A free Flickr account will get you 1TB of storage (more than even most prolific shutterbugs could fill up in years of shooting) as well as flexible privacy settings. Flickrįlickr remains one of the highest profile photo sharing sites on the internet, and with good reason: the entire service is oriented around high quality photo sharing, and the free tier of the service has a lot to offer. The desktop site is…lacking, to say the least.īest for: People who want a social media experience centered around photo sharing.

Instagram has been, and remains, a mobile app, and the only official way to upload photos to Instagram is via their mobile app. Additionally, if your primary photo workflow is more of a sit-down-at-your-PC one (as opposed to snapping pics on the go and uploading them right from the park where your kids are playing), you’ll probably want to skip Instagram altogether. While your photos are uploaded to Instagram at full resolution, they are not displayed at full resolution, nor is there any built-in way for the viewer to save the photos at all-which might be an issue for grandparents hungry for physical photos to put on the fridge. Further, if the people you’re sharing with want a traditional look-at-albums experience, Instagram isn’t it, as photos flow down the feed and looking at old photos requires lengthy scrolling. On the downside, the private account feature only works if everyone has an account, which means your whole band of friends and family have to sign up if you wish to keep your photos private.

(Yes, we know it’s owned by Facebook, but for now, it’s a separate service-and one much more focused on photos.) The service is completely free, easy to install and setup on your mobile device, and while Instagram may have made a name for itself in terms of hashtags and public photos, it’s very easy to set your account to private (which you should do right from the start!) and use it only to share with friends-effectively creating a tiny photo-centered social network just for the people you care about.

If you’re looking for an easy to use alternative to Facebook in terms of simple photo sharing with a social media feel, Instagram is a logical alternative. With that in mind, we’ve placed special emphasis on ease of use for each of our recommendations with a primary focus on photo-centered services, including key details that are particularly important when sharing with friends and family like: whether or not the viewer needs an account to use the service, how easy it is to organize your photos, how photos are uploaded (and if they are stored at full resolution and quality), and so on.

Best photo sharing apps 2014