Why do so many people use Pbase??

peestandingup · June 20, 2006

Seriously, im not knocking them or anything. They seem just fine for what they are. But, I see tons & tons of REALLY talented photographers over there displaying their stuff, which gets a lot of traffic & comments up the wazoo.

But, for $60 a year you only get 1200 megabytes (like 1GB) of storage. I understand its a different setup than Smugmug (or similar sites) & is geared towards comments/communities, but still. Only 1GB this day & age when so many other companies are offering unlimited like Smugmug, Zenfolio, etc with the same community-like features??

Because most every serious amatuer/pro I notice online either use Pbase or Smugmug, then a few newer companies here & there. Am I missing something about Pbase??

Seriously, this is NOT a diss on Pbase :-)

gus · June 20, 2006

I would guess the answer here is that Pbase has about 3-4 years head start. Internet whispers of good value spreads faster than herpies at university so i imagine SM will soon catch up.

SM is a phonomon...fenominal.. phenom .. top shelf product for the $.

Antonio Correia · June 20, 2006

gus wrote:

I would guess the answer here is that Pbase has about 3-4 years head start. Internet whispers of good value spreads faster than herpies at university so i imagine SM will soon catch up.

SM is a phonomon...fenominal.. phenom .. top shelf product for the $.

My son brought me to SM.
What I like in PBase - and I don't use it - is the data by camera, the data by country, by place, the trees representing the struture of each photographer...
SM only allow 2 divisions: Categories and Subcategories. Too little I think.

Harryb · June 20, 2006

You have to understand that for a good while they were the best around. They were also free at one time and then started to accept donations. It has only been around three years that they started to charge. That built up a lot of loyality.

I still keep a Pbase gallery and probably will continue to do so.

wxwax · June 20, 2006

Not sure if my account has lapsed or not.

What Gus and Harry said, for a while they were the only game in town. Accounts were free, linking was not. This n00b was completely buffaloed by their user interface, however, never did get the hang of it.

RatPhoto · June 21, 2006

Pbase does have some advantages
I just recently joined SmugMug and did not renew my pBase account. It was a somewhat difficult decision. Among Pbase advantages:

1. Very easy to have the same photo in multiple galleries.
2. Little or no restriction on nesting of galleries.
3. Very simply to use - guestbook integrated, etc.
4. Costs less $$$
5. People knew where to find me there
6. Pretty good "drop in" traffic
7. Things like location of shot can be added in a way that shows up nicely on the page.

Reasons I went with SmugMug

1. Much more customizable (with power account)
2. No limits to uploading - makes me feel free to upload full-size pics.
3. I prefer the way SmugMug URLs work - sites feel more standalone.
4. I like the multiple way of viewing pages (traditional, journal, slideshow, etc.)

I will say that transferring from Pbase to SmugMug has been a lot of work and it isn't finished yet.

http://ratphoto.smugmug.com/

http://www.pbase.com/ratphoto

wxwax · June 21, 2006

Good post, Rat, always interesting to see how others think.

Andy · June 21, 2006

RatPhoto wrote:

Among Pbase advantages:

4. Costs less $$$

Hrm. Put a Gigabyte of photos on both and see? Just curious how the costs less pans out?

Yeah, they're less $$ if you'll only have 300mb stored. I grant that. But...?

RatPhoto · June 21, 2006

Andy wrote:

Hrm. Put a Gigabyte of photos on both and see? Just curious how the costs less pans out?

Yeah, they're less $$ if you'll only have 300mb stored. I grant that. But...?

Because Pbase don't have SmugMugs ability to resize photos (S,M,L,O) very few people put original size photos on the site. As a consequence, I would be very surprised if the average Pbase account costs as much as the average SmugMug account. I know mine sure didn't.

Now I'll grant you that if you start storing bunches of the originals on the site, it would be more expensive on Pbase. I never did that there. I will be doing that here (and have started storing some of my newer work that way).

kkart · June 22, 2006

Well I don't use smugmug nor pbase......I found smugmug not to long ago actually and I have to say that IMO, I like the features here much better than I do on pbase. I think it's a matter of whose been around longer, and pbase certainly has been. Hence them having the amount of people that they do. Incidentally I use Zoto. http://www.zoto.com It doesn't quite have the gallery customization (yet) of smugmug with banners and so forth, however that is coming. They are a relatively new site that was recently taken out of beta. I have been on there since last year and so far really good. Being free, they give you 10 gigs, the pro accounts get like 20 or something, which costs $29.95/yr. The gallery templates they do have aren't that many yet but it suits my needs. So far, the best 2 I have found are smugmug and zoto. If I didn't have a site somewhere, it would honestly be a toss up between here and zoto...flip of the coin. I have seen quite a few people from pbase migrate to zoto. My portfolio on there is here http://kkart.zoto.com/galleries and my homepage on zoto is here http://kkart.zoto.com/ it is interesting how the gallery and the homepage areas are totally different areas.

mrcoons · June 22, 2006

I've used a lot of different companies and still maintain an account with Fototime for storing video primarily (even though I still have a few photos there) and tried them all.

I use PBase as a reference when I am researching a new lens for my camera and it has worked well for me in that regard. But as a storage or photo sharing site it did not 'fit' me.

For me: The ability to have all my current years photos online at the same time at a price I can afford was the number one selling point for me. I know I could not afford to have this many photos online at my old site as I do at Smugmug. And then the customer service provided here is just great! I've never seen anything approaching this at any of the other companies I've tried. Maybe I just caught them on a bad 'day', who knows.

This is really a subjective choice when you get right down to it. It's like picking one brand of car over another.

Why do so many people use Pbase??

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