Jamez’ Guide to Art Hosting for Exchanges
Last updated December 10th, 2024 to reflect Aethy going offline.
You are welcome to copy and distribute this document as much as you like. Everything in this document refers to fictional, artistic content. If you would like to provide corrections or suggest additions to this copy of the document, message me on Discord @jamesbranwen or email me at [email protected]. I’m just another fan, I have no affiliation with AO3 or any of the services on this list.
You may want to start off by reading AO3’s Posting and Editing FAQ section for posting images on AO3.
AO3 does not have native image hosting. Instead, users must host images elsewhere and link to them within their works on AO3.
To embed images on AO3, you need to use the HTML tag in the HTML editor. The image tag is used like this:
Where LINK TO YOUR IMAGE is replaced with the direct link to your image hosted on another website,
IMAGE ALT TEXT is replaced with a description of your image for blind/low vision users, users with limited internet connections, or in case of link breakage,
and XXX is replaced with the desired display width in pixels (this is optional, but will stop your images from appearing tiny or huge on some screens. AO3 also now natively resizes images for smaller screens).
An example tag may look like this:
The following table lists commonly named image hosts. Please read the terms of service for any site before uploading content there. All of these sites are subject to the laws of the places they are hosted in, noted in the Extra Notes column. No image host is infallible. At the end of the day, running servers costs money. If you post a lot of images, I recommend diversifying your hosting if at all possible. That way, if one platform goes down, you will not have to rehost every single image on your account.
Most of these services disallow commercial image hosting and hotlinking altogether, as does AO3, so the base assumption here is that you are engaging in non-commercial fannish activity that falls under AO3’s purview.
Platform
Allows Hotlinking?
Allows NSFW?
Allows Underage?
Allows Graphic Violence/Non-Con?
Reliable?
Image URLs are Anonymous?
Requires Login?
Extra Notes
Aethy
Not explicitly allowed or disallowed
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
On Nov. 28, 2024, Aethy announced that the site would be closing in 30 days from that date. Registration for the site also closed. Images hosted at Aethy will need to be rehosted elsewhere.
Yes
Aethy allows posts to be visible to “mentioned users only” which are private to the uploader if no other users are mentioned.
Yes
Signing up requires an email address
Aethy is a Mastodon instance hosted in California, USA. Aethy describes themselves as “a safe haven for creative and unique people and communities to flourish!” and states, “Instead of continuing to be squeezed out of spaces because perhaps we're too weird, too queer, or too kinky... we've made our own space.”
Aethy is explicitly kink positive and has a large focus on fictional/fanom NSFW content.
Aethy disallows site use by members of law enforcement.
Baraag
Not explicitly allowed or disallowed
Yes
Yes
Yes, requires content warning
Experiences some downtime
Quite possible it will go the same way as Aethy.
Yes
I assume uploading here is similar to the process on Aethy but confirmation is needed.
Yes
Baraag is exclusive to artists and requires an invitation to sign up. The site admin can be emailed to request an invitation.
Baraag is a Mastodon instance hosted in the United States and has one administrator
Baraag describes itself as a platform with “a focus on creators of uncensored art.”
Baraag occasionally posts open invite links on their Twitter account.
Blogger
Yes
Yes
No
No, per their content policy, Blogger disallows content that “depicts or encourages rape, incest, bestiality, or necrophilia.
Yes
Yes
Blogger blogs can be made private.
Yes
Blogger requires a Google account to use.
Blogger is a blogging platform owned by Google. Google is headquartered in California, USA. Google has extensive TOS and gathers a lot of data on users.
Catbox.moe
Disallowed for video
Yes
No
No
Also explicitly disallows bestiality
Yes
Yes
No
Catbox describes their mission as such: “Catbox's mission is to provide services that help facilitate an open and free Internet.”
Catbox operates out of the United States. Catbox has one anonymous admin.
Catbox is blocked in Australia, Ireland, Iran, and Afghanistan.
Catbox’s sister site, Litterbox, allows images to expire after a certain amount of time.
Cloudinary
Yes, Cloudinary serves as a middleman service giving users free content delivery.
No
No, disallows “highly controversial content” and content "inconsistent with the generally accepted practices of the Internet community"
No, disallows content that is “supportive of or promoting violence” as well as controversial content
Yes, switches between three different content delivery services.
