My flickr pro account has expired. I’m very disgusted by the Yahoo! patent lawsuit against Facebook, so I hesitate to renew my account or give them any money in any way. Additionally, the lawsuit also suggests that Yahoo! is in a death spiral, which means it may well be time to get out before they fold. The alternatives to flickr appear to be SmugMug and 500px.

SmugMug is setup for professional photographers who need gallery space, to sell prints, and work in every browser ever made. The guys who run it are consummate professionals, and the pricing starts at $40/year. For that $40, you get unlimited uploads, galleries, etc. To make money selling prints, or to allow assistants to access the account, you need to step up in their tiers, which run all the way up to $120 a year. It’s a serious site for serious photographers.

On the other hand, 500px seems more geared towards individual images rather than galleries. Printing options are limited. However, their pro account level starts at $29/year or so, and seems to be adding some of these features. 500px was built around a community with a voting/ranking system which is one of the things that Flickr does (albeit poorly), so there’s a lot more ‘social’ in 500px than there is in SmugMug. I’ve got a free account there, and I use it, but not as often as I should.

I’ll update again when I make a decision. I’m not sure what to do, other than the fact that I know I want to pay for a service. If I don’t pay for it, I can’t be sure that I’m not a product being sold, and I help ensure that the product I am using lives on.