For those who think that Flickr is a free service, then this might disappoint you. The free service includes all basic features but lack in the terms that only last 200 photos can be viewed and images can’t be viewed in their original resolution. The premium service is, of course, paid. And so it might be not a cup of your tea.

I will now introduce you to other Free Photo Sharing Sites which compete Flickr in terms of features.

Picasa (Web Albums)

Picasa is Google’s take on a photo site. It’s clean, it’s free, it’s fast and reliable. Picasa is especially known for its desktop application that can organize and edit your photos. I can recommend this software whatever photo sharing website you’re going to use.

The free web component offers 1GB of space for photos and videos and unlimited bandwidth. A feature that you’ll not find quickly somewhere else is facial recognition. The only paid advantage that you can get is a storage upgrade that you’ll be able to share with your Gmail account. Yearly prices in dollars or euros (they’re the same, oddly enough) range from 5,- for 20 GB to 4069,- for 16 TB (yes, that’s terabytes). I’m not sure who’d have four thousand dollars to spend on photo storage, but I guess they’re the same people who have 16 terabytes of photos.

Share.Ovi

Ovi is the portal of Nokia. Their photo sharing site is inconveniently named “Share on Ovi” or “Ovi Share by Nokia” or something. What’s important however is that anyone can use the site for free whatever mobile phone you have.

The latest Nokia smartphones do come with an easy way to synchronize their photos to Ovi Share however. Nokia bought the company Twango in 2007 and rebuilt it to Ovi Share, which opened to the public in February 2008. Earlier this year however Nokia announced they will not improve the site much further due to disappointing usage numbers. This excellent site will remain live and free though.

Ovi actually comes closest to the features you get with a paid Flickr Pro membership. Unlimited storage and bandwidth and a very nice clear interface.

Migratr

When you have picked a photo sharing site, you can easily migrate your photos to it using Migratr. This application downloads all of your photos to your computer and then uploads them to a site of your choice. It’s really easy and the best thing is, it also exports all of your metadata such as titles and tags.

You can also just use it as a backup system for your photos. A bummer is that you will not be able to retrieve any photos over the 200 limit of Flickr if you don’t have the Pro membership. It doesn’t support Ovi and Snapixel yet, but you can make a Flickr backup with Migratr and than use bulk upload on your new site. Snapixel does support adding tags and titles to images by IPTC.

So please give me some advice. Should I transfer my photos to another site? Will I choose the dependability and clearness of Picasa, the complete features of Share.Ovi, the social functions of Zooomr, the marketplace and professional setup of Snapixel or the easiness of Photobucket? Or should I just invest in another year of Flickr Pro membership? Or do you know another even better photo sharing site?