Flickr has set up a velvet rope around its desktop app's auto-uploader, reversing the feature for pro members and offering free users a discount to get in. The image hosting company announced the changes in a blog post on Tuesday.
Free users of the desktop app can use the promo code "FLICKRPRO30" to get 30 percent off a year-long subscription to Flickr Pro. And they have two weeks, starting from Tuesday, to take advantage of the discount.
"If you are already a Pro member, you won't see any changes to your existing subscription," the company stated.
Without the discount, Flickr Pro goes for $6 per month or $50 annually. The discount brings the price of an annual Pro subscription down to $35.
The perks of joining Flickr Pro, beyond regaining access to the auto uploader tool, include a "Pro" badge to wear on an account. The Pro experience is also free of ads, both on the user's pictures and photos shared by others, and comes with 1000 GB of storage space.
Flickr Pro users are also eligible for a 20 percent discount on an Adobe Creative Cloud Photography subscription.
Pro users also get free standard shipping for Flickr merchandise shipped in the United States, and they get half off the cost of international shipping, as long as they buy at least $25 worth of Flickr merchandise.
Flickr Pro also gives users access to the service's statistics page, which includes "improved data navigation and insights into your most popular photos."
Last summer, Flickr brought back its Pro plan. Those who were already subscribing to the ad-free version of the service were bumped up to Pro for no additional cost.
Flickr Pro disappeared back in 2013, after Yahoo came in and changed the service's monetitzation model. Existing Pro users were grandfathered and grandmothered in, able to keep their unlimited storage space, while new subscribers were given 1 TB of space.
"Today, unlimited storage is not a top request for our users," Rajiv Vaidyanathan, product director for Flickr, reasoned at the time. "In fact, fewer than 100 members in the history of Flickr have exceeded the one free terabyte of storage we provide. It's more important to our users that we store their photos in full resolution."
When Pro returned, it came back with many of the perks, such as the shipping and subscription discounts, that its current version currently has.
