As it turns out, they are now forcing people to subscribe to their services. Anything that was uploaded in my photobucket, is now broken on my pet profiles. I'm not paying this company. It's really too bad... I've had this photobucket account for 10+ years.

Does anyone know of a free image hosting site?

I don't seem to have that problem. Not yet, anyway. My tumblr background still works fine.

Only other free image hosting site I know of is Imgur.

Are you using Photobucket or tumblr for all your photo uploads? I don't think tumblr has an issue, other than occasionally loosing people's uploaded images.

I've had my Photobucket account for literally 10+ years and all off a sudden "You have to pay for our services and also pay for third party hosting". It ranges from $599 a year to less than $100 a year. No thanks!

I'm looking around. I'll really miss PhotoBucket.

I use photobucket to upload images and they never asked me to pay for their services, especially not that much...

Really? I wonder why they're asking me to pay...

My friend uses Photobucket and she's been getting notes about being forced to upgrade and pay for the use of the site now. I think everyone will start seeing that info in due time.

Here is a question: how often do you two use it and how many people view photos from that account? Maybe it's something that deals with you getting so many views. Gf just checked hers and all her images are still seeable and no message.

It's only being rolled out for accounts that release their images for usage in third-party sites.

From what Photobucket is stating if you use it and it's not released to third-party accounts you're fine up to a certain point, but if the photos/graphics are on third-party sites then, you have to pay.

I had that issue with one of my pet profiles recently too, took it down from spotlight because all the images have that you must pay text on them now.

What's the point of even having a photobucket account if you're not going to use the images on third-party websites? That seems like such a stupid stipulation.

I've also had my photobucket account for 10+ years, but recently had to switch to Imgur because I can't use any of my images anymore. I never got the "you must pay" message, just nothing shows up on Subeta anymore.

imgur works great for me. it's easy to upload images and organize them into albums.

I've stopped using photobucket years ago when some shady Russian ad got by my good trusty ad blocker which would legit and is still legit blocking every other ad. Photobucket used to be a good site. I'd suggest moving image sharing sites. :X Can only get worse from here.

My pet profiles started breaking a few days after I first heard about what Photobucket was doing. Buttons on my profile were still okay, but I've since changed those.

Yesterday I registered with postimages.org, which has been great so far. You can create galleries, which helps. Not to the same extent as Photobucket, unfortunately (I'll miss being able to create galleries within galleries. Really helped keep things organised), but it's better than some sites I've tried. Nice and easy to use.

They do prefer if your images link back to their website, if possible. I haven't done that with my pet profiles, but I'm using this host for something else as well, and linking back from other places.

Best alternative I've found so far anyway. Hope I can keep using it.

Hmm. ok.

I signed up with imageBB and I haven't had the chance to move any of my images yet. Been working lol

I'm trying imgur myself, had a bucket account for just about as long as most of the people here. Thank goodness for backups but what a pain to reload everything I've collected and used over 10+ some years.

For anyone looking for more information on this, read this page on Photobucket's website

They do count using the tag as 3rd-party hosting.

What's hilarious to me is that, on that very page, they brag: "Photobucket is the global destination for linking and 3rd party hosting. In Photobucket’s 14-year history, the Company amassed over 100 million registered users, over 15 billion images stored, 2 million daily uploads and 10 billion photos accessed monthly."

Yeah... It's not going to be the global destination for anything much longer.

I see this is a new issue. I've been using it for 10+ years as well. I really wish they'd go back to at least their old ways where they had smaller limits (how many uploaded or whatever) and had a limit on how many views it got in a month (temporarily over limit pic), but then reset each month. This made more sense :/ Kept bigger businesses from trying to get free hosting.

I do believe as month(s) go by, everyone will eventually get the 3rd party images. It wasn't instant since I just found mine today, and have seen other people have this error for about a month since they updated to this :/

I've been using Photobucket mostly for storage instead of hosting. Will I still have to move everything?

No. All your uploads are saved. They only want you to pay for their services if you're going to link to other websites (like Subeta), known as "Third Party Hosting"