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500px my first impressions

Submitted by on July 28, 2011 – 10:00 am5 Comments

 

MacWorld called 500px a photo sharing site with class, Trey Ratcliff jumped in before getting distracted by Google+ and TechCrunch described this Flickr alternative as white hot! Last week I took the plunge and signed up for my own account with 500px to see what the fuss is all about.

First Impressions

In a word….. slick.

Once I worked out the navigation, which wasn’t too complicated and worked out exactly what Upgrading to awesome was all about getting started was fairly easy.

Most importantly the images look good…. no sorry let me rephrase….. they look awesome!

Like all good sites like this there is a free and paid option (being awesome in other words).

What you get in the free (Decaf) version.

  • You are part of the Photo community
  • Photo blog
  • An iPhone & iPad (HTML 5) friendly site
  • Unlimited hosting – Although uploads are limited to 20 a week and 30MB in size
For the ‘Awesome’ $50 annual upgrade
  • Premium portfolios and themes
  • Unlimited everything, including photo uploads
  • Custom domain – yourdomain.com
  • Custom logo in portfolio
  • Full image RSS
  • Ad free
  • Completely remove 500px branding from your portfolio
  • Support, which is always nice
  • Google Analytics integration
I haven’t upgraded yet but for $50 a year that’s a pretty good deal. The free version does have it’s limits especially if you put it side by side with Flickr . This hasn’t stopped hardcore Flickr users like Thomas Hawk and Troy Holden making the switch although both of those two have Upgraded to Awesome.
I did still have a few questions…….
  • Is iPhone app coming?
  • Is iPad app coming?
  • Are you developing LightRoom plugin?
  • Do you have Aperture plugin in works?
  • Are you planning Android app?
  • Are you going to do Flickr importer?
  • Are you going to release API?
  • Do you have geo-location in the works?
  • Are you developing forums/groups?
  • Will you have thumbnail previews on Twitter?
I was delighted to find all of the answers to be YES! With a $525K investment being announced last month hopefully these developments will appear sooner rather than later but in the meantime I’m just enjoying exploring what 500px has on offer already.

You can find me at 500px.com/MichaelShilling

  • http://www.tpsphoto.co.uk Tim Hoy

    Just got my internet back and thought I’d take a look and maybe sign up myself – the link to your   500px was broken though.

  • http://twitter.com/mcrowleyphoto Matthew Crowley

    Still trying to decide if it is worth it to jump from Flickr to 500px. I like 500px, but I am not sure yet if it will stay around or not.

  • http://twitter.com/dubmill David Inglesfield

    Flickr is far from perfect but remains a far superior option to 500px in my view. That may change with time but I doubt it.

  • http://www.tpsphoto.co.uk Tim Hoy

    I’ve just signed up to the Awesome account and had a play.  I like what it does and can’t see why David would suggest that Flickr is superior – better established of course but in what way is anything on offer “superior” – I have the pro Flickr and it’s really just somewhere else to display our work on line.  Can you do another blog post Michael letting Luddites like me know what I’m doing wrong as I suspect that Flicker could actually host an eCommerce and stock image site for me and I just haven’t taken advantage of it not having read the small print etc.  I agree with Matthew however that many of these companies start up and then disappear – Beanpix being one of them we used a while ago.   

  • http://twitter.com/tariquesani Tarique Sani

    I wrote a similar article http://tariquesani.net/blog/2011/06/07/500px-is-not-flickr/ about the same time as you and drew a lot of flak for pointing out deficiencies :-(