Flickr adds unlimited storage, lowers free usage

Flickr users, get ready for a change – especially if you’ve been using it as a virtual shoebox for all of your photos and video.

The photo site, which Yahoo left dormant for years and rival SmugMug snapped up in the summer, will cut back on how many images users can upload for free, instead offering unlimited storage for $50 a year.

Flickr had offered up to 1 terabyte of storage for photos in 2013, in a bid to draw new users. In talking to the existing Flickr community, SmugMug CEO Don MacAskill said that since users of SmugMug’s premium service had been passionate about unlimited storage for photos (and up to 3 gigabytes for videos), he thought that model would work well on Flickr as well.

“We hope they’ll think this is awesome,” he said.

The difference between the two, aside from SmugMug’s monthly fee that starts at $48, is that SmugMug is more about presentation, the ability for pros to sell their prints and having their images and videos backed up. And Flickr primarily is a photo community, which says it has more than

100 million users, who connect to show off work and discuss it with other photographers and photo enthusiasts.

Flickr users now will have a limit of

1,000 free uploads yearly. “We think that gives people tons of opportunity to participate in the community,” he says.

The changes become effective in January.