We’re making fotocommunity simpler and better. We’ve been working on this behind the scenes for a while now, and there are many great new things in the pipeline, one of which being our membership accounts: the four different variations for paid membership accounts will now become three. All of the new accounts are better than the old ones. But only the new Basic Account is getting an increase (of 50 cents) – all the other accounts either keep their fee at the old level, or become even better value for money!

As always, we remain true to our promise not to change fees for any user already subscribed to our services. Except, of course, when the fee is now lower ;)

Here you can see a preview of the new payment form, which also shows all the differences at a glance.

We have often been asked about monthly payments for accounts – this is now possible for all account types.
Especially nice for the more active members: the storage space has been increased for all accounts, and, at the same time, the difference between “photos in MyPics” and “photos in fotohome” has been removed. As a result, the new accounts make it possible to organize every photo into a fotohome folder .

What that means in detail:

Basic Membership

The new Basic Membership offers 10 uploads a week, as before. The storage space increases to 350 photos, and it makes no difference whether a photo is published for discussion or is just saved in a fotohome. In comparison with the old Basic Membership, the size of the fotohome has thus been increased by a factor of six.

Since this membership is the only one that increases in fees (by 50 cents), there is no automatic changeover process. All those users with an old Basic account (or who still have the even older Full Membership account) stay with their old account until they cancel their subscription. As a result of the new, increased storage space, a changeover to the new Basic membership account will certainly be worthwhile for many members.

Pro Membership

The new Pro Membership is no more expensive than the previous Premium Membership, but the features offered are much better. For this reason, all existing subscriptions will be automatically changed over. And it’s better than before:

* 15 uploads a week instead of only 10
* Storage for 900 photos (whether in fotohome or only in “MyPics” makes no difference)
* All banner advertising can be hidden if so desired

The above does not apply for the old “Full Membership Plus Classic”, which offers slightly better value. Subscribers with such accounts will not be affected, but can change over to the new account type if they want to.

World Membership

The new international World Membership gets 50 cents better value for money and even increases the features provided: all this means that it is now better than the current Universe account. This is what’s better:

* 30 uploads a week in ALL of fotocommunity’s language sites (de, com, fr, it, es). It even makes no difference where the uploads are used – if you want, they can all be used on one language site.
* Storage for 2000 photos
* All banner advertising can be hidden if so desired

All existing World membership subscribers automatically get the features of the new World Account. However, we will not be able to automatically change over all users, because of technical reasons associated with our payment service providers (Paypal and Firstgate). Therefore, we would ask these users to click on a few links to activate the new subscription, so they can begin to enjoy the new lower fees. All affected users will get a mail from us next week, with a detailed description of what they need to do.

Universe Membership

To simplify things, this membership account type has been discontinued. The features offered by the new World Account are in fact even better than the current Universe Account. This works out as a fee reduction of the equivalent of 3.50 euros a month for all current Universe Account membership holders. Otherwise, everything we have already said above about the World Account also applies here.

Free-Accounts

As before, there is of course the Free Account – for everyone that’s not so active. However, as you can see in the payment window above, there are a few new restrictions concerning numbers of friends (Buddies), favorites, and fotohome folders. These restrictions will however only apply to users of Free accounts that registered after 1/2/2007. All our long-standing users are not affected by these changes. And this also does not apply to those of you who currently still have a paid membership, but perhaps later want to change to a Free account.

The changeover will be done next week. Every user with a paid subscription will receive a personalized mail containing all the necessary information. You can contact us with your questions about any of this at any time. Just send your questions by mail to support@fotocommunity.de