No
Yes
Signing up requires at least an email address
Cloudinary is a middleman CDN (content delivery network) that hosts user files on Amazon services and delivers via three companies, Akamai, Fastly, and CloudFront. Content uploaded to Cloudinary is subject to Cloudinary TOS as well as the TOS of these companies (which is similarly restrictive).
Cloudinary’s TOS is broad about what it disallows, including content that is deemed to be “promoting or facilitating pornography”, content that infringes third party copyright, as well as content that is “inconsistent with the generally accepted practices of the Internet community.”
Cloudinary was founded in Israel but is now headquartered in Santa Clara, California. Cloudinary Enterprise users may choose to ensure their content is hosted in the EEA.
The Cloudinary free plan offers 25 “credits” per month, which can be used as “Transformations” (new file uploads), GB of storage space, or GB of monthly viewing bandwidth.
CubeUpload
Yes
No, although per TOS “We allow tasteful artwork at our discretion”
No
No
Mostly – volunteer run and experiences some downtime
Needs confirmation
Yes
Signing up requires an email address
CubeUpload is an image hosting site based in the UK. May not be exchange friendly, according to their TOS: “Do not upload inappropriate images - use common sense!”
Discord
No
Yes
No
Yes
No
Discord has cracked down on hotlinking. Images posted on Discord now expire for off-platform linking 24 hours later.
Yes
Images posted to a private channel on Discord can only be accessed by users in the channel.
Yes
Discord requires a birthday and email to sign up.
Discord is a for-profit online chat service based in California, USA. Discord was previously highly popular as a content host, but has since cracked down on hotlinking from the platform.
Dreamwidth
No. Hotlinks will be blocked.
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
No
Yes
Signing up requires an email address.
Dreamwidth allows image uploads with all account tiers, however, image hotlinking is not allowed.
Dreamwidth is based in the United States.
Dropbox
No, if they notice high bandwidth usage, your link will be banned.
Doesn’t explicitly disallow
No
Unspecified
Does not allow hotlinking
Yes
Yes
Signing up requires name and email
Dropbox is a cloud based file sharing service based in California, USA.
Flickr
Yes, if also linked back to Flickr
No, UNLESS user pays for premium plan ($9.49 USD per month)
Unspecified
Unspecified
Yes
Yes
Yes
Signing up requires name, age, and email address.
Flickr is a for-profit image hosting site based in California, USA.
Google Drive/Google Docs/Google Photos/Google Keep, etc
No
These Google services will block links as soon as they are hotlinked.
No
No
No
See “allows hotlinking?”
Yes
Yes
Requires a Google account
Just don’t.
ImgBB
Yes
No
No
Unspecified
Yes
Yes
No
ImgBB is an image hosting service headquartered in the United States. It is based on the same sourcecode as Squidge Images.
ImgBox
Yes
Yes
No
Unspecified
Yes
Yes
No
ImgBox is an image and video hosting site. This site supports itself with ads and sometimes contains popup ads. ImgBox uses a Swedish IP address.
ImgChest
Yes
Yes
No
Per TOS: “Images which contain gruesome scenes, such as death or mutilations” are not allowed.
I would interpret this as including photorealistic imagery, but YMMV.
Yes, unless your image is flagged for copyright. Images may be taken down without notice.
Yes
No
Per their FAQ, “Image Chest makes sharing media easy. … Image Chest is where media finds it's uncensored and uncompressed forever home.”
Image Chest operates out of Ohio, US.
Imgur
Imgur dubiously allows hotlinking for non-commercial purposes such as forum posts but encourages users to use Imgur site embeds over image embeds.
No
No
Imgur allows “mild violence, medical work, injuries or blood” if it is labeled Mature. Imgur disallows “gore or shock content.”
No, the Imgur NSFW bot is known to be overactive and images may be removed without notice.
Yes
No
Imgur, inc is a for-profit corporation based in Delaware, US.
Internet Archive
Yes
Per a 2005 forum post, “we essentially do not allow adult pornographic content on our servers.
otherwise, we are very free-speech friendly!
tracey, webmaster”
IA content policies are difficult to co