ImagesHack.us is one of the biggest images host providers. Despite the pop ups and the inconvenience caused by the excess of adverts, the host provides massive bandwidth per domain name (this includes forums as well, so if many members posted large images hosted on imagehack, the files will be down until the next hour when bandwidth throttle will be elapsed again.)

• Supported formats:  .jpg, .jpeg, .png, .gif, .bmp, .tif, .tiff, .swf, - As long as file size does not exceed 1.5 megabytes.

• Advantages:

Many handy tools such as auto clickable thumbnail generator, resizing the image  to different dimentions from 100*75 to 1600*1200. The thumbnails can ge generated with or without the original file’s resolution (you choose), and if you register (for free), you can create your own gallery and see the files you have uploaded, delete unneeded ones, etc. Another advantage is that the files are hosted forever, unless someone reports inappropriate content or copyright infringement. Also, if you find your photo / image been illegaly ripped from your site and hosted on ImagesHack, all you need to do is contact them and they will remove the file, as been a USA based company, they are very accurate with the Copyright laws.

• Disadvantages:

A popup is generated way too often when you view images or enter the site. Understandable as they obviously need to cover the costs of such a big web server, yet we, the selfish free users will moan about it anyway. Another disadvantage is that big files are getting resized upon upload to save bandwidth, so you can’t possible host a huge, high resolution file.  We coul add that hourly BW limit is a burden, but don’t forget that most free file / images host provide a lot less and ImageHack are actually been generous.

If you want to save your bandwidth on the website, you can host the needed images on their free server, then hotlink to the file, but remember if the BW is exceeding you will have an error image with a yellow frog stating the file is temporarily unavailable… so, not recommended for any business or serious website that cares for its reputation.

PhotoBucket is one of the biggest free image storage websites. They require registration (which is free), and if at some point you feel that you need more space, you can always upgrade for a small fee (25$ per year)… But then again, we want a free files host, not a paid one, so we’d have to make do with what we were handed out.

Once you have registered, you can create your own gallery where you can as well generate flash preview galleries of your photos for websites, blogs and forums, make folders, and see, share and display all your uploaded images in your online, customizable gallery.  Max Image Size upload !MB, 17″ Screen (1024 x 768 resolution image).

The free account provides you with 1GB space and 10GB monthly bandwidth, which is pretty much a lot. Moreover, you can upload videos of up to 5 minutes lengt. The upload can be made from both your local machine or web URL (this is a new feature) and upload up to 20 images at a time. All files you hos on PhotoBucket automatically generated in thumbnails for a preview and offer URL ready to use in HTML and BB (forums) code, as well as direct URL for hot linking. I personally use PhotoBucket and find it to be a very fast, easy and convenient way to store images online which all can be easily accessed through your well organized gallery.

If you Google “free hosting”, you are likely to see Bravenet in top 10 results. They have been proving both free and paid webhosting for many years now, as well as dominating part of free online services for webmasters such as polls, guestbooks, and many other web tools.

I personally used Bravenet for a few weeks… but honestly I was fed up with the ads on the first day already. Most web hosts place ads on your website, with frames and pop ups, but Bravenet will just shower you with them. The Adsense Leaderboard placed across your header takes up some extra width due to amazing configuration of the frame, as a result most sites are only viewed properly on 19″ monitors. Forget the rule about no horizontal scrollbar at 800*600 resolution if you decide to host with Bravenet.

Among other disadvantages is the little space and bandwidth provided - 1.5GB transfer and only 50MB disk space. Then again, some websites never use this much even during one year.

Then again, if blinking, flash, animated and enhanced with sound advertisement do not bother you, look at the bright side of the deal - the host is free, allows up to 5 Hosted Domains, online site builder (pretty easy to use, by the way) and an FTP account. Myself, I’d not recommend using Bravenet for any monetized website, as having 2 leaderboard ads by the host leaves you with a framed site and ability to add only one advertisements place  yourself. Scripts and SQL and nor supported, so hosting a forum, blog or any dynamic (php based) site is out of the option.