Today’s internet has gotten so visual that it is hard to imagine a time it wasn’t. All the corners of the web prominently feature videos and pictures at differing levels. This phenomenon led to the rise of photo-sharing and image hosting platforms like ImageShack.
It is a free registration service that enables users to upload and store images of different file formats for personal or commercial purposes. You can also edit and share them with friends, family or embed them to your blog to share with the internet.
The ability to host and share images with ImageShack made it popular with professional photographers and amateur users. However, not everyone is a fan, especially after the service switched from an advertising-based business model to a subscription-based model.
It has led to a search for ImageShack alternatives by users looking for free image hosting and photo-sharing services. Although few have the service’s dual sharing and hosting capabilities, we have compiled the best fifteen alternatives to ImageShack for all kinds of users.
15 Best ImageShack Alternatives
Google Photos
Google Photos is one of the most popular platforms to host photos for individuals and businesses. It is regularly updated, simple to use, and while it is not entirely a free image hosting site, users get up to 15GB of storage space free.
The search engine’s image hosting service is particularly handy if you tend to forget to back up your images after taking them, especially via your mobile device. Simply download the mobile app and link your email address. It will automatically back up every photo you take with your devices.
The only noteworthy downside, however, is its editing abilities. While you can edit images to a certain degree on Google Photos, its editing features are not as robust as what you might find with ImageShack. Still, it supports enough simple edits to help you further personalize your images.
The app also offers additional features like support for all major image file formats, automatic album creation, online sharing, and overall excellent photo management.
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Flickr
Flickr is one of the oldest and most recognized services as far as image hosting and photo sharing platforms go. It has changed hands several times since its launch in 2004, a year after ImageShack came alive. Still, it remains an excellent alternative to backup and share images.
One of the things it does as well as ImageShack is photo editing. Before publishing to its over 112 million registered users, you can finetune photos to your satisfaction. You can also create albums and backup from any local storage space, such as your computer, phone, or online locations like Dropbox and Apple Photos.
If you are a professional photographer, Flickr lets you publish photos under the Creative Commons license with personalization tools like geolocation, license information, and tags. It ensures other users give proper recognition when they use your work externally.
For casual photographers, Flickr’s free option might be good enough. You can upload up to 1000 images or videos. For more, you need a paid plan on Flickr Pro. Besides unlimited storage space, you also get advanced analytics on your photos’ performance, automatic image uploads, and ad-free browsing.
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Dropbox
Unlike ImageShack and other alternatives in this list, Dropbox works primarily as an image hosting service. Although it has a sharing feature, it is not publicly accessible, as one might find with Flickr or ImageShack itself. Instead, you can share links to photos and albums with friends and family privately.
As an image hosting service, though, Dropbox is one of the best alternatives you can find. It is fun to use, with an attractive yet intuitive interface that fits seamlessly into your workflow, especially if you edit your photos before backup. A nice way to think of it is as your second and indestructible hard drive.
That indestructibility comes at a cost, though, because the free plan offers only 2GB of storage space for personal and professional users. The paid plans start at $11.99/month for 2TB of storage space for personal use and $19.99 for 3TB of space for professionals.
Another major advantage of Dropbox is its support for multiple users. You can collaborate with other users to edit and download images in a secure and safe environment.
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Imgur
Those who spend a lot of time on Reddit are most likely familiar with Imgur. It is the image hosting website where millions of users share GIFs and memes. There are not many that can match Imgur’s popularity when it comes to free image hosting sites.
With the platform, you can easily upload and edit your images, GIFs, and create memes. While it is renowned mainly for publicly shared photos, you can choose to keep your pictures private, accessible only via links to share with others.
Like ImageShack, Imgur supports all major image file formats, including JPEG, APNG, JPG, PNG, BMP, and more. You can also upload images with a maximum size of 20MB and up to 200MB for GIFs. In return, you have to deal with mildly intrusive ads. However, it offers an ad-free experience via its Imgur Emerald plan for $5/month.
Its greatest strength, though, is its community. Thanks to its over 100 million monthly users and an interface design that allows them to upvote or downvote posts, photographers can get exposure for their work through the platform.
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SmugMug
SmugMug offers a place for you to sell your creations online. With the platform, you can set up an eCommerce store to sell prints of your pictures, backed by a responsive design that adapts to all types of mobile devices and desktops.
It offers all the bells and whistles a professional photographer would want in an eCommerce store such as SEO tools like site maps and meta tags.
Not interested in selling your photos? SmugMug remains a capable alternative to ImageShack to host images and share pictures with others. For a minimum price of $7/month, you can enjoy unlimited storage space for photo and video content with zero image compression. Your images maintain their high-resolution quality after upload.
