Fotopic.net has closed down

Last week on Piwigo.com contact form, we’ve received several questions from customers of Fotopic.net. They told us that their photo sharing website had closed down. Of course they are searching for a replacement. Here is an anonymous extract of a message we’ve received:

My question is if I sign up for your site, like it and pay a subscription, will it be reliable?  It takes a lot of hours creating a nice site and disappointing to lose it. Hope you do not mind the question but I am having difficulty finding a suitable replacement to the defunct fotopic.

And my answer looks like:

I perfectly understand your concern about reliability and sustainability. Piwigo.com is a commercial offer, so we can’t promise we will last for a hundred years (not even Microsoft or Google could promise that) but we have a major advantage compared to our competitors: Piwigo.com is based on Piwigo and Piwigo is a free software (open source).

It means that in case you’re not satisfied with Piwigo.com services or if Piwigo.com is closing for any reason, you can get your data back, including photos, user comments, visit history… and move your gallery on any other host and you won’t lose anything

(the best is to have your own domain name so that your visitors won’t have to find your new address if one day you decide to move)

This is what I call the no vendor lock-in advantage! I truly believe it makes a big difference with any other photo sharing website.