New Photo Sharing Alternatives to Flickr

1. SmugMug

What It Is: SmugMug is a site with a central focus on making it easy to showcase and organize your photographs — whether you want to sell them or not.

How It’s Different: SmugMug is really focused on making sure your photos are safe, secure and easy to access. There are no bandwidth caps and no limits on the number of photos you can host. You can choose to password-protect all or some of your photos or galleries, add custom watermarks and share photos on social networks like Twitter, Facebook and Tumblr.

How Much It Costs: SmugMug Basic is $5 per month or $40 per year. For $60 per year or $8 per month, you can upgrade to SmugMug Power and get more customization options and the ability to upload and embed 1080p video. SmugMug Pro is $20 per month or $150 per year and includes tons of e-commerce options for the professional photographer.

2. picplz

What It Is: Picplz is a photo sharing app that makes it easy to share your photos to Facebook and Twitter, while also checking in to Foursquare.

How It’s Different: While not purely a photo sharing app — you can browse, comment and upload photos using the website — mobile is the big focus with picplz. The app and the website also let you apply filters to your photos, stuff like toy camera, ’70s and cross-processed.

How Much It Costs: Picplz is free and available in the App Store or the Android Market. You can also sign up for a free account at picplz.com.

3. Instagram

What It Is: Instagram is an iPhone app that lets you take photos and share them with your friends on Twitter, Flickr, Facebook, Tumblr and Foursquare. You can also apply various filters and transformations to your photos.

How It’s Different: Instagram is most similar to picplz, but it has a hint of Hipstamatic in it as well. What sets it apart is its ease of sharing, browsing and commenting.

How Much It Cost: Instagram is free.

4. Path

What It Is: Path is a website and iPhone app that lets you share your photos with a select group of people.

How It’s Different: Path limits you to 50 network connections, based on a theory that states that humans can only sustain 150 social relationships. By limiting users to a smaller network, Path hopes that the sharing and capturing experience can be more personal and more special.

How Much It Costs: Path is free.