Seeking Image Host Recs

[soc_puppet]

Let's face it: I love Dreamwidth, but it's going to be a long time before it has image hosting interface that a lot of former Tumblr users, or new web users in general, are going to find intuitive. I've got a tutorial for it on my to-do list, but in the mean time, we have another problem:

Free accounts only get 500 MB of storage; regular paid accounts get 1.5 GB, and premium paid accounts get 3 GB, but there are artists out there who will absolutely blow right through that amount of storage in short order. On top of that, it doesn't allow hotlinking of images anywhere.

Dreamwidth happily hosts and defends NSFW content, and has a history of stability to boot, but for a lot of artists out there, that's not enough to go on.

So what are the other options out there? tesscodes goes over some in a fair amount of detail here, and elyusion summarizes some not in the previous post here; meanwhile, a Tumblr user suggested Amazon's s3 as a hosting option, pointing out that, since a lot of businesses use it for legal stuff, it's unlikely to be scraped for AI, but, like Google Docs, doesn't really do hotlinking. (Separately, I'm also going to add that Neocities allows hotlinking with a paid account, but doesn't encourage it.)

Do you know of any others? Can you recommend one in particular, either from the posts linked above or that you know of otherwise? Please share in the comments so we can get some solid recommendations!

Comments

[aflatmirror]

Neither of the lists mention Squidge, which I use to host a fanfic illustration after Discord stopped working. Fair warning, the background image on the homepage is. A Lot. https://images.squidge.org/

[malymin]

Weird question - is Squidge specifically for fanart, or can official media (magazine scans, model sheets, etc) be posted there too? And for that latter use case, is there a way to reverse image search to see if the image has already been posted, to avoid redundant usage of server space?

[aflatmirror]

I do not know for sure. From what I've read of the TOS, you can use it for anything non-commercial. I think there is not a reverse image search, it's pretty low tech

[arcanetrivia]

Right on the front page when I went to check it out: "This site is for FANDOM use only. If you are not in fandom, please use a different service. If you want to know what is allowed, you can click here to read this site's Terms of Service"

eta: I think I misunderstood the question. I thought it was "can this be used as a general image host". Seems it was "only specifically art or is other fandom-related stuff okay too". That idk.

[soc_puppet]

I'm going to make an educated guess here: I would say that Squidge is for hosting images you, yourself create, the same way that its fanfic hosting site and AO3 are for hosting fanworks that you (general you) create. I haven't read their TOS so I can't say for sure, but that would be my guess based on the fact that it's supposed to be for "fandom" content and that Squidge is also hosting a fanfic archive.

[malymin]

Any good alternatives for hosting official media (to use as visual reference when writing meta), then?

[ratsplain]

From what I've seen Walter (the guy that runs Squidge) is pretty chill and responsive and available on Tumblr @ squidgiepdx if you wanna ask him directly

[veronyxk84]

I have used imgbb for a while, but then I had to abandon it because most of my hotlinked images had started to be replaced by blue squares that read “image unavailable”.
Even going into my imgbb account, I saw that square replacing many images I had uploaded.
With some searches I found a reddit entry (I believe) explaining that it happened with low-traffic images, or something like that. I don't know if it's reliable info, but I got fed up with having to refresh my pages endless times for the images to show up again (sometimes it worked, sometimes not), so I said goodbye to the service, permanently.

I deleted all my images from imgbb and reuploaded them to SquidgeImage (mentioned in elyusion's list and in the comment above) because 99% of my images are fandom related anyway so it seemed like the best option for me.

(note: if you're selling your art and need img hosting to show your work to potential buyers, SquidgeImage is most likely NOT the service for you. Check the FAQ carefully.)

Then I went through a time-consuming task of replacing all my old imgbb links with SquidgeImage links.

So far I'm satisfied with the service and I hope it stays like this because if I have to replace all my links all over again, I swear I will cry.

Also, ditto on the observation made by aflatmirror above regarding the background image welcoming you to SquidgeImage.
https://images.squidge.org/

[tresfoyle]

The service I've had recommended to me since starting out on here is IMGchest; so far it's worked fine for me, though I imagine some may chafe at the upload size limits on free accounts and the content rules regarding graphic imagery; frankly, I don't have a great picture of how consistently they're even enforced.

[pebbleinalake]

A couple of comments mentioned Squidge which I agree is a great option, though it is geared towards fandom images specifically so that's something to keep in mind. Also, FileGarden is free and works great; it has a wonderful folder sorting system that I love.

On a side note to anyone looking for image hosting options, please don't use Neocities for hotlinking. While they do technically allow hotlinking with a paid account, they still strongly discourage it. To quote their explanation for why it's bad: "the purpose of Neocities is not to be a "file dump", but to be a portal for people creating their own web sites. When Neocities is used as a file dump for other sites, it hurts Neocities sites by cutting into the amount of bandwidth available to them. We want to focus our resources on those sites." It is intended to be a webhost for indie web users and people new to site building; it's a valuable platform in that way and it's a shame when people harm the platform by using it outside of its intended purpose.

[ratsplain]

Thirding Squidge Images! Haven't tried most of the other options since I don't have a need for non-fannish image-hosting, so once I ran into it I didn't try any other hosts.

I agree with tesscodes that Discord and Imgur suck.

[yourlibrarian]

Great topic for a post, I hear this query regularly. I also think Squidge is a great option for fannish stuff. Unfortunately my own posts rarely involve anything fannish and I use Pillowfort for all my image posting. On occasion I hotlink images here but mostly I just rarely post any images since I've been through 3 rounds of image hosts and now have tons of dead links in my account. I use Dreamwidth's native hosting mostly for community banners and layouts, things that are repeat use.

From the lists offered it seems like Dropbox is the most useful, but only if you're willing to pay for an account. That said, there's a high limit for all sorts of storage. I use Carbonite for my file backups so I don't want to pay for a second cloud storage account but if one considers it a kind of insurance for your data it seems worthwhile.

[stel]

i use catbox! i can't speak to the longevity, but it's pretty reliable from what i've used it for and seems pretty decently funded. there's only a file limit for individual files (rather than each user), and you can make an account if you want to keep track of your stuff

i also know of file garden which has sort of a more drive-like setup. i don't know much about it since i haven't used it myself