To host images for free, there are several methods available. In this article, we are going to discuss the different methods that you can adopt for storing your important images online without paying a single penny to the image hosting services. This will provide you the freedom to store, use, link, and download your important images whenever you want without having to worry about paying the monthly subscription fee. It is effortless to host as many images as you wish for completely free of cost which we are going to discuss today.
Host Images for Free
Like already mentioned, we will be listing the methods that you can use for free image hosting. You can use any one of them as per your convenience. One thing we can guarantee is that any one of them will work perfectly and will provide a free place for you to store images online. You will be able to access them anytime, or anywhere you want without any restrictions. So, here is how to host images for free.
1. Using a Free Image Hosting Website
Free image hosting websites allow you to host your images online without any cost. Some of these websites may also be an image sharing website, but still, they allow to use the images, embed it wherever you want, and download it whenever you want. So, in short, you can utilize them as a free image hosting service to store all your images. If you want to keep your images private from others, be sure to choose the right service with the option. Not all services will allow you to store images privately.
2. Using a Free Cloud Storage Service
There are several cloud storage services that also provides free storage up to a certain limit. For example, the Google Drive provides 15 GB of free cloud storage across all their services while the Dropbox provides around 2 GB free space. Like this, almost all popular cloud storage services provide a certain amount of free storage which you can use for storing images for free. You can embed them or download them whenever you want and most importantly, your images will stay safe. Unlike the image sharing websites, they will not be visible to the public unless you decide to do so which is beneficial for most of the users.
3. Using a Free CDN Service
CDNs are technically similar to the cloud storage services. If you are a webmaster and running a blog with a lot of images, this can be very useful. While most of the CDN services will not allow you to directly access the images and organize them as per your requirements, they do help to improve the speed of your website. They will host your images on a different server and make your website faster by providing the files from the nearest location to the user. I am not going to the technical details. But in short, free CDNs are a great way to store your website images online for free. Some of the recommended free CDNs include Cloudflare, Incapsula, Jetpack Photon, etc.
Demerits of Hosting Images for Free
It is true that you can host your images for completely free of cost using the methods listed above. However, there are few more things that you should know before going for hosting your images for free.
If you hold any copyright over the image, you may lose it
If you are a photographer who often takes original, quality images, choosing a free image hosting solution may not be the best decision you can make. By the laws, you hold the copyright of the original image that you produced. However, if you go through the terms and conditions of such free image hosting services, you may end up seeing that upon uploading your images to their servers, they reserve the rights on the images and they can use it under certain conditions. This is not the case for all the case for all of them. But most of them have such copyright issues.
Others may get the right to download and host your images
Continuing the previous point, upon uploading your images to certain free image hosts, you give the permission to them to distribute the content to their other users. In such situations, anyone who has an account on those websites will get the right to download and host that images for their own usage. It might not be that favorable to you especially if you are planning to earn money for your hard work. So, always consider going for some paid image marketplaces which let you earn money using your images.
Your images can get removed at any time
The free image hosting websites hold the right to remove the images that doesn’t comply with their terms and conditions. It means, your images can get removed at any time without any notice. It might be difficult to accept in case you even don’t keep a backup of your images. So, if you are worried about the removal of your images, do not go for a free image hosting solution.
There will be limitations
There are several limitations on the free image hosting websites. For example, you will be limited from uploading certain file types, images that exceed a certain size threshold, images that is more than the allowed pixels, etc. Even if some premium services also has such limitations, they are not that plenty and will be flexible according to the plan that you chose. However, you may not take this as a demerit because you are getting the service for free. Buying a premium subscription while there are free alternatives available is not a good idea. So, you do not have to worry about the limitations of the free account that much.
So, keep these in mind before going for a free image hosting service. These are not meant to scare you and in most of the cases, it doesn’t cause any problems. However, these are possible. So, keep an eye on it.