Flickr’s free users with more than 1,000 photos need to make a decision

Beginning January 8, if you have a free Flickr account that has more than 1,000 photos or videos, you’ll no longer be able to upload any new content unless you upgrade to its paid plan.

And if you don’t upgrade this month, the company will start deleting your content — beginning with the oldest uploads first — until your account meets the new free limit of 1,000 photos or videos.

The move is part of several recent changes to hit the photo-sharing and storage site following its acquisition by SmugMug in April 2018.

Flickr users with more than 1,000 images or videos who don’t want to pay for a $50-a-year (or $7-a-month) Pro subscription need to rescue their content before February 5 if they’re storing any of it exclusively on Flickr’s servers. And with Flickr previously offering a terabyte of free storage, there could be some major downloading sessions in the pipeline for a number of users.

We should point out that anyone with a free Flickr account who uploaded more than 1,000 photos with a Creative Commons license before November 1, 2018, will not have any of it deleted. In addition, content in the Flickr Commons collection, which has been provided by institutions, will not be removed from the site.

Flickr’s Pro option

If you’ve invested a lot of time and effort in your Flickr collection but are currently a free user, you may want to take a serious look at its Pro offering, which means you won’t have to worry about deleting your work to meet the new limit.

Flickr’s Pro option gets you storage for an unlimited number of photos at full resolution, as well as ad-free browsing. Since November 2018, Pro also offers advanced photo stats for mobile so you can see how your work is performing on the site. You’ll also have access to priority assistance from Flickr’s support team, as well as special deals that include discounts on Adobe’s Creative Cloud, 50 percent savings on a SmugMug portfolio site, 20 percent off gear from Peak Design, and more. Starting “early in 2019,” Pro users will be able to upload videos of up to 10 minutes in length, increased from three minutes. Another incoming feature is the ability to display Pro images at resolutions of up to 5K.

So, to recap, if you have a free Flickr account and have more than 1,000 photos or videos on its servers, then time is running out to save your work if you’re holding any of it exclusively on the site.