I have been asked by a couple of people the differences between the two photo-sharing sites, Shutterfly and Flickr.
vs. 
I have thought about several ways to compare these two services and have decided to compare them “by feature”. But of course, the following are just MY OPINION (I am entitled to lots of them, right?) and you may share yours with me in the comment box. Just remember to be nice. Because I am nice 
Storage/Bandwidth limit
If you have an account with Shutterfly, you can upload as many pictures as you like, without storage or bandwidth limit. Which means to say that you do not have to resize your pictures before uploading them. But with a free Flickr account, you can upload 100MB worth of photos each calendar month. And only the most recent 200 photos will be shown. The others are not deleted, just removed from the list, but if you blogged about a photo, that photo will still appear in your blog. And with a Flickr Pro account, you have unlimited storage space and bandwidth (some people have over 5,000 photos in their Pro accounts!).
Albums vs Sets
With Shutterfly, you upload your photos in albums - e.g. you can have an album that contains your birthday pictures, another separate album of your honeymoon pictures, another one of your cousin’s wedding, you get the drift? And each album will be “stored” in a unique “space” and you will be given the URL to access that album. Which means, if you sent me a link to view your birthday photos, there’s NO WAY I could take a peep at your honeymoon pictures.
But with Flickr, you have this feature called “sets”. You may group all your turtle pictures into a “Turtle” set and all your doggie pictures into another “Doggie” set, but as long as I have access to your turtle pictures, I will also be able to view your doggie pictures (unless you make them private). You can create a maximum of 3 sets if you have a free account, but with a Pro account, the sky is the limit, literally
Interaction among members
Shutterfly does not provide a platform for members to communicate with each other. But Flickr excels in this. With Flickr, you can add contacts (family or friends or just plain “contacts”) and you can join groups into which you can post your photos, which encourages discussions and exchange of knowledge in a way. Besides discussion groups, there are also different forums which you may join to either request for help, give a suggestion or report a bug.
Accessibility
With Shutterfly, you cannot tag your photos, neither can you search for them. Your photos will be contained in albums the moment you uploaded them and the only way to share them is to email your family and friends the unique URL your album is assigned to. Only registered members can leave comments on your photos. But with Flickr, you can tag your photos with keywords which in turn makes your photos more search-able. And you can set who can leave you a comment on your photos - members who are logged in, or anybody at all. You can also send FlickrMail to other members. To search for a photo in Flickr, you may use keywords to search everybody’s photos, or search only your own photos, or search photos in groups and you can also locate your friends by their names or emails or their locations.
Other FREE features
Both Shutterfly and Flickr provide the flexibility to “do more” with your photos, such as printing them on T-shirts, mugs, etc. But you have to pay for those “services”, of course But with Flickr, in addition to those paid services, you can also upload your pictures directly from your mobile phone, you can create either public or private groups, you can put up Flickr badges on your blog or website, you can make your photos public or private (only visible to you and your family and friends) and your family and friends can subscribe to your Flickr feed so that they are always updated whenever you added more photos. Unfortunately, you do not get these “services” with Shutterfly.
Conclusion
As a conclusion, it all boils down to what your needs or wants are. If you want to share your separate albums with separate people (e.g. colleagues, high-school friends, family members), use Shutterfly. But if you want to really share pictures, discuss and learn more about them, use Flickr. And if you’re greedy, use both *smiles*
If you think this post might benefit other bloggers:
That’s why I have my own gallery. Sure, there isn’t much user interaction there. But it’s got the full power to have everything I need. Tags, accessibility settings, the works. Plus it runs off my blog so it doesn’t eat so much bandwidth since it’s also tied into my blog.
pelf: What does it mean by “runs off your blog”, Ed? But won’t you use up a lot of space storing pictures? Do you resize your pictures before uploading them?
Well I was just wondering that is there anyway by which one could prevent his/her pictures being copied by any person. For ex. disabling the right click option… Is this feature in Shutterfly OR Flickr OR Photobucket….
pelf: Ouh yes, I missed this point. In Flickr, you have an option to allow or disallow other people to download your photos. And you can also set who are those people who can download your photos - your contacts, or anybody at all.
Thank you. Best answer yet!
Is it true that with Flickr PRO, one can download from their site, any photo you put on the site in its full pixel size (even very large files)? And is it also true that with Shutterfly, while they accept original size (even 10mega pixels) photos, they do NOT let you take them back from the web in their full size unless you pay for a backup CD.
If both are true, then SHutterfly is not really a good backup system since you have to purchase back from them any photos you want in original size. With Flickr PRO, while you do pay a nominal annual fee, you can restore any photo in its original size to your computer.
pelf: I didn’t mention any of them to be a solution for backing up your photos, did I? Plus, if I want to back up my photos, I’d burn them into a CD myself, and not upload them unto web-based services, and then figure out whether it would cost to download the original size. Both Flickr and Shutterfly are just photo-sharing services.
It is all confusing to me..in a way. When I move my pix off my computer..to say…shutterfly, photobucket..or Flickr’..and then delete them from my folder on the computer..do the pix stay there. ( at the site) .or do ‘they delete too.’
Also..I clicked something somewhere yesterday..that said ‘publish to web’ sheeeesh! Where did they go? I suppose for everybody to see? Hmmm. They were just pet pix..so that was ok…I suppose.
One more question? I have Picassa 2. That means that the pix that are there..are ‘downloaded’ to my computer..taking up space? Or does it?
(Person with a new camera..lost in cyber-space…LOL)
Thanx carol