14 DAY TRIAL // Once upon a time, paying for Flickr actually brought you some actual features in exchange for the annual subscriptions.
Now that Flickr has been redesigned by Yahoo and that the free accounts now have 1TB of storage space, the question remains why anyone would still pay for the service.
And it’s not like finding the payment plans is easy at all, since they’re hidden in the FAQ area.
Regardless, here’s what you can get for free: 1TB of photo and video storage, the ability to upload photos of up to 200MB and HD videos of up to 1GB, video playback of up to 3 minutes each and the possibility to upload and download in full original quality.
The first payment plan is called “Ad Free,” which for $49.99 (€38.8) per year, rids you of all ads on the website. However, all other features remain the same.
The next payment plan is quite expensive and it costs $499.99 (€388.4). However, for this kind of money, you get 2 TB of photo and video space, as well as all the other benefits of a free account.
However, the problem with Yahoo’s plan is that at such a high price, many will simply choose to go through the trouble of setting up a second email address and making a new account on Flickr. In this manner, you still have 2TB of free space, but they’re cheaper (read that as "free").
Sure, you will have to remember yet another email address and password, but it’s certainly worth it rather than paying $500(€388.4) a year.
However, the latest statement can be applied to most cloud storage services that are already on the market.
But maybe that's the actual idea behind the move, namely increasing the number of accounts, even if more are held by the same person.
Yahoo has also redesigned the entire website, in an effort to make it more attractive to young users and to infuse some life into the service.