Why isn't ZooFoo free?

There is no such thing as a free lunch. At least not if you want to have a good lunch.

Free Doesn't Work

There are many free photo sharing websites on the Internet. There are also many poor quality photo sharing sites on the Internet. Different sites try to offer free hosting or photo sharing services but many of these sites suffer or fail because it is impossible for most sites to generate enough revenue from ads alone to cover their running costs.

One prime example of this is the bittersweet success that Youtube has experienced. Being the hands down worlds largest video sharing website seems like a sure fire way to turn a profit and yet this massive branch of Google can't break even. Infrastructure costs far outweigh ad-revenue. In fact estimates suggest that Youtube may even be running at a loss of anywhere from $174 million to $470 million. Part of what makes Youtube so special as a service is its democratic nature - anyone can post anything - but they will have to find another way to cover their expenses if they want to stay around for a long time.

Many leading photo sharing sites including Flickr and Kodak Galleries have been forced to charge for their services as well.

At ZooFoo we recognize the fact that it would be impossible for us to be a real, long term solution for people if we pretended we could offer our service for free. Instead we made the decision to optimize our services and charge a reasonable usage fee.

No Ads

One of the goals behind ZooFoo is to make your photos look as beautiful as possible on any screen. This means no ads. Ads take away from the images and use up valuable screen space resulting in photographs being displayed smaller and becoming less of the focus of the page. Of course even without ad revenue ZooFoo still has to be kept up, running and maintained.

The ability to access a website is an amazing thing. We can access all kinds of information instantly and freely and yet we rarely make the connection that data is served from systems built and maintained by human beings with jobs, lives and families. This infrastructure is essential to the very existence of this site and is one reason why we opted not to have a free site but instead offer a significantly higher quality of service free of ads.

Where costs exist, there has to be some attention by ZooFoo as to how to cover them. If users didn't pay, and we had no advertising, we would be entirely dependent on investors. Eventually one of two things would happen:

  • Investors' money runs out, and ZooFoo would close.
  • Investors lose patience and focus on financial returns and want ZooFoo to become part of a larger company.
By taking money only from customers, we have loyalty only to our customers, our products, and our people. There are no external financing parties distracting us from that mission.

Pay to Protect Your Investment

You bought your camera. You bought your memory card. You bought your computer. All of these tools were worth investing in because you know how valuable your personal data is.

ZooFoo is more than a photo hosting site. We want you to feel secure about using our service as a long term photo backup solution. You are paying not only to share but also to protect your photos. By paying for the services you use from ZooFoo you are taking control into your own hands. You are helping to ensure that ZooFoo is able to maintain our systems, meaning we can host your photos indefinitely.

If a photo hosting site can't afford to pay for its storage and traffic it will collapse or go the route of Kodak Galleries and be "forced" to threaten users with deletion of files if they don't pay even though the service was initially and unrealistically offered as "free".

The costs you have paid by purchasing a digital camera and related equipment are significantly greater than a subscription to ZooFoo. Likewise our systems are less expensive, more powerful and more reliable than home backup systems meaning there is no hardware headache for you when you decide you need to protect your photos.

Higher Quality Service

ZooFoo is about quality. We want to make your photos look as good as possible. This means we pay to store the original high resolution images that you uploaded. We also make sure these files are readily accessible to you. Whenever you need to recover them they are instantly available for download. The infrastructure that allows us to provide this and other services is not free. By investing in a ZooFoo subscription you are investing in maintaining the system that you use to protect the pictures you treasure.

Perhaps David Lazarus from the LA Times put it best: "Free is a great price. But you get what you pay for."

ZooFoo accounts are negligibly priced when you take into account the high quality of service, ad free photo sharing and long term backup and storage.

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