Photobucket Boldly Pioneers Revenue Generation and Predicts Bright Shiny Future. . . On June 28, 2017, Photobucket changed its Terms of Use regarding free accounts and third party hosting (hosting on forums, eBay, etc). Only the most expensive plan, at $399.99 per year, now permits third party hosting and linking to forums, etc. Which effectively alienating a very large percentage of their users, whom only used Photobucket for third-party image hosting. Photobucket made this change with no input or consultation with their current users, or the public. Adding this to photobuckets use of excessive pop-up ads, scams, clickbait advertisements, and in some cases viruses embedded in ads, the number of active account quickly decreased.
This new business model has caused thousands of forum DIY's and write-ups with explanatory pictures to be rendered useless. Ebay and Etsy have also been affected, in addition to many forums and blogs. Thousands of images promoting goods sold on Amazon and other shopping sites have been removed after the photo-sharing service changed its terms.
Photobucket offered free and subscription based (Plus) accounts. Free account users received 2 GB of storage for photo and video uploads, 10 GB of transfers (which they call "bandwidth") per month for sharing and linking, and unlimited access to Photobucket’s editing, slideshow, and Story features. "Plus" accounts were structured into storage tiers offerring unlimited bandwidth, use of site features, and an advertisement free experience.
The following described subscription pricing as of October 2016:
2 GB - free
20 GB - $2.99/month, $29.99/year
50 GB - $4.99/month, $49.99/year
100 GB - $8.99/month, $89.99/year
200 GB - $16.99/month, $169.99/year
500 GB - $39.99/month, $399.99/year <<--- (As of June 30, 2017, the only option that allows embedding/hotlinking)