Flickr has announced some changes which impact those who use its free tier. The service, recently purchased by professional photo hosting service SmugMug, today confirmed that it will no longer offer 1TB of free storage. Users on the free tier will now be limited to 1,000 photos. This is the first major change of its kind made to Flickr after the service was acquired. It also confirmed that starting in January 2019, there will be no need for a Yahoo account to access Flickr.
“Unfortunately, “free” services are seldom actually free for users. Users pay with their data or with their time. We would rather the arrangement be transparent,” the company said in a press release. Users on the free tier can now upload 1,000 photos or videos regardless of the size. They will no longer get 1TB of free storage for their content.
Flickr Pro now includes ad-free browsing, advanced stats, new 5K photo size, increased video playback time, and more. Subscribers will also be able to get more partner discounts including Adobe Creative Cloud. It costs $49.99 per year. Users who upgrade to Pro before November 30th can get 30 percent off the first year.
Those who have more than 1,000 photos uploaded to their account will have until January 8th, 2019 to either upgrade to Pro or download those photos that take them over the 1,000 limit. They will no longer be able to upload new photos to Flickr after January 8th if they remain over the limit.