’ photos, join groups you share interest in (or even create), and view the latest photos from the people in your contact list. One of Flickr’s latest features lets you get updates via email that include photos from others you’ve selected to receive.

7. Jalbum

For the more experienced web user, Jalbum allows you to download their free online album software so you can add the photos you want and customize the look of your albums. Once you upload your photos and create an album with the look and feel you want, you can publish the album right on Jalbum or any other site you own. As an online photo community, Jalbum offers free skins and plugins you can download and use to make your albums shine online.

Jalbum also incorporates the use of widgets that let others know all about your Jalbum and how you created it, allows comments to your photos, offers a visitor counter, provides you with the option to identify who’s in your photos with the Name Tagger widget, and a sharing widget that lets viewers share your albums.

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