If you want to edit, you can integrate your account with editing tools like Lightroom, Luminar, and On1, to personalize your creations and simplify your workflow.
Additionally, like ImageShack’s SkyPath, you can upload images automatically from any device with the SmugMug app on both Android and iOS devices.
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Pixlr
With ImageShack’s Resize, you can perform various editing actions like resizing, cropping, and adding filters to images. It is handy for professional and amateur photographers as well as website developers. Pixlr is a good option if you are looking for a good alternative to ImageShack in this sense.
Besides its capabilities, it is free and fully accessible right from your browser. You do not have to download an app or install any software. It supports all kinds of image formats, whether you want to create a new image or edit an uploaded one.
Depending on your technical capabilities, there are two types of Pixlr editors. Pixlr E is an advanced photo editor with more robust image editing features fit for professionals, while Pixlr X is a simpler, more straightforward editor better suited for beginners.
While you cannot store images with this service, you can access more than ten million stock images and design templates. They are available via a $14.99/month subscription fee, but you can test it out with a 30-day free trial.
Photobucket
More than 90 million people use Photobucket worldwide, so if you are looking for an ImageShack alternative, you should find plenty of company. The image hosting and photo-sharing platform is one of the most easy-to-use substitutes for anyone looking to back up their photo content.
It also offers the ability to embed the same picture to different platforms, including online marketplaces, forums, websites, and blogs using one link. What’s more, every image uploaded to Photobucket is secure. It protects photos with private encryption and removes EXIF data during downloads.
Another notable benefit of using this platform as an ImageShack alternative is its inbuilt photo editor. Although it is not as robust as Pixlr, you can perform simple edits on every photo before sharing.
Lastly, Photobucket is available on all devices, mobiles, tablets, and desktops. You can access your stored photos anytime and anywhere.
However, it is not a free image hosting site. The minimum storage space on Photobucket costs $6 a month for 25GB of space, and its true unlimited hosting plan costs $13 per month.
Pasteboard
Looking for an alternative to ImageShack that has its straightforward design? Pasteboard is one of the best subtitles in this regard. The online image hosting service is as minimalist in its design as they come, and it is evident right from their website.
Without any enticement to try something else, Pasteboard offers a simple way to upload images to its platform. You can either drag or drop files directly from your desktop, copy and paste images from the clipboard, or upload from your mobile device via the website. There is also the option to snap a picture via a webcam and upload it directly.
The platform supports the major photo file formats, i.e., JPEG, TIFF, PNG, APNG, and GIF, up to 10MB in size. Once your images are uploaded to the service, they are stored and secured forever, completely free.
After uploading, you can perform minor edits like crop portions of the image and add titles and descriptions to each image to contextualize them.
And although photos are only shared with others when you choose to do so, Pasteboard has an analytic feature for you to track how many people have viewed your images.
Postimage
Postimage is a simple alternative to ImageShack for anyone looking to host and share an image. The service, one of the internet’s renowned free image hosting sites, launched in 2004 and allows users to upload and share pictures on message boards and forums with zero fees.
With the service, you can upload any photo from a long list of image file formats with a maximum size of 8MB. There is no inbuilt editor, but you can resize the image in different preset sizes for avatars, websites, and desktop wallpapers before uploading.
While it supports permanent storage, you can also set expiry dates for every image you upload, like one day, one week, or one month. As for the uploading process, you can upload via URL or through local storage.
The lack of robust additional features and automatic upload makes this service less ideal for professional photographers. However, it has a Windows screen capture app that could come in handy for those who make explainer videos or write how-to articles.
Overall, Postimage is most suited to casual users who want a free and simple way to back up their images and videos.
ImgBB
Like Postimage and Pasteboard, ImgBB is a minimalist resource that offers both file sharing and image hosting services. It is a capable alternative for anyone looking for a free image hosting site, even if it does not have the additional features that make ImageShack popular.
Asides from having limited features, the photo-sharing platform is easy to use. You don’t even have to open an account. All you have to do to upload your photos is drag and drop images over its homepage. It accepts most image file formats, up to 32MB in size, and provides direct image links to share or embed anywhere on blogs, websites, or forms with one click.
One advantage it has over ImageShack is that it is entirely free to use. However, the trade-off is it does not support copyrighted images. The service is managed by human editors who review every photo uploaded to the platform to ensure they meet the relevant regulations.
Uploading is entirely manual. It also doesn’t have a mobile app, and it is unsuitable for professional use. Still, ImgBB is a decent alternative to ImageShack for regular users who want an easy way to store their photos online.
500px
Maybe you are not looking for an ImageShack alternative because of its subscription-based model. Perhaps you want a platform where you can store your images and showcase your art to millions of people. Then, consider 500px, a photo-sharing service with a large active community of photographers.
