I have an account at flickr but admit I have hardly used it. I really don't care for it that much. I have had one at Pbase since before it was a paid site--I 'contributed' to helping keep it up and running when they did it more as a service-- and find I still have months and months of usage left--nice that that was recognized, but at the time, it was the only decent thing around. Some have had some problems--usually due to wanting it 'right now' and servers, etc. have been added over the years. I will say that I've never reloaded a thing--everything always 'righted' itself given a short time---and the images are not surrounded by other text. I don't try to sell from mine (though I get a number of requests and follow them up). I don't really care how many 'hits' I get---though a lot of Pbase folks get a lot, do sell, etc.---but I find it easy to deal with--you can personalize it as you like---and, again--there's little there to divert the eye from the images.
Diane