Imgur Drops 'Pro' Subscription Service, Gives Tools To All Users

A recently announced GIF making tool was pretty neat; handy if you've ever wanted to get a looping snippet from publicly available YouTube or Vimeo video (or any other publicly hosted video, really). While Imgur could have stopped there and still found favor with users, they've instead gone ahead and made everything free to use. The paid tier to Imgur, Imgur Pro, is going away, and all the goodies in the Pro version will be wrapped up in Imgur proper.

So what does that get you? Well, you'll save about $23 each year, and have the following services available for free:

Store an unlimited number of images in your account

Receive multiple thumbnail options on all uploads

Access complete image analytics and referrer data

Manage, edit or delete any uploaded image at any time

Interact with the awesome Imgur community through commenting, voting and sharing

The company says it's their 'sixth birthday present' gift to the community. Imgur was launched six years ago today, while Imgur Pro was announced five years ago — today.

The catch (because you knew there would be one)? Imgur Pro was ad-free, but Imgur is not. So, while you get the above features for free, you also have to suffer the ads.

If you've signed up for Imgur Pro in the last 30 days, check your email. Imgur is also sending out emails to those who have recently upgraded to offer a refund. At least they're doing the right thing.

Cool for users, obviously, but it also may suggest that ad revenue for Imgur was outpacing Pro subscriptions, so they just went for the money grab while making Pro features standard.

Source: Imgur

Via: The Next Web