Advice requested on photo-sharing websites

[moxiewoman]

Hi all -
Our DD is 3 weeks old tomorrow, and we have people begging for pictures. She came a bit early, so I hadn't decided on a photo-sharing website for us to share her pictures with family and friends.

I have heard good things about shutterfly and other friends have used picasa, while I know someone else that has used snapfish. I am trying to decide which site to use. Does anyone have good/bad experiences?

Things that I prefer:
-- not having to resize pictures - that the website does it for me
-- maybe at some point (when I have more time), I would think about blogging, but at least I need to get some pictures out there first.
-- I want the opportunity for family and friends to order pictures online if they want them

Any advice?
Thanks!
Moxiewoman

[WatchingThemGrow]

We did dotphoto, picasa, shutterfly and finally settled on....Flickr because DH loves all the features of it.

He actually set up a blogspot account for us and people can read the stories and click on the pictures that link to our whole flickr collection.

I think he likes also that he doesn't have to send notification to anyone that pics have been added. They can sign up for alerts and get notified on their own. It is fun, and people love reading the posts on the blog too.

[ShroomsMom]

Please check out SmugMug... We pay for it... but what's nice is they offer prints, gifts, and storage... and it's not as cheesy as Shutterfly, Flickr, etc... It's very professional looking... You can also order back ups... There's no size limit, so if you take hi res photos it uploads without a problem and no resizing required. You can also rotate, tint, crop online if you wish... It's fun and easy to use (for real). There's tons of themes to choose from for your galleries... and I especially love that it's a bit blog like... You put captions w/ each gallery you create as well as each photo, but only if you like. I've been with SmugMug for about 4 years now and they get better and better... I highly recommend it...

[Neatfreak]

Flickr is cheesy now? I know it's been months since I uploaded new photos - hee!

Anyway, the real reason I was posting is to say that there is a trade-off to not resizing your photos before uploading and the amount of time it takes to upload. I hate re-sizing, but it's better than waiting forever to upload two dozen full-res photos from a 14.3 MP camera.

[n2ou]

Second vote for smugmug. It rocks ... the best features are that it is compatible with Picasa and that the pictures are stored in their "real" size, so when family members want to save them on their own computer, they don't save a low-pixel-mini-version.

HTH,

Simone

[Swimfreak78]

We like webshots - plus it does desktop pictures.

[mamaoftwins]

We love Shutterfly - especially since they upgraded their sharing option. It looks quite sleek now, with options for not just pics (and several options for pics - albums, slideshows, highlighted pics), but videos, blogging, widgets, lots of fun stuff. And it's so easy to use. Seriously. Easy.

We have one since our family is all over the country, so if you want to see mine so you can see what options are available before you decide what to go with, just PM me and I'll give you my address.

Congrats on your DD!!