[rprii]

Any thoughts on what is the best portfolio site . . . have looked at SmugMug, PBase, Zoto, etc. . . . kind of like buying a car . . . too many choices/options
Rather than wasting time reinventing the wheel with "trial" memberships, thought I would ask for some expert opinions. Cost is not as much an issue as ease of use for visitors, functionality, security, etc.

Input will be appreciated . . .

[foxglove]

This is certainly not "expert" opinion, but here it is anyway.

I used a free site for a bit - Kodak ImageStation, I think (I suppose I should see if my stuff's still there and get rid of it if it is...) - and it was awful. You get what you pay for, I guess. Very little control of appearance, small image size, totally cluttered with ads. Yeuch. On the advice of several friends I moved to pbase, and I'm very happy with it. There are a few stupid things about it, and for a while there it was misbehaving a lot (not allowing uploads, stripping exif, etc.) but lately it's been fine. For the small fee it's a huge step up from ad-infested free sites. If I were you, I'd go look at a bunch of galleries on the sites you're considering and choose the one that suits your tastes. Good luck deciding!

Julie

[ISH]

My opinion is just to host your own domain. You have 100% complete control of how you want your gallery to appear. Yes there is a cost associated with hosting your own domain from a provider, but check with your ISP as they may offer some sort of web page hosting with your service.

Prices are fairly inexpensive, for example www.1and1.com has plans starting at $1.50 a month with 10GB of disk space. That's a lot of images in your online gallery!

[SuperJared]

My opinion is just to host your own domain. You have 100% complete control of how you want your gallery to appear. Yes there is a cost associated with hosting your own domain from a provider, but check with your ISP as they may offer some sort of web page hosting with your service.

Prices are fairly inexpensive, for example www.1and1.com has plans starting at $1.50 a month with 10GB of disk space. That's a lot of images in your online gallery!

That point is certainly valid, but I'm going to go the opposite route. Even for me, a guy who writes code for websites 9 hours a day, SmugMug is the superior option because they remove all the headaches, especially for printing.

[buckethead]

I spent a couple of weeks testing out and trying different hosting sites for Photos. I do have my own web space so I could have gone that route, but when hosting is so cheap - under $40 a year - I did not want to goof around with all that on my own and wanted something quick and easy.

In the end I decided on Zenfolio. There is also Smugmug - those are the 2 that it came down to for me.

Take a look and sign up for all the trials you can.