It has more than 16 million photographers across various genres who upload images to the platform. 500px also allows you to build a portfolio, which you can share with others and market yourself as a professional photographer.
Additionally, you can compete in the platform’s photo challenges and win prizes or license your images and get paid for them, with up to 60% in royalty earnings. It also offers a growing resource hub for aspiring photographers to learn valuable tips and skills to improve the quality of their work.
The service is accessible via any browser. It also has a mobile app for iOS and Android devices, giving you access and control over your images anywhere you go.
As a photo-sharing platform, it is most suited to amateur or professional photographers who are looking to earn money from their images.
SlickPic
Do not let the landing page fool you. You don’t have to be a professional photographer to fully enjoy the benefits of SlickPic as an alternative to ImageShack. For all its well-packaged look, it is still a platform for anyone to store and share their images privately or publicly.
It supports high-quality image resolution, up to 8K quality, and you can create albums for different groups of photos with varying privacy settings. You can then share these albums on social networks like Facebook, Twitter, or friends and family. There is also the option to create disappearing albums by setting how long they are viewable.
Besides its enviable capabilities as an image hosting site, this ImageShack alternative is also an excellent resource for professional photographers. Its advanced user features include building your portfolio website from multiple themes, creating photoblogs, custom domains, and integrated Google Analytics.
All of these and more are available at a minimum price of $4.95/month, a basic plan that offers only 20GB of storage space. However, like ImageShack, you can get a free trial before committing to it or a better plan.
Imgbox
Imgbox is another good option for anyone looking for a simple free tool to host their images online. It offers unlimited storage but only for a maximum file size of 10MB. Thus, unlike ImageShack, which supports larger file sizes, high-resolution images need compression before getting uploaded to imgbox.
Still, it is a helpful tool for anyone who wants a secure, easy-to-use service to back up their images without storage expiration.
Additionally, there is no inbuilt community for imgbox. But it does allow users to share their stored images with friends or on social networks like Instagram, Twitter, or Facebook. Imgbox does this by creating a URL for each image which the user can then share.
As a minimalist free photo hosting site, you don’t have to create an account to use it. But having one makes uploading easier.
Asides from the fact it only supports a narrow list of image file formats (GIF, JPG, PNG) and users can’t create descriptions and titles for their uploads, imgbox is a decent ImageShack alternative as a photo-hosting service.
Imagesocket
The first 250 photos you upload on Imagesocket are free, but that is not what makes it a useful alternative to ImageShack as a photo-sharing platform. That recognition belongs to its support for all kinds of image art, including illustrations and graphic designs.
Furthermore, it is intuitive and easy to use enough that it suits professional artists and casuals who simply want an organized and safe place to store their photos. Imagesocket provides streamlined user experiences backed with high-level security, not only to protect your uploads but also to power your online store.
The image hosting service also provides eCommerce support for photographers and artists to sell their works online in easy and speedy ways.
Other technical features include support for various image and video formats, including JPG, GIF, RAW, HD, HDR, and 4K files. Imagesocket is also completely ad-free, with full support for social sharing on all platforms and embeds on blogs and websites.
To use Imagesocket, you need to create an account, either with your email, Google, or Facebook account. You also have to pay a subscription fee, although it is significantly cheaper than ImageShack. A personal account costs $5/year, a professional account, $10 per year, and a business account, $15 per year.
Img.vision
One of the hallmarks of ImageShack as a photo hosting and image sharing service is its suitability for business purposes. You can enjoy the same with img.vision, an image and video hosting platform with content distribution networks across 90 countries and over 200 cities worldwide.
Its global reach makes it a universally accepted platform and ensures high-speed optimizations that make file upload and download fast and efficient. Expectedly, it supports all major image file formats, including GIF, PNG, and JPG, and uploading is a breeze.
You simply have to drag and drop files from your desktop device (PC or Mac) or upload from online storage spaces like Dropbox, OneDrive, and Google Drive. The website is highly optimized for mobile devices, too, so you can upload images from your Android or iOS devices.
Most importantly, as a photo-sharing platform geared towards business applications, it complies with industry-grade security protocols. It also supports image galleries for eCommerce sites like eBay and Walmart, with 100% uptime guaranteed.
It is slightly more expensive, though. Pricing, when billed annually, starts at $11 per month for 5000 images and five videos. However, you can give it a test ride for 15 days with its free trial offer.
Conclusion
Whether you captured images for personal or professional reasons, each photo represents an irreplicable moment. That is why it is crucial to protect them by storing them online, with image hosting services, where they are forever accessible and freely shareable with others.
And while ImageShack remains one of the best services out there in this regard, these alternatives are capable of helping you preserve your memories and hard work.
