I take tons of pics of my son and share them multiple times a day with his grandparents, my wife, and others from time to time. The way I've been doing it has been through my iPhone and sometimes iMessage right from my computer out of Lightroom with pics from my better cameras. Snapsots from my iPhone were easy, I could load up 10 or so pics and fire them off in a text and not have to think about it. Family would receive them, save them if they wanted to and all was good with the world.

I have just this week switched to an Android device, Samsung Note 4. The texting on this is way different than the iPhone. The pictures are rather large so I get errors when trying to attach more than one to a text. This has ruined my normal process.

I'm looking for some kind of solution that allows me to post photos and have my family see them easily either through a handy app on their phone or even a website through their browser. I want to be able to fire multiple images off from phone with minimal effort, preferably through an app or direct share option from my image gallery. Also I want the album/feed/pics to be private and only available to those invited or given access.

I'm willing to turn to a hosting site, but I have an issue with paying for more data space when I already pay for data on my phone. That being said, $25 a year won't kill me but it is an annoyance that I can't just send directly. That is an issue with the way my new device works and not the hosting companies fault though. Also I don't want my family being hammered with ads for pictures that I pay to have hosted.

Some of what I've been looking at.

Carousel - Wants to back up ALL my photos ALL the time. I don't care for that. I'd like to choose which photos I want to share and upload.
Flickr - Signed up, haven't worked with it too much to see how it operates on the receiving end as my family would use it.
Tumblr - I could setup a blog for photos but I'm not able to make my main blog private, only secondary blogs. I can't upload directly to a secondary blog through my device. Unless I haven't figured it out
Imgur - Same as Flickr, haven't been able to see the end user experience.
Google+ - Too big and complicated, ain't nobody got time fo that.
Picasa Web - Tied in with Google+, might as well be the same thing
Photobucket - Slow, ads everywhere

So far I'm leaning towards Imgur for ease of use, maybe Flickr if the ads aren't too heavy on the viewer's end.

Are any of you all in the same boat? Any suggestions for a solution?

Thanks!

dropbox

Dropbox or Google drive. I use them both

Instagram doesn't maintain quality and shrinks everything to square aspect.

Windows SkyDrive will do it also. You can set up auto upload for your phone and computer.

I prefer DropBox though, as it is much easier to restrict access and see who accesses it.

Mighty Text. Send SMS or MMS from your computer through your phone.




You're worried about maintaining image quality, but you text photos?

Get everybody on DropBox. Share a folder with everybody. Drag and drop.

Yep.

The big benefit to Dropbox over google.drive is how sharing is done.  With Dropbox I can just send out a link